I’m honestly even surprised at myself because I’m not someone who usually just gives up halfway through a game!! and with a **Tales** game especially? I really thought there was no way I’d actually drop it 😭

But I just reached that point where I thought... I can’t do this anymore..  
And I really did give it a chance! kept telling myself to continue a little more, maybe something would finally click, but the longer I played, the less I wanted to continue..

I even sent my sister ranting about it before finally admitting defeat 🥲  
And her answer is as you can see, aligns with what many here have told me before: good story, bad game experience. 

I want to say I’m not posting this to lash out at the game or argue with people who love it. Not at all. I already went in with low expectations..  
It was honestly just sitting in my library for years and I thought, I have* *to* *finally play this properly at some point*.*  
Well… apparently not! 

So where do I even begin? I know a lot of people say the story itself is good, and maybe it really does become great, but I just couldn’t connect with the way it was being told. Everything felt so rushed and smashed together. Like scenes and story points were just cut and placed next to each other without that natural progression in between!

There was no smooth flow, no real build up, no feeling of slowly being pulled deeper into the story the way I usually expect from a JRPG. Things just kept..happening!

And I do think there was potential there, which made it more frustrating, but since I didn’t finish it I’m not going to sit here pretending I can judge the full story.

The world, the towns, the places, even the npcs… everything felt flat and cheap.   
And eventually I realized there was just… nothing pulling me forward anymore.

So, I surrendered 🥲

I could honestly sit here and talk about every little thing I disliked, but I don’t even want this to turn into some angry Zestiria hate post. There are obviously people who genuinely love it and I respect that.

For me though, this is my second genuinely bad experience with a Tales game, and sadly it sits very low for me.

Now I’m just very hopeful that whenever we finally get a properly new Tales title again, it feels much more developed, rich and alive than this.

Tales of Zestiria.. I tried. I really did