Nothing gets me ready for buttoning through endless expository dialog like the music from the opening of Tales of Zestiria.
There are Japanese role-playing games with openings I watch once and then skip, and then there are JRPGs that I turn on just to watch the opening sequence over and over again. Grandia III is a prime example of the latter. And now so is Tales of Zestiria.
That’s one powerful set of ten notes right there. The sort of grouping I’d like to accompany me whenever I enter a room. I’m pretty early on in the game and haven’t met half of the characters appearing in the opening movie, but I am excited to do so. As each face becomes familiar, the opening animated sequence will gain more meaning, my connection to it growing stronger.
I am kind of silly about my video game music.
Though Tales of Zestiria has a pretty massive soundtrack crafted by two of series fans’ most beloved composers — Motoi Sakuraba and Go Shiina — this particular tune is the work of Japanese rock act Superfly. Titled “White Light”, the track debuted back in 2014 with the Japanese release of the game, and was also included on the band’s fifth studio album, White.
Here’s the band’s video for the full version of the song.
I’ve already purchased the track and placed it on my music listening device, so if you see me driving down the road at irresponsible speeds with one white-gloved hand raised outside of my car window, you’ll know why.
Because I have problems.
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17 responses to “I’ll Never Skip Tales Of Zestiria’s Opening Movie”
Up until last night, I was quite enjoying Zestiria.
Then I got to the Water Trial, and my God, if there was ever a thing to jeopardize the potential of spending my grade for a second playthrough, it was that.
Zelda Water Temple’s haven’t got shit on being warped to the start of a dungeon when you’re spotted by Seraph-security cameras. Thankfully it was short.
Beat it last night and agree completely. I think it is deliberate too with the very 4th wall breaking dialogue at times and general self awareness especially on edna’s part, the devs probably decided that because it was a water temple something needed to be frustrating about it. It wasn’t really a hard temple, and neither was the OOT water temple, but it definitely leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
Ashura looked pretty sweet thoughAww I was kind of hoping there’d be some skits if I kept getting caught (which happened a lot), but I don’t think I’ll go back to find out, haha
This is me right now. Also, I might just be underleveled playing on Moderate instead of Normal, but the flying eyes… they are a pain. Even with Edna set to hit multiple enemies, or when you’re armatized with her, it’s near impossible to properly dodge Burning Strikes from multiples of them.
Fuck this dungeon.
Only the true loli seraph Edna will save us now.
A excellent intro song and clip.
I never skipped the tales of graces intro,that thing was epic!
Where’d you purchase this song from, Mike? I can’t find it on iTunes and I don’t know where else to look.
The US iTunes store tends to have access to a lot more Japanese music than the AU one does, sadly.
Yeah, I’ve noticed this phenomenon in the past. Sometimes a few songs that I enjoy trickle into the AU iTunes store (such as Karma by Bump of Chicken), but for the most part Japanese artists rarely have their work represented in the AU marketplace.
Oh yeees I have that song on my iPhone haha.
But yep, Japanese music on Australian iTunes is mostly limited to Bump of Chicken, One Ok Rock (which I recommend and is also on Spotify), Lisa and anything from Key anime.
Though, for Tales games – Song 4 U by Ayumi Hamasaki and the Japanese version of White Wishes is on the AU store as well. Anything other than that, though, and you’d have to get a Japanese iTunes account like me :s
Well, there are a few other Tales game songs available on the AU iTunes store, such as Starry Heavens (One of Symphonia’s opening songs) and Ring a Bell (Vesperia), but yeah, I’ve been really tempted to get a Japanese account.
OK! You’ve convinced me to watch this. Bravo! xD
it annoys me that recent anime doesn’t have as much variation in the character designs in comparison to the tales series. they’re all starting to feel the same… but i guess that why i always get so caught up in tales games 😀
Well the Tales series has two extremely good character designers working on it regularly, Kousuke Fujishima (Sakura Wars, Ah! My Goddess, etc,) and Mutsumi Inomata (bunch of older, more obscure anime). Used to be that there was two Tales teams, one that used Fujishima’s designs and the other that used Inomata’s, but the two teams were unified after the release of Tales of Graces, so from Xillia onward the character design work for the games has been collaborations between both of them, with a lot more involvement from some of the internal artists in the studio now as well.
I think that’s a lot of what appeals to me about Tales as well, personally. It’s a lot like playing a really top-end fantasy anime.
I trust your judgement on games like this. I’m an old die-hard fan of the older Tales games, and have liked them up to Tales of Vesperia. Tales of Graces F was “okay good”, Tales of Xilla I didn’t even finish (got to the no-magic other world part), and even though I bought Xilla 2 I haven’t even plugged it into my machine.
There were lots of negative japanese reviews that seemed a little shallow, so I don’t know how much I can trust those bad reviews. How much have you enjoyed the game?
The general rule I found was that people who liked Xillia > Graces seem to like this game more. It seems to me to be quite a bit more like Xillia thematically.
That said, it’s probably one of the most unique Tales games that I’ve played (which is both a good thing and a bad thing) so you’d have to play it yourself. Rating it against other Tales games, I’d say it’s somewhere in the middle tbh (they’re all pretty decent haha).
Tales game intros are always so rewatchable. Absolutely love them.
I cranked up the PC version as soon as I got back from work. Played it up until the intro started. Began to mouth along with the words, then stopped in despair. Karaoke version for the English release… I should have known. T_T
*EDIT* – Just read in the steam community that this is actually a known error, and can be fixed by changing file names. Sweet.