As far as other co-op details go, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the game gives players a second party member. Milla joins the party as a playable character within half and hour into the game, which is much quicker than many other Tales games. A third character is added around an hour or two later, but a fourth character doesn’t join the roster for quite a few hours after that. Due to some preliminary research I did beforehand, I chose Jude as my protagonist, and I’m pretty happy with that choice. According to others, when Milla and Jude split up, Jude is more often and more quickly joined by additional characters, while at times Milla goes about it solo for some time. Jude seems like a solid bet for players who will have a consistent couch co-op buddy for their time in Rieze Maxia.
Milla, being a badass
All in all, I’m enjoying Xillia immensely. The combat system may be my favorite yet in the Tales series, and none of the characters are obnoxious (if you’ve played other Tales games, you’ll understand how this is a positive). The graphics (especially the environments) are impressive and pleasing to the eye. Though the difficulty seems a little easy compared to other installments in the series, we were able to ramp up the difficulty to make things more challenging. In addition to all of this, many little things have been streamlined (e.g. the food and shop system as well as party AI tactics) making Xillia is a solid step forward for the Tales series, and a great place to start for newcomers. Just remember, though, to take advantage of all the combat features, two players is probably best!
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Up to four players can play the real-time action combat parts of the game together. Choose from a variety of different party members with different skills.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.