Video Game / Tales of Link

Tales of Link was a Free-to-Play mobile game for Android and iOS featuring the crossover of the many series in the Tales series, including the mothership and escort titles.

In the land of Liafyse, items known as Seeds of Ruin have created powerful monsters known as Ruinators, which ravage the land. The goddess Leonne has prophesied that a Great Savior will be able to save them through the power of Stonecantation - summoning and commanding powerful warriors via Hero Stones. Together with the Goddess' servant Lippy, an adventurous girl named Sara, and an assortment of other characters, the Great Savior must roam the land to fight against beasts and humans tainted by the Seeds of Grief...including Caesar, Sara's older brother.

Gameplay consisted of linking characters with similar icons together, resulting in combo attacks against opponents.

The game ultimately closed down in March 2018 with Global Link shutting down on the 27th and JP following on the 28th. Sara, Kana, Zephyr and Allen were later brought over to Tales Of The Rays as playable characters with Lippy appearing in the story. An archive of Link's entire story is also available fully integrated into Rays' story archive menu, letting people who wish to experience the story still do so through that game.

This F2P game makes use of the following Tropes:

• Alternate Universe: Many Tales characters live in the land of Liafyse, and can accompany the Great Savior as Guest fighters.
• Amnesiac Hero: The Great Savior serves as one and part of his and Sara's quest is to help regain his memories. Chapter 3 reveals though that he actually has no past at all. He is born on earth from heaven as a blank slate each time, although he did at least forget his earth name of Allen.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise here.
• Anti-Grinding: Every character and piece of equipment has a level limit, which be increased a set number of times through fusion.
• Anti Poop-Socking: Every mission requires Stamina to access, with harder missions requiring more. Stamina slowly recharges over time, though it can also be instantly replenished through items.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Players are limited to bringing nine of their own characters per fight, in addition to three from another player's team, and mission-specific Guest characters.
• Badass Adorable: The characters' fighting sprites are chibi, based off of the art design of the "Tales of Gekijou" miniseries.
• Bonus Level of Hell: Insofar as a free-to-play gacha game can have such things, the global-exclusive Ares Realms function as these, getting gruelling in later stages, though the reward is usually a 6* character that the Realm is based on at the time, with the likes of Dhaos, Yggdrasill, Kratos (a Global-exclusive version that used his Cruxis/Judgment costume), Barbatos Goetia, Saleh, Van Grants (in his Final Boss costume) and Gaius (also in his Final Boss form) getting their own Ares Realms.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The effect of a Seed of Ruin on a normal human.
• Breakout Character: Sara and Kana have managed this thanks to them being announced for Tales Of The Rays.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Hero Stones (used to summon rare heroes) can be obtained in small amounts through missions, or simply bought in bundles using real cash.
• Crossover: Aside from combining various Tales games, there have also been special events involving God Eater, Sword Art Online, and Hello Kitty, among other franchises.
• Darker and Edgier: The fourth chapter takes on a much more serious tone compared to the first three chapters and has a major Downer Ending.
• Desperation Attack: There are passives that increase the attack of a unit if the player is below a threshold percentage of HP. The lower the HP threshold, the stronger the boost tends to be. Desperation Healer is the strongest form of this passive, multiplying a unit's attack by 2.5 (Or tripling if it's Desperation Healer 2), but has a very low threshold of being below two percent of the player's maximum HP. Mystech Hammer, the bash weapon from Challenging Trial, can make any bash unit use a desperation attack, as it doubles the attack of a unit when the player has ten percent or less of their maximum HP. These stack with each other, allowing a bash unit's attack to quadruple if they're equipped with two copies and meet the HP requirements. The difficulty of the HP threshold can be made easier to achieve with some Last Chance Hit Point skills.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Long before the 2nd chapter was released in English, Kana appeared next to Sara on the "Key" tab. She made her first proper appearance in a Tales of Festival related event.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After cycles of pain and heartbreak, Allen and the others finally redeem Zephyr and the rescue Kana at long last, before destroying Nidhogg for good. Sadly, Zephyr must pay or his sins in the Circle of Purification, but what stops this being a Bittersweet Ending is how the party convince Leonne to only have Zephyr go though this when his mortal life ends.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Water, Fire, Earth, and Wind oppose each other in a cyclical way. Dark and Light directly oppose each other.
• Excuse Plot: Since Sara can't be featured in every summon, excuses have to be made as to why she isn't wearing a costume like the rest of the characters, ranging from reasonable to downright ridiculous. The School Festival skit actually parodies this by giving the most ridiculous excuse yet.
• Fanservice: Some of the costumes and banners evoke this, like swimsuits.
• Fun with Acronyms: The device Lippy uses to track down Seeds of Ruin is abbreviated as "SMARTPHON".
• Glass Cannon:
  • Using the 6* (Hero Killer) Barbatos as your leader (as well as having a friend doing the same), as well as the Link Boost setup associate with him, makes the player this, trading HP and survivability for a very quick and very dirty tile change into an incredibly powered up Mystic Arte right from the word go. But if it fails somehow, the player may not have enough HP to try building up LC for another shot. The Ares Realm version of Gaius also provides the same but with a higher damage buff requiring all five types of heroes in a link.
