10 hours of gameplay, so far.

But I think already now to talk about the game itself (I will update this review if the need arises later in the game).

Tales of Xillia is a Japanese RPG, from the series "Tales of" (like Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Vesperia, etc.), a venerable series if any, as will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year!

This is the first game of this series that I play, but not my first J-RPG ... Far from it.

Tales of Xillia succeeds in giving me exactly (except for one thing, but you will see that, frankly, I nitpick) everything I expect from a J-RPG on PS3. A story and lovable characters, a good combat system and lots of little stuff to do outside of the main story.

The story is more or less what I expect from this type of games: you must save humanity from itself by preventing it from creating weapons that destroy. To do this, you can play as one of two characters: Milla (the girl to the right of the cover of the game), which actually is - for short - an incarnate god or Jude (the young man left) a young medical student. Milla I play, and I'm honestly not sure that either choice greatly affects the course of history (100% linear).

According to the rules established in the genre, the game tells its story linearly, but brings some variation by adding a ton of stuff to do next. Quests, stuff to collect, set goals (kill X monsters, do some combat tricks, etc.), as well as optional to do skits that allow character development.

The battle system is real-time closed arena. This means that when you find yourself faced with a monster, you will be taken to a different setting, the camera angle changes to be more combat practice. The fights are rhythmic and quite short (no monster who spend 15 minutes in a corner to be untouchable until now) - which, in my opinion, is a good thing. This is more or less a beat'em all in less oriented combos and more on strategy. The character you control can bond with another character, taking advantage of various protections or benefits after ally. An ally break the defenses opponents, another will protect you against magical attacks, etc. On top of that, you fill a special gauge that lets you launch a devastating combination attack.

The fight is pretty easy - feel free to increase the level of difficulty in the options if that's too simple. There are a lot of combat mechanics, but fighting against the basic monsters often hold the "I attack a bunch of times, I put my guard, I attack a bunch of times, I put myself on guard" - hence my comment on the duration of the fighting. I climbed a notch above normal, and I have no problem really (I plan to go one step further to see if I get massacred;)).

The art direction is good, although I find that the graphics capabilities of the PS3 could be better used (I had said I pinaillerais on something, here).

In conclusion: is this the best game of all time? No, but he is not here for that. This is a more than competent RPG on PS3, very pleasant to play, hard to let go, everything I love.