The Japanese role-playing game food chain is hardly a difficult thing to discern. At the very top, with pride of place above all the other pretenders, you have your Final Fantasies and your Dragon Quests, the alternating mainstays of that conglomerate RPG behemoth Square-Enix. Realistically, what similarly minded developers are vying for is no greater honour than third place - and despite no short order of competition, the now ten-strong Tales franchise seems set to clinch it. Tales of Vesperia is inarguably the best instalment yet, and it's no surprise: Namco Bandai has taken the series from strength to strength in recent years. From impressive portable entry Tales of Symphonia to 2007's ambitious but technically constrained Tales of the Abyss on PS2, the development studio dedicated to this increasingly powerful brand plainly has the ins and outs of the formula down pat; with few exceptions, each of the Tales to date has improved upon the graphics, characters and battle system of the last. In those regards, Tales of Vesperia does not disappoint, and though its staunch traditionalism keeps classic status at arm's length, the incremental improvements we've come to expect from entry to entry help to set it apart from the competition. Certainly its aesthetics put those of Tales of the Abyss to shame, but then Tales of Vesperia is the series' HD debut so it had damn well better look good next to a last-gen game. The cast, too, notwithstanding an overwhelmingly ho-hum first impression, are fleshed out well enough over the fifty or more hours of gameplay that you can expect from this latest Tales that it's easy to forgive some of their initially predictable characteristics. And the story, when it gets going - nearer the halfway mark than the start - is alright.

The world of Terca Lumireis turns on the relationship between its populace and the blastia that enrich their lives. These artefacts of a forgotten race are many things to many people; for some, an energy source; for others, they are weapons, commodities, status symbols. For Yuri Lowell - a dissatisfied former knight born and raised in the lower quarter of the Imperial capital - blastia are important in that one powers the water pump that sustains the poor but close-knit community he is proud to be a part of. When a shady mage makes off with said blastia, he takes it upon himself to follow the thief beyond the great barrier that protects Zaphias from the monsters that wreak havoc beyond its borders. Yuri is joined on his quest by Estellise, an escaped candidate for the Imperial throne who hopes to see some of the wonders of Terca Lumireis before taking up the rule of it, and her healing artes - medicinal magics made possible by portable, bodhi blastia - help keep Yuri alive long enough for them to be joined by several other characters in the early stages of their journey.

When the team is in place and the pace finally picks up, Tales of Vesperia weaves a moderately interesting narrative that is environmentally-friendly but otherwise rote. There are power plays, conspiracies, doppelgangers and dangers around every corner - your usual assortment. Players with any experience in the genre will surely have suffered through significantly worse stories before; sadly, however, there are some strikingly dark - and original - themes that receive only short shrift due to a frustrating overabundance of predictable, protracted piffle. In the end, it's a fun albeit forgettable tale that will only remain with you thanks to the warmth of its involving ensemble. Largely because of some surprisingly organic voice-work, Yuri and Estelle (not to mention Karol, Rita, Raven, Rapide and Judith) develop into genuinely relatable if not always likeable characters. Be assured, though, that Tales of Vesperia is likely to squarely meet your expectations in every other respect. In fact, if I could make just a single complaint about the series' next-gen debut, it'd be exactly that; Tales of Vesperia will not often surprise you. Although it does everything you might expect of a Japanese RPG well, it does it all strictly by the book. Just as soon as the unremarkable themes are revealed, you're ready for every formulaic story beat hours before your expectations actually bear out - and they will. Perhaps the developers at Namco Bandai have worked so resolutely to obey the narrative traditions of the genre that they cannot bear, from time to time, to break from them. It's a crying shame, too, because a cast this credible deserves more memorable context.

The real star of Tales of Vesperia is the incredibly flexible battle system, and though players of previous instalments will already be versed in the series' trademark encounter mechanics, this iteration tightens up the proceedings to the point that battles are positively reminiscent of those you might find in a character action game. We're not talking God of War here, but you have refreshingly direct control over your player character of choice - which is to say Yuri, at first, and any of the remainder of your party once you've bought or synthesized one of the key items that allow you to change your leader. You only ever control one character at a time: the rest of the party, though you can select which items and artes they are allowed to use under certain conditions, are directed by some admirably adequate AI. If the going gets tough, in the midst of battle you can issue specific orders to change your team's overall strategy, but success or failure from encounter to encounter largely depends upon your control of the party leader. Whoever that may be, he or she can move freely around the circular battle arenas, blocking, evading and changing position when need be but mostly chaining together melee attacks with presses of the B button and modifying them by holding a direction on the left thumbstick. Each successful strike wins you a given amount of TP, points you can spend on more powerful burst and arcane arts. Time a tip of the right trigger correctly and you can execute a fatal strike, instantly defeating your enemy and scoring you an XP bonus in the process. An overlimit gauge also fills up gradually from one encounter to the next; activate it and you can combo your most powerful artes together until your opponent keels over or you run out of TP, irrespective of the anti-spam refresh rate with which such attacks are usually governed.

There is such a variety of options during battle that you can approach encounters from any one of a number of ways. Firstly, you can rush the enemies head-on: you'll suffer some damage but an AI-operated healer has your back more often than not. It's a basic, button-mashy tactic - if you can even call it a tactic - that gets you by until the more challenging bosses force you to play a more strategic game, blocking and dodging until an opportunity to truly lay the smackdown rears its head. Alternately you can hang back and use your spellcasters to whittle away at your opponents' health, or use your teammates as the perfect distraction to sneak behind enemies and hit them where it really hurts. Battles are tight, responsive and ultimately rather satisfying, making the inevitable grind that much more tolerable. And rejoice: the incessant load times between encounters and exploration that spoiled Tales of the Abyss for so many are as good as gone.

All in all, the technical aspects of Tales of Vesperia's presentation are top notch - the developer has plainly pulled out all the stops for this latest iteration of the go-to game engine. The graphics would be breathtaking if last year's B-side JRPG Eternal Sonata hadn't clued 360 owners into the incredible potential of stylistic, anime-influenced cel-shading. Namco Bandai's Tales studio one-up Tri-Crescendo at every turn, however - the look is soft and clean where Eternal Sonata was jarringly jagged, and while that musical misadventure clearly had a couple of graphical set pieces, the look of Tales of Vesperia is more consistent throughout; from a desolate ghost ship to a lush desert oasis, a town built around a great tree to an expansive, pseudo-steampunk Guild city, the scores of environments - all rendered with remarkable attention to detail - elaborate upon the same, subdued imagery. By comparison, the audio, excepting the excellent voice acting, is disheartening. Sound effects are sufficient at best and though a few key themes transcend the uninspired soundtrack that plays throughout much of your journey, one particularly irksome Benny Hill bit will do away with all your growing goodwill.

There is enough about Tales of Vesperia to applaud that it seems petty to linger on criticising those aspects that can only be faulted for falling short of exemplary. The developer appears to have systematically gone about rectifying the series' past slights. The difficulty curve is spot on; the cooking and item synthesising activities are intuitive and offer up yet another level of complexity for you to master; the animations are fluid; and an otherwise-intimidating array of menus are easily accessible and clearly laid out. For once it all works much as it should, and while Tales of Vesperia never quite lights the vital spark that separates the great from the merely good, each of its aspects are absolutely serviceable - solid if unspectacular and a little too traditional. This is no Final Fantasy but so long as you approach it with reasonable expectations, Tales of Vesperia should have no trouble finding a place to call its own in the affections of every discerning JRPG fan.

Reviewed by Niall Rough for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).