Anti Frustration Features / Tales Series

Anti-Frustration Features in the Tales Series.

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Mothership Titles

Tales of Phantasia

• The game has a puzzle that challenges you to hit a series of switches at the same time as your computer controlled ally, who just refuses to walk straight at a consistent pace and keeps stopping, speeding up and slowing down randomly. If you, playing as Cless, fail to hit the switches with Arche enough times, your other two party members will take over, hitting all the switches in record time. Only downside is that, for any version past the initial Super Nintendo release, you miss out on a title for Cless.
• Chester will likely rejoin your party at a third of the experience levels of everyone else. From the PSX version onwards, sleeping at Inns will show a couple scenes in which he level grinds himself at night while the others are sleeping. Afterwards, he gains massive amounts of Experience, catching him up fairly quickly.

Tales of Destiny 2

• The game has a very... specific tightrope walking puzzle. If you fail the puzzle, you land in poison that hurts you every few steps. To mitigate the frustration of this puzzle, Nanaly will complete it for you if you fail too many times or are at critically low health. However, when this puzzle appears again in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, she will not help you.
• As long as you have magic lens in your inventory, Harold will use them automatically to identify new enemies when they're encountered, making completing the bestiary much easier once she joins your party.

Tales of Symphonia

• If you mess up the ice puzzle to cross a geyser, the character with the highest affection will save Lloyd, and then another party member will do the puzzle for you.

Tales of Legendia

• If you can't or do not wish to go through a Puzzle Booth, you can always choose to skip them. You won't get a special title for Senel if you skip any of them, but the title is more of a Bragging Rights Reward since it barely increases his stats.
• Moses and Will also offer to guide you through the Forest of No Return and the Mirage Palace warp maze if you're having trouble figuring out the patterns on your own.

Tales of the Abyss

• Prior to obtaining the airship, there are instances wherein the party has to go to an area that is a long walk away, both in-universe and to the player. In several of these instances, the game will give you the option to go straight to that area and skip the walk.
• Midway through the game, you must sneak the party through a forest without being spotted by enemy guards. If you're spotted, you fight a random encounter, then get sent back to the beginning of the area to try and sneak through again. If you get spotted too often, the game will start giving you the option to forget about stealth and just wipe the guards out.
• There's a short "re-draw the fonic glyph" minigame, where Tear will do it for you if you fail. However, you rob yourself of 100% Completion this way (at least unless you do it right the next time).

Tales of Vesperia

• The PS3 and later versions, the Secret Mission for the Flynn duel is a lot harder because the boss has more artes than in the 360 version. However, he cannot use Burst Artes, Altered Artes, or Divine Streak even if he learned them as a playable character, thus keeping his artes list reasonable for this Secret Mission.
  • In the same later editions, Nam Cobanda Isle had a kowz who could allow you to have a rematch with all the story bosses in order to unlock any Secret Missions that a player may have missed first time around. Unfortunately, there is one that doesn't fit this mold. The Secret Mission when fighting Estelle as it requires a special item that is particularly easy to miss permanently.

Tales of Hearts

• The game has several "light up all panels in a 4x4 grid by walking on them at the right order" puzzles you need to do in a row. If you take too long to solve any of them, your party members will offer to do them for you. They'll be happy to demonstrate that they're smarter than the protagonist for the first two times, but from the third time onwards, they'll mutter angrily about your incompetence while solving it.

Tales of Xillia

• The game does its best to avert Now, Where Was I Going Again? by giving you a map system with fast travel. It also shows what the player's current objective is with the push of a button, which often includes the name of the location they need to go to next.

Tales of Xillia 2

• The game has a Bonus Dungeon that only characters with the maximum Relationship Value may enter with Ludger. This can be difficult to achieve, if the player did not pick the right answers during certain events or grind for Friendship Potions. So, the game gives you the Bond Of Shadows, an accessory that can be equipped on any party member that lets them into the dungeon, regardless of affection rating.
• It also has the previous game's feature of pushing a button to tell the player their next objective.

