Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition: Best Party Setup Guide

Best Party Setup in Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition

Tales games are well known for their diverse selection of party members, and Tales of Vesperia, especially, has a pretty fantastic ensemble cast. The Definitive Edition even adds two new party members, among other things, making Flynn Scifo a permanent member and adding on a brand new one named Patty Fleur. Here’s the best party setup in Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition. 

Before we go any further, it should be said that you can realistically play Tales of Vesperia with any party setup you want. None of the characters in the game are bad, per se, and with so many different characters there are a lot of combinations you can make, let alone the fact that you can control any character directly.

However, there are a few options that stand out as better than the others, and we’ll go over which members should always feature into your strategy.

• Estelle – For Healing – Estelle should always, always, always feature as a part of your battle strategy, and in all honesty, she might never leave your party. This is because Estelle is, by far, the most effective healer in the game. She packs the strongest healing spells like Nurse and Revitalize, which heals the entire party in one go for up to 80 percent, in the case of Revitalize. She’s also the only character that can resurrect a party member without an item.Later on, she also gets access to some strong offensive magic, and useful stat boosting spells. If you don’t want to continuously blow through items, Estelle is the best way to keep your party in fighting shape.
• Rita – For Heavy Damage – Rita is basically the opposite of Estelle, as she’s got the strongest offensive magic of anyone in the game. Rita’s spells often have a long charge time but boy do they cause damage. Most of her artes cause upward of 300 percent damage, and artes like Champagne or Spread can hit a wide radius.The other benefit is that some of her spells get boosted damage in specific conditions, like Champagne getting a 2o percent damage boost in rain or Negative Gate getting a 20 percent boost at Night. The best idea is to edit Rita’s strategy so she always keeps her distance from the enemy and goes full-force with her artes. You’ll need to keep her TP up with items, but she can ravage the battlefield if you let her do so.
• Judith – For Flying Enemies – Judith is a strong offensive character, one of the best in Tales of Vesperia, but she really excels at aerial combat due to her being a dragoon-like fighter. Whereas certain characters, like Repede and Raven, can have trouble even hitting airborne enemies, all of Judith’s attacks are focused on that.With her lance, she has a large attack radius, and she can juggle enemies in the air for a while by mixing up combos and artes. To add to this, Judith is just a tiny bit faster than Yuri, making it easier to attack enemies without getting interrupted. Basically, Judith is essential for dealing with aerial enemies but she’s also just one of the best offensive characters in Tales of Vesperia, making her a valuable party member.
• Yuri or Repede – For Distracting Enemies – With Estelle focused on healing and Rita focused on casting, you’ll need another character to distract enemies and keep them away from your magic users. For that job, either Yuri or Repede is best. In the case of Yuri, he has the most diverse moveset of all the offensive characters, with artes that can hit enemies all around him, hit a wide area, or continue a long combo. His attacks are also extremely powerful, especially later on.Repede, on the other hand, is the fastest of all your party members. He can dash around the battlefield at high speed backing up party members or attacking enemies. He has attacks like Falling Leaf that let him easily maneuver around enemies and continue attack.Repede isn’t as strong as Yuri, but he’s certainly no slouch, with a wealth of offensive artes. The biggest drawback for Repede is the fact that he’s so low to the ground, making it very hard to hit aerial enemies. However, if you have Judith in your party, that can easily be compensated for.

Benefits of Other Party Members

Although the party listed above is the one we recommend, we’ll help go over the strengths of the other characters as well, in case you’re leaning toward using them.

• Karol – Karol is a slow character that functions as a tank and light healer. In general, he has the highest HP of all your party members and can even hit enemies with some status effects. Luckily, he also functions as a healer with attacks like Nice Aid Smash, which will restore HP to all your allies in a small radius. He can be very useful for some of those tougher boss battles where you need to supplement Estelle’s healing and soak up damage.
• Raven – Raven functions as a kind of tricky character, peppering enemies with a variety of different attacks. Raven’s greatest strength is his adaptability, being able to change between ranged attacks and close range on the fly. Because of this, he can function as a great support character for members like Yuri, or as a distraction character for Estella/Rita. Raven also gets some pretty powerful spells later in the game, adding to his long-range damage.
• Flynn – Like Karol, Flynn functions as a tank and healer. Flynn has higher defense than Karol does, but not as much HP. He’s also a bit faster than Karol, and his artes have good range to them. Right off the bat, Flynn comes with First Aid, helpful for healing party members, and he gets access to Cure later on, which heals 75 percent health for one ally. As you might expect, combined with Yuri, Flynn makes a fearsome force to be reckoned with, especially if you factor in their Dual Mystic Arte.
• Patty – Patty is the novelty character of Tales of Vesperia, and she can factor into any party build if you want. This is because of her basic arte “Change Form” that lets her change to four different combat forms that each function differently.Normal increases the Overlimit gauge and has moderate attack speed, switching to Advanced will heal 20 percent HP and increase her attack power and speed, Braniac heals 10 percent TP and increases her magical power and range but slows her speed, and finally Critical adds all three starting effects and significantly ups her movements speed. She’s a tough character to play because of all this variation, but her wacky attacks can hit wide areas and she can be hugely powerful if used correctly.

Those are our picks for the best party setup in Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition. If you have any other setups you feel strongly about, feel free to drop them in the comments down below.

For more tips and guides on Tales of Vesperia, make sure to search Twinfinite. You can also take a look at our review of the Definitive Edition and see why we consider it a JRPG classic, or our massive ranking of the entire Tales series.