The first time I played Tales of Graces f was in 2012 on a 20-inch CRT television, where the watercolor art style looked all smudgy and I could barely read some of the text — but that didn’t matter. I was enthralled by one of the best battle systems to ever grace video games and a delightful cast of characters wrapped in an almost charmingly generic story.
Tales of Graces f Remastered is the quintessential comfort food RPG, a game that’s so abundantly full of charm and whimsy that its flaws often don’t matter. It feels like the video game equivalent of settling in with a good book on a cold winter’s eve. Tales of Graces didn’t revolutionize RPGs when it came out in 2009, and it still doesn’t now, but it’s a game that knows exactly what it wants to be and does it well. Despite some sluggish pacing and generic storytelling, there’s a lot of heart packed into Tales of Graces, and its phenomenal gameplay helps push it to greater heights.
