In addition to artes, characters also gain access to an increasing amount of skills. Skills are learned by equipping weapons which let you train up skills, and eventually equip them with any weapon, not just the one they come with. From regaining more life after each battle to adding on an extra hit to a regular B-button combo, there’s a wide range of skills which will require constant juggling for best performance.

Even though the combat remains fun no matter how long you’ve been playing the game due to its active nature, the true star of the show is the writing and the ensemble cast. It’s good to finally see another RPG on the 360 which puts the emphasis on writing and characterization before pretty graphics and gigantic enemies. At its most basic level the story is rather cliché of the genre: a former knight joins up with a princess desiring more control over her own destiny, and together they team up with a cast of characters to save the world from dark forces and political corruption at the hands of the Empire. Beneath that general plot, however, lies enough subtlety and off remarks to satisfy any fan of the series.

Perhaps the biggest accomplishment in the game isn’t just the writing, but how inviting and enjoyable every character in the game is. From generic peon knights to the two star characters, the cast may be built upon a solid foundation of cliché and JRPG Stories for Dummies guides, but every single character manages to make themselves entertaining and well-liked. I can’t recall the last time I played an RPG where there wasn’t a single main character I wasn’t sick of, or didn’t wish sweet sword-from-behind death upon. Tales of Vesperia manages—in its fairly formulaic overall plot—to do the impossible and throw at us a cast of characters where any single one of them could star in their own RPG and people would love it. Not only are the sidekicks and random NPCs better, but Tales Studio also seems to have learned from past mistakes and have given us a much more relatable (and entertaining) lead in the game’s star, Yuri Lowell, a persona who should go down with the other well-loved characters in RPG lore.

Looking at the whole product on paper, Tales of Vesperia really doesn’t do anything new or exciting. Instead, Namco Bandai takes the components for RPG success—a serviceable story, stellar writing, combat which doesn’t become a chore, anime-inspired visuals, and a fantasy setting with some roots in reality—and puts them together so well that the game just works. Is the game groundbreaking? No. Is it fun? You bet. Even after playing nothing but this game all day for the last week, I still want more. Finally, the Xbox 360 has a JRPG which it can claim as a true RPG gem, and if Tales of Vesperia doesn’t get RPG gamers believing in the 360’s future with the genre, nothing will.

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