Tales of Rebirth is set in a world where humans (called Humas) and Gajumas (beast people) coexist in relative peace. In ancient times, both races joined forces to found the kingdom of Karegia. At the age of 60, the Gajuma king Ladras Lindblum (ラドラス・リンドブロム?), who has wisely governed the kingdom for years, gradually weakens and dies a mysterious death. On the day of his death chaos breaks out in the kingdom, and since then people refer to this day as "The Day of Ladras' Fall". His daughter Agarte Lindblum (アガーテ・リンドブロム?), the only remaining blood relative and heir to the throne, takes over as queen. She is advised by Zilva Madigan (ジルバ・マディガン?). The latter is often referred to as the princess, due to her close ties to the imperial family.
Gameplay[edit]
There are four main modes of play: menu, town, dungeon, and battle screens. At the menu screen, the player changes various parameters concerning the characters in his or her party; maximum party size is six. Functions include changing equipment, assigning character skills, defining battle strategy, and using items. Additionally, the player can make use of the cooking system from the menu screen. A typical town screen consists of static NPCs that the player can interact with in order to gather information, trade items, provide additional character development, or advance the plot. Safe zones that are free of conflict with the enemy, cities provide valuable merchant and inn services where the player can obtain new equipment or heal all available characters. Dungeon screens are enemy territory subject to random battles, and usually these areas must be traversed in order to reach the next boss encounter as dictated by the game's script. When the player enters combat, Rebirth transitions abruptly to the battle screen(system); groups of hostile units must be annihilated in order to receive valuable items and experience, but escape without reward is also a tactical option. Since bosses are of fixed difficulty and must be cleared, holding the difficulty setting constant, story progression becomes increasingly difficult as escape is used more frequently.
"Skits" can be triggered by the player under certain story-based conditions in the town and dungeon screens. A skit involves animated images of the main characters accompanied by voice acting as they discuss issues pertinent to recent plot development. This feature has become a defining characteristic of the Tales series, with each game presenting hundreds of skits; listening to skits is almost always optional, however.
Cooking has become another subsystem endemic to the Tales methodology, and the system has presented itself in some fashion in every main series game; Tales of Rebirth is no exception. As the player learns new recipes from city inhabitants, an increasingly varied selection of dishes can be prepared once after every battle. Preparing a particular dish can heal the party or temporarily improve characters, for example. As such, cooking is one of the primary methods of healing, along with item use and in-game skills.
Battle system[edit]
Rebirth breaks slightly from the series with a new take on the Linear Motion Battle System, the so-called "Three-Line Linear Motion" system. The player's characters and enemies are placed on three different planes and the player has the ability to switch between these planes during battle. This system makes pre-battle positioning of party members on the three different planes critical to success. Two possible options are to place party members on different lines or to stack all characters on the same line, which makes battles more closely resemble those of previous Tales games that in effect only had one line or plane. Commands are executed in real-time, and attacks usually only affect opponents in the same plane as the attacker. Physical skills are instantly performed, but magic spells are delayed due to the required casting time. The player is rewarded "grade" upon completion of each combat based on battle performance and efficiency, where total acquired grade can be used to purchase special enhancements in the "grade shop" after the game is completed. The system also includes unique "Secret Justice" moves, analogous to the hi-ougi concept of previous Tales entries, which are extremely powerful attacks triggered by an attacking character and a supporting character. Due to the power of these techniques, they can only be infrequently performed under very specific conditions.
A new "Force Gauge" replaces the Technical Points, or TP, of the previous Tales games; skill usage previously consumed TP, but Rebirth uses the Force Gauge to limit use. Tales of Rebirth lets the player assign four skills to the four directions of the directional pad. In battle, skills have a recovery time that is directly related to the strength of the skill. The Force Gauge is a set of four diamond-shaped marks near the character's portrait in battle, where each diamond corresponds to the recovery time remaining on each of the skills assigned to the four-way directional pad. The "Rush Gauge", which measures a character's emotional levels during battle, is located in the lower left corner of the screen during combat. As the gauge fills up during battle, a character's offensive power will increase at the cost of decreased defense; healing spells become less effective as well.
Another feature added to Rebirth to improve the Linear Motion Battle System is styled "Enhance". After victory in battle, the player will receive "Enhance Points" (EP) that can be used to improve weapons and armor. EP can be used to improve basic parameters of equipment, such as attack and defense, and unlock latent added effects; some of these added effects include double damage and protection against status effects. Finally, enhanced features from one piece of equipment can be transferred to another.