Above is the promotional advert of the contents. For ease, I'll list it as well:
- Special folded box
- Making Of video
- Soundtrack
- Hardback artbook
- DLC card
- The game
And here, is what you actually get:
Basically, it's everything as described except for one thing, the artbook is not hardback. At least, it's not hardback in the traditional sense, it just has a 'harder' cover than average, but I'll still classify it as softcover. That orange card is just a loyalty program by Namco Bandai (that's in all their games).
The making-of videos and soundtrack come in their own individual discs (which is a nice touch), and they're all stored inside the one game case. Anyway, I'll cover each of the items under a separate heading now.
"Special" Folded Box
Errr... yeah. It's just a cardboard cover that contains the contents. It's flimsy and prone to creases. It seemed disappointing as I was hoping more along the lines of something similar to steel tins. Anyway, the main draw of this is the new artwork of the game cover.
The rear of the box is the same as the rear of the game case.
The Game
Obviously, the thing you're going to look forward to most is the game itself. This is the cover of the 'standard' edition of the game.
My thoughts on the game can be found here.
Making Of Video
It's less of a "Behind the Scenes" (or "Making Of") video than a "Answering Your Questions" type. Here, we get the producer, Hideo Baba, answering questions that were sent in by fans. It is split into four parts (individually accessible through the menu), each around six to seven minutes long, making a total length of roughly 28 minutes. It's subtitled since Hideo Baba speaks in Japanese. It's quite entertaining since often after answering a question, he sidetracks and shows off some of the "Tales of" merchandise and other related things. It makes it more interesting.
Soundtrack
This is not the full four-disc soundtrack, and at the price this Edition was selling for, I doubted it would have been the full thing. It's more of a "best of" selection, containing twelve tracks. The included tracks are:
- Tales of Graces
- Sophie
- The Pact
- Timely Return
- Whet the Sheath
- Past the Droplets
- Perplexing Blade
- Rise to the Challenge
- Dance of Fountains
- Answering the Ocean's Call
- Blast of the Frigid Wind
- Shatter the Steel
While some of the tracks won't be my first choice, at least none of them are tracks that annoy you. They've included a couple of battle themes, and most of the tracks are ones that you would have heard a lot of times during the course of the game. Personally, the best ones on this disc are "Sophie", "Whet the Sheath", "Perplexing Blade" and "Shatter the Steel". The other ones only truly grow on you as you play the game and hear it again and again and again. The duration of the soundtrack is only 27 minutes (and six seconds).
DLC:
You also get some downloadable content, it's not much but it's better than nothing I guess. You get costumes based off Tales of Destiny 2 for Asbel, Richard and Sophie, and a couple of PS3 themes (I think four?). To be honest, I don't really care about costumes (since it doesn't add any extra gameplay, it just changes the aesthetics) or PS3 themes (I'm happy with the simple default one color theme). However, these costumes are cool in that they are "Titles" for the characters, a sort of leveling up equipment, so it does affect gameplay (if only marginally).
Artbook
As mentioned, it's not really the hardback that was advertised. Other than that, it's a 100 page book containing various pieces of art from sketches to all the alternate game covers to character models. It's enjoyable to flip through the pages once you finished the game in order to see how things were developed (and to avoid minor spoilers). I've included a low quality sample consisting of 19 pages for your viewing pleasure.
Overall
The entry price is worth it for the game alone, yet you're getting much more than that. This Day One Edition provides enough content to be even classified as a "Special" or "Collector's" Edition. Apart from the game, the artbook is the most worthwhile here.
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