Xillia text dump

Tales of Xillia

13th Mothership Title in the Tales series
-mothership means main title compared to the Escort titles, which are spinoffs
Released in 2011 in Japan as part of the 15th anniversary of the series
Released in 2013 in North America and Europe

Kept the Tales series alive in the West and made the series known it was going to stay, especially after a couple years where fans thought Namco was going to abandon the series here.

There was a period of time in which a lot of fans said that Tales series was abandoned in the West and was going to be Japan only.  That changed with Graces being released, first Tales game to be released in a while, then Xillia gets released because that game and Abyss 3DS apparently did well enough

A number of people did runs here and there, both for the Japanese and Western releases, but there really was no 'community' to speak of.  The group that got together to make the Xillia 4 player co-op run happen at RPG Limit Break is the first sense of community found for this game, which makes it all the more special.

There was a previous attempt at getting a co-op run of a Tales game into a marathon before.  This was the planned 2-player run by Rinimt and MetaSigma for Crystals For Life 2014.  However, that run never made it to the final list for that marathon.

Each of the runners in this 4-player run have been practicing the game and doing solo attempts on their own.  The idea is that each of them will get together at RPG Limit Break, do a practice session or two with the experience they have, put it together, and have a run they can finish when the run actually happens.

New Game is what people run just because it provides more of a challenge.  Normal mode is selected since that is what Japanese runners do and the rest followed.  New Game + is not actively run.

There are two main categories run in New Game: Milla's story and Jude's story.  The biggest differences between the two stories take place at the beginning of Chapters 3 and 4, where the areas and the fights are very different.  From a speedrunning perspective, Jude's story is more challenging since you fight certain bosses at lower levels than Milla's story.  However, the routing for Jude's story lets you get more Gald, the in-game currency, to buy more items as needed.

Xillia is shorter than other Tales speedruns because of the ability to skip every single cutscene instead of mashing through like others.  Nothing in the way of puzzles compared to Symphonia and other Tales games.  World map is made up of big open fields where you can simply run past enemies.  The game was also meant to be experienced through both Jude and Milla's perspectives so the game as a whole ends up being shorter on a single playthrough.