New information for upcoming iOS and Android mobile game Tales of Asteria has been released, focusing a bit on how the game works overall. New screenshots of the game are included.
As we reported before, the main scenario of Tales of Asteria lets you begin by choosing one of six characters - Cress, Lloyd, Sophie, Luke, Milla or Yuri. Each character has different reasons for their journey, providing you with different views on the game's story. Some parts of the game are fully voiced, apparently mainly the main scenario.
From these characters, you'll also meet other Tales characters as part of the story. You'll have the character you choose interact with characters from other games, providing a fresh experience.
The opening movie features animation by WIT Studio, the same people behind Attack on Titan and the art of the Tales of Card Evolve cards. The opening song is "believe in you" by Do As Infinity. You can hear some of it in the previously released trailer.
More Screenshots Here
The game features a new Cross Slide Battle System. It's a simpler system compared to the usual Linear Motion Battle System since this is mainly just a mobile game. Aside from the character chosen in the route, a party consists mainly of 5 characters. The first part of a battle consists of the route character being used to attack minor enemies by simply tapping the screen. Depending on how well your timing is, your taps will be rated as Perfect or Good. Defeating the enemies gets you stuff like apple gels to heal the 5-person party, or points to increase the over limit gauge.
The 2nd part of the battle is a boss fight using the 5 party members. Each character has their own given elemental attribute out of six (Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, Shadow). At each turn in battle, random elements are displayed above the characters, and you have a limited time to try and swap the characters into slots that match their own given element. Those who don't have any matching elements will still be able to attack, but will not be able to deliver a lot of hits. There are also symbols above the characters that either heal members, increase attack or defense or increase over limit gauge points. The eye mark above these show which characters the enemy will be attacking for that turn.
From here on out, the system in Tales of Asteria is pretty much like Tales of Link's own system. You can increase your characters through the use of Summons. You can summon characters in two ways: Normal Summons which use Aste Coins, or Special Summons which use 2 Spirit Star Stones. These can be gotten from either in-app purchases or completing quests, so either way, you'll be able to get them. If you get a character you already have, you can use them to increase the upper level limit of the other same character (note that lower rarity/star level characters have lower level limits, so if you want to make them stronger, you're going to have to do this).
Characters you have can be made stronger by leveling them up with Experience Books, there are also Arte Books and such. You'll need Gald for these, which are gotten from battles.
There are also sub quests aside from the main scenario quests. You can also form guilds with other players, or cook food to have specific bonuses when you enter battles. There's also a quest of the day you can participate in. In addition, there's a Cat Dispatch feature where you send out Rollo/Lulu from Tales of Xillia 2 to find you items and such. Depending on the location, the time for each dispatch will vary.
You can view the rest of the screenshots here in our gallery.
Tales of Asteria will be released for both iOS and Android sometime this year.
Sources: Dengeki Online, Famitsu Apps
