Tales of Xillia Remastered Gives An Overlooked PS3 Gem A Second Shot At Life
Inverse Score: 9/10
The PlayStation 3 era was a strange time for Japanese RPGs, as so many series tried to shift styles or modernize while struggling against the rise of open-world and multiplayer-focused titles. Final Fantasy 13 took the series in an experimental direction, while years passed between new entries in series like Dragon Quest and Persona.
But one franchise absolutely flourished in that transitional era, producing a handful of games that have left a lasting legacy. Chief among those is Tales of Xillia, one of the most tightly paced RPGs you’ll ever find. It packs in brilliant characters and one of the genre’s best battle systems, and thanks to a new remaster that adds smart quality-of-life changes, Tales of Xillia has never looked or played better.
Tale As Old as Time
Originally released in 2011 for the series’ 15th anniversary, Tales of Xillia is a case of the development team putting everything on the table, trying and largely succeeding in crafting a definitive Tales experience. Xillia takes place in the land of Rieze Maxia, where humans share a symbiotic relationship with spirits that sustain the natural world. Two millennia prior, humans developed a technology called spyrix that absorbs spirits, prompting the lord of spirits, Maxwell, to gather humans onto Rieze Maxia and seal them in a barrier, separating them from the larger world of Elympios.
Xillia is the first game in the series to feature two protagonists, each with branching story paths and exclusive scenes. The first protagonist is Mila Maxwell, the successor to the lord of spirits, who’s sent to the human world to prevent the creation of a weapon of mass destruction. A young medical student named Jude Mathis stumbles upon Mila’s mission, and the two end up on the run from the country of Rashugal’s military.
While Xillia’s concise story is one of its biggest strengths, the dual protagonist approach offers replay value.
The immediate urgency of being on the run injects Xillia with an energy different from other games in the series. That’s supported by the overall narrative, which diverges from the slow and methodical approach most games in the genre have. Xillia will still take you around 40 to 50 hours, and it features all the vibrant character building the series is known for, but it doesn’t waste any time with its main story.
A lot of the fluff is cut out so Xillia can focus on the ensemble cast, integrating each character’s arc into the main story rather than spinning those out through side content. This helps Xillia avoid a problem that comes up in a lot of RPGs, where each party member is just kind of there after they do their story bits. And the cast is what really makes the game come alive, from the two-timing debonair mercenary Alvin to the suave and mysterious old butler Rown. There’s clear care and thought put into each character and how they connect to the larger world, enhanced by the Tales series’ trademark skit system — dozens of optional conversations you can stop and watch on your adventure.
Fighting the System
Each of Xillia’s six characters has a drastically different combat style.
Xillia’s other essential ingredient is its phenomenal battle system, a brilliant iteration of the series’ action-packed team battles. The Tales series has always had a heavy action focus, and building your team for its real-time battles is important. In Xillia, each character has a distinct combat style and a host of different skills, called Artes, that they unlock throughout the game. It feels smooth and responsive, rivaling even the likes of Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
But the key feature is the Link system, which connects two characters via an ethereal chain, unlocking a variety of new options, combos, and Linked Artes. Every combination of the game’s six party members has a different style and selection of attacks, giving you an astounding array of combinations, and the Link system, in taking some inspiration from tag-team fighters, lets you effortlessly chain crazy combos together.
There’s also a variety of ways to build out your characters, including the Lillium Sphere system that functions almost exactly like Final Fantasy X’s beloved Sphere Grid. Each character has a massive web of nodes that grant stat boosts, Artes, and other bonuses, but the order you unlock them can drastically change their strengths. You might want Jude to be a damage-dealing tank by investing in physical attack, or you can buff his intelligence and defense to make him a hybrid healer instead.
The Link system pushes Xillia’s combat to new heights.
It’s that combination of crunchy combat and breakneck story that makes Xillia so compelling to play. I might not call Xillia the best game in the Tales series, but it’s undoubtedly the one where the developer’s vision feels the most well-defined, and all the disparate elements snap together almost perfectly. It’s certainly the best entry point into the Tales series.
That was true for the PS3 version, and has been for 15 years. And while the Remastered version is a mostly straight enhancement, it does add some important quality-of-life features. For one thing, Xillia’s HD upgrade is remarkable, and significantly more effective than the release of Tales of Graces f earlier this year. Xillia had strong art design that favored an ethereal, spirit-like aesthetic, in keeping with the game’s themes. That stylistic choice translates well here, as the environments really pop.
The game also introduces a cornucopia of little changes, like clear objective markers, a retooled minimap, and the ability to turn off encounters or retry tough battles. These remove the game’s smaller frustrations, while the upgrade to a stable 60fps (120 on PC) helps combat and exploration flow better. These may sound like minor details, but returning to the original Xillia after playing the Remaster is like night and day.
Finding the Balance
Xillia benefits from a visual upgrade even more than Graces.
Tales’ remasters seem to be focused on visibility, and that’s important for a series like this. While Tales has a hardcore fan base, it never quite reached the mainstream brand recognition of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and even Persona. Retaining the core of these games while adding visual enhancements and streamlining gameplay is a smart approach, and this is now, by far, the best way to play Tales of Xillia.
It’s almost impossible to find copies of many Tales games today, and Bandai could’ve simply ported the game to modern platforms and been done with it. But Tales of Xillia Remastered is the best version it can be, a hidden gem polished to a sheen. RPG fans shouldn’t miss it.
9/10
Tales of Xillia Remastered is available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Inverse was provided a PS5 code for review.
INVERSE VIDEO GAME REVIEW ETHOS: Every Inverse video game review answers two questions: Is this game worth your time? Are you getting what you pay for? We have no tolerance for endless fetch quests, clunky mechanics, or bugs that dilute the experience. We care deeply about a game’s design, world-building, character arcs, and storytelling come together. Inverse will never punch down, but we aren’t afraid to punch up. We love magic and science-fiction in equal measure, and as much as we love experiencing rich stories and worlds through games, we won’t ignore the real-world context in which those games are made.
