Advancement in Tales of Hearts R

The Tales series generally has some interesting way they do character advancement.  There's the usual "experience gives you levels that improves hit points and stats" but skill acquisition is not connected to that.  In Tales of Symphonia, you gained skills depending on the different type of skills you used.  In Tales of Graces F, you simply bought them with a different form of experience points.

That brings us to Tales of Hearts R's system.  When you gain a level in the game, you are awarded a certain number of Soma Points.  These Soma Points can be spent in the Soma section of the menu, where you have 5 different traits that you can improve.  Kor has fight, belief, mettle, endurance and sincerity.  Each level takes a different amount of Soma Points (the first takes 8 or 9, the second around 15, etc.) and the character gets a minor bonus for each point put in and then a larger bonus when the level is reached (a skill, a new weapon form, a passive trait, etc.).  Some abilities are unlocked when you reach levels in traits that are next to each other (they all extend in different directions from the same starting point, so if you connected them, they'd make a pentagon).

It's an interesting system.  I have already run into the case where you need to level up more than once to get to the next level in some of the traits, but that's also because I've put multiple levels into the same trait rather than trying to level things equally.

Hope you like Atelier games!

Thanks to a present from a friend and the 3 year anniversary Vita sale, I have three Atelier games on the Vita. While Atelier Rorona is not PS TV compatible, the other two are.

Looks like there will be a lot of Atelier entries in the future!

In the meantime, I am still going to be playing Tales of Hearts R. After stopping g my last two games, I feel I should get a win for the blog.