  • Slash and spell units in general fall into this category, as they have very low HP compared to other unit types. For slash units, this is made up for by them having the best attack stats among all five types. For spell units, they have the highest recovery stats among all five types.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Some characters in the main story will travel with your party for a few chapters. Featured units act as this in their corresponding skits.
• Harder Than Hard: The Trial Tower, Carnage Sphere and the Global-exclusive Ares Realm events usually feature and end with a very powerful boss that'll require considerable planning and high level characters and equips to defeat. The rewards are usually worth it, though.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The Great Savior, AKA the player, begins with a random name that can be changed at any time. Chapter 3 of story mode reveals that this is the Great Savior/Allen's true name as an agent of the heavens.
• Idol Singer: The idolm@ster collab units.
• Improbable Weapon User: In keeping with the theme of their corresponding banners, some units wield things like bouquets, cooking utensils, or bags as weapons.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Some active skills such as Ares Realm Kratos and Swimsuit Judith allow the player to keep one HP from an attack that would otherwise wipe out all of their hit points.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Some character variants spoil their appearances later in their respective games.
  • The English release does not release the skits in order. As a result, some skits spoil plot points or make references to skits that have yet to be released in English (such as the second beach event, which made references to the first Christmas event, still unreleased at the time).
• Lazy Artist: Characters that don't have full bodied sprites only have their status images used during skits.
• Limit Break: There are Mystic Artes, granted to specific units with very rare items; Unite Artes, whose users are given in special events; and Link Finishers, which anyone can use when you link nine characters in a single combo.
• Malignant Plot Tumor: Zephyr and Kana's stories were once an unexplained change from the regular plot featuring Sara, Allen, and Lippy. Come Chapter 4 they have completely invaded the plot to the point where the former A plot is summed up in cutscenes rather than actually explored.
• Mighty Glacier: Bash units tend to have the best HP compared to other units. This is balanced out by them having the worst recovery stats of the five unit types.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • Global's 6* Dhaos, with a passive that adds 30 LC to one's LC pool, is obviously intended to compensate for the shot type's low LC, which otherwise makes the type lowest on the tier list of usable characters.
  • Once the Barbatos/Link Boost strategy caught on in Global, the devs began to bring in the events that had game-start LC Drain effects to curb it and get everyone to start actually trying again. The Global Soul Arena lacks this as well, in comparison to the JP version's Mystic Arte arena's newly added Conqueror's Den level which lowers your MAX LC for the first few fights.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Sara and the Savior.
• P.O.V. Boy, Poster Girl: Sara and Kana have more units and appear more in merchandise and promo art compared to the male POV characters, the Savior and Zephyr, who did not get units until a good bit into the game's lifespan, and only in the JP version in the case of the former.
• Regional Bonus: The obtainable 6* antagonists from the Ares Realm events are Global-exclusive, doubly so for Kratos, who's 6* version uses his Cruxis outfit, which was never in the JP version at all.
• The Reveal: Remember Lillium of the Nidhogg group, the entity Caesar answers to? Chapter 3 reveals that Lillium is Zephyr. "Lillium" is his real heaven name and he's working with the evil dragon Nidhogg to steal the souls of Sara, Lippy and the Great Savior so he can save Kana, who ended up devoured by Nidhogg and who Zephyr ended up falling in love with.
• Running Gag: Zephyr pulling on Kana's hood when she starts going off in the wrong direction. This gag ends up taking a tragic turn at the end of Chapter 4 when Zephyr tries, and fails to grab onto Kana's hood before she's eaten by Niddhog.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Some banners feature units dressed in formal clothes.
• Stat Sticks: If a unit is not an arte healer, delayer or finisher, then they're this. Certain units like 5* event versions of Van, Elrane, Lazaris or a Hot Springs Episode Leia have this as their main purpose (although in Van, Lazaris and Elrane's case, they have passive abilities while Leia has none.) In some builds, even if the team leader does not buff them at all, Bash units are usually included in order to help buff the party's HP.
• Super-Deformed: Aside from battle sprites, the Dark Wings always appear in this style.
• Team Pet: Lippy
• Tech Points: Characters can learn Passive Skills only though landing enough final hits on enemies.
• Temporary Online Content: Certain character variants, such as the Hello Kitty costume types, are only obtainable through Events or random Hero Stone draws that are available for limited times.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The third chapter is told from the point of view of a new protagonist and adds an additional new character. Even the text boxes are colored differently.
• Violation of Common Sense: How do you get the most out the 6* Barbatos and Yggdrasills that you can get? Don't limit-break them even if you have duplicates. Why? Their Link Boost passives. Once earned, you start the battle with LC. This passive stacks. Enjoy.
• Voice Grunting: Sara and Lippy do this during skits.
• Wolverine Publicity: More popular characters like Yuri and Leon tend to get more costumed units compared to less popular characters.