Tales of Graces F Remastered review: A great remaster for a dated game

Tales of Graces f is a game of two parts. It opens with a lengthy prologue which features much of the main cast as children. It’s slow and frankly boring, and I’d imagine a lot of players would bounce off the game before getting through it. It’s important, though, because it introduces all of the important characters in the story and sets up the plot for after the time skip. 

When that seven-year time skip does arrive, about 2-3 hours into the game, it doesn’t speed up the pace of the game much at all. While much of the mechanical tutorials aren’t repeated, the story feels like it’s starting all over again — we’re once again introduced to each of these characters, the story has to be re-established despite being set up just a couple hours earlier, it feels like starting the game from scratch again. A few hours later, things get better, with the story moving forward at a decent pace for the most part, but when you have to get through 6 hours of slow-burning chaff to get through first, it’s hard to get invested. 

Thankfully, once the story does get going, it’s pretty good. While the character writing and dialogue is frustratingly middling, the overarching story is interesting and compelling, with twists and turns that are genuinely surprising and character arcs that feel satisfying. There is a lot of tropey nonsense among it all, with a journey to the center of the earth, obvious betrayals, and very out-of-place sci-fi elements, but if you can lean into the fact that it’s just going to go off the rails, it can be fun. 

The combat is probably the aspect of the game that has aged the worst. In my mind, I remembered Tales of Graces’ combat to be innovative and fresh. Now, not so much. It’s a clunky mixture of action RPG combat, resource and gauge management, and a strange input method for abilities and combos. Add in an unclear job system that forces you to play in specific ways to level up, one of the clunkiest targeting systems I’ve ever seen in a game’s combat, and a needless crafting system for good measure, and you get something that feels well past its use-by date. 

All of these things could have been fixed in this remaster, but then it wouldn’t really be Tales of Graces anymore. Still, there is a lot of room for improvement, and no amount of toggles to let you do extra damage or earn more experience change that it all feels very overwhelming and very clunky. 

There’s something to be said for remasters preserving games largely as they were with a higher resolution and image quality, bugs ironed out, and some optional quality-of-life additions. Sometimes you just want to play the game you remember, warts and all, and experiences like Tales of Graces f Remastered offer exactly that. While that may make for a great remaster, it doesn’t necessarily make for a great game in 2025. 

Score: 7/10 

Version tested: PS5