Corpse Run 422: …but they wouldn’t do that, right?
LIVESTREAM UPDATE:
Just a reminder, there is no livestream this week as I will be up at my camp doing some preliminary work for the summer. Chances are the stream will resume next week!
See you then!
END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!
Note: I’ve combed through the post to make sure there are no blatant Tales of Xillia spoilers, but just in case, I offer a warning that something here might be construed as a spoiler, so… be careful, I guess?
After seeing today’s strip, you may have guessed that Rich and I finished up the Tales of Xillia run this week.
You might also have guessed that I wasn’t too fond of the ending to Milla’s story.
The huge issue is that the third act of Milla’s campaign is almost non-existent. She gets one unique area (which, to be fair, is an incredible sequence) that lasts about thirty minutes tops, whereas Jude’s story gets tons of character developing scenes, a bunch of narrative driven boss battles, and a large helping of plot that helps explain what’s happened over the course of the game.
If you play as Milla, there are many principal characters that she meets, but never sees again due to the fact that their character arcs are tied up in her absence.
This isn’t just a situation of “you need to play both campaigns to get the full story,” mind you. Any player would say that the Jude’s campaign gives you a resolution to the story, both in tying up plot holes and giving closure with the cast.
Milla’s… doesn’t do any of that… she more or less gets air-dropped in when it’s suddenly convenient, and the player is expected to already know what’s happened beforehand.
If the purpose of the Milla campaign was to give a little bit of flavor to an already rousing adventure, it should only have been available after beating Jude’s quest. Playing as Milla first will leave you scratching your head come the finale.
The whole situation is really a shame, as Milla is a million times the lead that Jude is, and her struggles and conflicts are the true driving force of the story; it felt as though Jude’s “importance” was artificial and empty.
Xillia is totally an amazing game and I highly recommend that you play it. I admit that my criticisms are nitpicky, but when a game is so close to being perfect the little flaws really stand out.
IT COULD HAVE BEEN LEGENDARILY GOOD!
Grrrrrrrrr!
Damn, I played Jude mode when the game came out, assumed milla mode would be all the same, really sounds like I missed out, might polish off my disk and play NG+ then
You totally should! The Milla-only scenes are really great; one sequence in particular completely wowed me and stole the show.
It sounded like Threads of Fate up to the part where the female lead skips a bunch of stuff.
I haven’t played Threads of Fate, but chances are it’s the same situation: playing as Milla forces you to miss huge portions of the story.
It’s actually not. They start out fairly similar, going to the same places and doing similar things, and then each character has two special dungeons that they access separately before going to the same places again. Pretty interesting concept since each story is complete enough to stand alone, but playing Mint’s story after you finish Rue’s (or vice versa if you started with Mint) will fill in some extra details about people, places, and the magical maguffin that both of them are after.
Ah, well, nothing can compare to Tales of Symphonia anyway, right?
(Note: I haven’t played Tales of Symphonia)
It’s strange, really. I am absolutely willing to confess that Xillia does just about everything *better* than Symphonia. The battle system is stellar, the level up system allows for great customization, pretty much all of the characters are fun to play as (as opposed to basically just half the party in Symphonia)…
and the linked artes… oh god they’re awesome.
Truth be told, I’m willing to admit that Xillia is a better game. My nostalgia for Symphonia will keep it #1 in my mind, but the Tales series has really improved the gameplay over the last decade.
That said, Xillia has the aforementioned issues with the Milla campaign and also has some major problems in the map department: pretty much every “walking between areas” segment is exactly the same… big open area, enemies littered about, zero flavor.
A split narrative? Doesn’t Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (and by extension Kingdom Hearts 2.5 Remix) do this very well? The story you get depends on which of the 3 players you choose and happens concurrently against the other two narratives.
Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance does the same thing, but you don’t pick a character at the beginning and it constantly shifts you between Sora’s and Riku’s narrative
I.. Never realized there was two different stories, I played as Milla the one time I played and didn’t really have any gripes with the story.
‘Course that’s probably because I didn’t know I was missing any story!
Star Ocean: the Second Story also does the split narrative thing, down to each having a recruitable party member unique to their playthrough and a couple points where the two are separated so you only see that part with that character