Tales of Zestiria

• The game areas in the overworld are, simply put, quite large and spread-out. For a small fee of Gald, you may fast-travel to save points you have already been to.

Tales of Berseria

• Loading a save will occasionally have the characters give a few short lines of dialogue to let you know what your objective is and refresh you on where the story is headed. It also retains the "press a button to see your objective" feature from Xillia.
• Your mini-map will show anyone that you need to talk to or any place that you need to go marked with a yellow star, so you know exactly what you need to do to advance. If it's not in the current area, checking the starred objective in your map will show you the location you need to be in to advance the story.
• The scout ship normally takes half an hour before it returns with items. The first time you use it, the scout ship's voyage will take only five seconds so that you can learn how it works.
• Inoph Bottles let you teleport to other locations as a fast travel system, and Denore Bottles act as a Door to Before by letting you warp right to the beginning of any dungeon so you don't have to walk. It's also possible to find "Bottomless" versions of both so you no longer have to keep buying them.
• The Bonus Dungeon doesn't have any save points, but quick-saving still works, so you don't have to do it all in one go. You can also leave the dungeon at any time, which lets you retain everything you got while inside of it, including experience points. Finally, you can spend Katz Spirits to help complete the objectives in each area, which you can't do anywhere else.

Tales of Arise

• This game retains the ability to press one button to see what your current objective is from previous entries.
• Should you miss a skit, you'll get a chance to view it when resting at a campfire by selecting it from a list. Skits you haven't viewed yet are marked with a [!] next to them, so you know which ones you still need to see.
• You can flag any ability that you want to save up for, but don't have the points to buy just yet. When you get enough, the game will inform you that you can now buy the flagged ability.
• If the player has already completed the requirements for the sidequest, such as already having the items in your inventory, or defeating the giant monster you're asked to kill, the player will automatically complete the quest and receive the rewards as the characters will acknowledge this.
  • Similarly, if you have the required items, but don't want to give them over just yet (i.e. you want to use it for crafting or cooking) you have the option to decline for now.
• In order to get the lure that can unlock the ultimate boss fish (Silver Marlin), the player must have caught at least 40 fish. As there are 42 in the game, this means the player can easily skip one tough boss fish, or one of the fish that you cannot unlock until you are near the end of the game.
• The chain bonus was introduced in Berseria, however, any chain bonus you gained would be eliminated if you saved the game. In Arise, it is retained, though it does still go away if you end up having to reload.
• In Berseria you could do a quick save anywhere, but had to be at a save point in order to do a proper save. In Arise, not only can you do a regular save anytime you have access to the menu, but the game also auto-saves regularly.
• Losing a battle is no longer a Game Over in the field, you just take a penalty, and can also readily reload from an auto-save that was probably saved not long beforehand, or a manual save if it's more recent. In Berseria, a loss on the field was a Game Over and a potentially significant wipe in progress if you hadn't saved recently. As for boss battles, you can retry infinitely and also have the option to change the difficulty, which is the same as Berseria.
• One of the trophy requirements is to forge 100 weapons, but some of them require materials that are only ever dropped once by bosses that you can only fight once. Furthermore, forging some of the weapons requires the consumption of a lower-level version of the weapon. Sold off one of these lower-level weapons without realizing this? You can go back to where you fought the boss before and there will be a spawn point where you can gather another of the material, thus allowing you to again craft the lower-level weapon. Additionally, on the forging screen, there is a helpful "Created" indicator in green with a star at the bottom right for weapons you have already forged.
• As only Law can enter into Overlimit without taking damage, and Overlimit occurs more frequently when the player is low on HP, there are several title bonuses that revolve around making the player more robust when they're in Overlimit. Since the player will frequently be at low health when they reach Overlimit, this allows the player to more easily use the benefits of Overlimit to their advantage without risk of overextending and dying when the entire point of Overlimit is to act as a brief Come Back Mechanic that makes all your artes free to use.
• The Final Boss fight takes into account that you're forced to play Alphen and, given the very nature of the series, may have stopped playing as him the moment you got Shionne and thus might not have much experience with him. So long as you have at least mastered the basic concept of dodging, Vholran's final fight is fairly reasonable, as he pauses between every attack he does besides dedicated combos, not just at the end of combos as before, and he's the one human boss in the entire game who can be stunned reliably without using Alphen's Boost Arte, since that runs off Alphen's HP and the player doesn't have a healer to support them. The real final boss was effectively the Great Spirit of Rena; Vholran is just around to give a climatic finish to the whole thing. Adding on to this, the second phase cannot be lost, which is very generous considering that even players who used Alphen liberally may not have interacted much with his gimmick given the inherent riskiness of spending HP for stronger attacks, and for the final phase the player is locked into nothing but those attacks.

Escort Titles

Tales of the World

• In Radiant Mythology 3, the Tales characters level up automatically, even if the player never puts them into their party, though this stops once they reach Level 70. Given that the Tales cast in that game is huge, leveling them up manually would be an arduous task. And while Level 70 doesn't sound like much since max level is 200, it's a very good level to be for the Final Boss. This leads to any Tales character that ends up only joining the party for plot-mandated events later in the game to not be a dead-weight.

Tales of Link

• Although most rare characters require spending Hero Stones to obtain, there are some limited-time Events that gift exclusive characters and powerful gear upon completion. Many characters can also be earned through completing Story quests, defeating them in a random encounter, or by sending Lippy to do Cooking-type missions.

Tales Of The Rays

• The app closed accidentally, or your phone ran out of batteries during battle? No worries. You can continue from the beginning of the fight.
• The Oversmash feature keeps the last enemy alive until the active queue of Mirrage Artes is depleted. Helpful for objectives requiring a certain number performed or total amount of damage.
• Because there are no revival methods outside extremely rare equipment, party members gain a Last Chance Hit Point during enemy Mirrage Artes.
• Currency for reprinted events is acquired through missions completed through normal gameplay, eliminating any need to micromanage energy between events.
• Selling 15 unwanted mirrages lets players purchase a selection ticket redeemable for any regular mirrage of choice up to a certain release date.
• A single character cannot have more than 3 enemies targetting them, so as not to overwhelm you if your party starts dwindling against groups of enemies.

Tales of Crestoria

• If the game ever force quits or crashes during a quest, you can choose to resume that quest right where you left off. In addition, if you choose not to resume the quest, the AP cost of that quest gets refunded to you, even going over your current max AP if necessary.
• In order to help you ease into the battle system, you get a free pull of one Super-Super-Rare character and their respective SSR Memoria Stone upon starting the game for the first time. You're even allowed to choose which character you want; all other SSR characters have to be acquired through random chance in Loot Boxes.
• There are various battle quests that offer rewards when you complete a set of six. However, the game tracks records for these battle quests even if you haven't unlocked them yet, so it's possible to acquire the rewards for the quests as soon as you get them if you've already incidentally completed all of the requirements.
• The Version 1.1 update in December 2020 gave players the "Skip" feature which allowed players to simulate completing a quest multiple times in a row as long as they'd already fully completed it once before. This allowed players to get the experience, affinity, money, and items from a quest without having to grind against weak enemies over and over again. However, each quest still costs the regular amount of AP to run it.
• In PVP arena battles, animations for enemy characters' Mystic Artes are automatically skipped. Instead, a cut-in flashes to show you which character is using the move, then the effects just apply all at once. Since you're on a time limit to beat your opponent's characters, skipping the extra long animations for each Mystic Arte gives you a little more of a grace period.
• You can't use healing artes if everybody's at full health. The game will let you know that there are "no available targets" and prevent it from working, which saves you from wasting the healing arte.

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