Bandai Namco released Tales Of Graces F Remastered, bringing the 2009 game originally released on the Wii and then on PS3 now playable on modern platforms.
Hailing from the long lineage that is the Tales Of series, Tales Of Graces has all the trappings of a great JRPG, and I mean that as high praise. I’m only about 10 hours in, but there’s a lot of deep mechanics here to explore, and the slow-burn story has just started simmering.
For the remaster, the game now has a lot quality-of-life additions that makes it play more in tune with modern titles. All of them wonderful, but there is one little quirk which I wish Tales Of Graces F Remastered sanded out. And that’s how to change the default playable character at the start of each battle.

Changing The Default Playable Character In Tales Of Graces F Remastered Is Confusing
To explain that, let me walk you through how I experience this issue. Tales Of Graces has an active combat system, the proper name is the “Style Shift Linear Motion Battle System”. This is during the days where action-RPGs are not just action games with RPG elements, as modern games now has homogenised into. RPGs have to create their own convoluted action-based mechanics in the battles. You only control one character while the rest of the party by default will be controlled by the AI. And mid-battle, you can swap out to another character and fully take control of them.
There’s another layer to Tales Of Graces’ combat which is the Titles. Titles are unlocked either by story progression or through combat prowess (i.e. doing a skill, Arte, enough times). And you want more Titles to unlock so you can equip them and learn new skills or improve your attributes associated with them.
While the AI is competent enough to keep doing skills enough times to unlock these Titles, I wanted to speed up things by having me control someone other than main hero Asbel, since he’s been unlocking way more titles compared to the rest of the party. And changing characters every time a battle start is inconvenient. Surely there’s a way to set the default character at the start of the battle?
There is. But it’s complicated. And you can get it wrong in many ways.
First, I tried change the party leader. That was not it, it only changes the character model of who you control during exploration. Only the party leader is represented on screen when exploring the world, a JRPG tradition of its time.
Next, I tried swapping the party members around. Instead of Asbel on the top spot, I changed it to Sophie. And it looks like I am in control of her. But that was not it. She moves and attacks on her own.
So I go to the Artes menu and “switch” her from Auto to Semi-Auto. The UI design here doesn’t feel like it’s a toggle between Auto and Semi-Auto, more like you’re switching tabs to customise the different features when you have the character in Auto or Semi-Auto mode. That seems to do the trick!
But I forgot one other detail: I should set Asbel to Auto, as he’s now just standing there doing nothing. And the camera is all zoomed out. And now there’s a 1P and a 2P label on target that’s being locked on. This is how I discover that Tales Of Graces has multiplayer support where up to four players can each control the party members during battle. A feature I know exists in JRPGs, but I didn’t know this game has one.
To figure this out, I had party members dying over and over as I lose control of the battles and not knowing how to set it all back. It was a rough trial-and-error experience.
So in short, to change the default controlled party member during battles in Tales Of Graces, what I needed to do was:
- Set the desired party member in the top slot of the party screen
- Set their Arte setting to Semi-Auto
- Set everyone else’s Arte setting to Auto
It’s simple to do, but easy to get it wrong and be strayed.
In the grand scheme of things, this is only a little, peculiar issue which I assume OG fans of the game and the series has no trouble with. But as someone who’s not played the original and have not much experience with Tales Of games outside of Zestiria and Arise, I had a bad time working out what I feel like should be a simple button press.
Tales Of Graces F Remastered boasts plenty of quality of life changes (the objective waypoint is a godsent), but that doesn’t mean it covers all its bases.
Tales Of Graces F Remastered Plays Like A Good Old JRPG
That all being said, I do find myself enjoying Tales Of Graces F Remastered so far. The story has all the melodrama I wanted out of a grandiose fantasy RPG, with a lot of compelling characters. The combat system may seem rudimentary but it hide so much depth. The crafting system (Dualize) is fascinating.
And it has all the charms of a late-PS2 era JRPG. I know the game never released on the PS2, but Tales Of Graces evokes a lot of memories I had of games from that generation of consoles. Simple yet distinctive environments, flat textures, non-realistic-proportioned characters (their heads are noticeably bigger, and of course those big anime eyes they have), and a charming yet repetitive soundtrack that loops over and over.
For those curious or pining for a taste of what old RPGs play like, Tales Of Graces F Remastered is a fun time, at least in the first 10 hours. Don’t worry about the slow-burn, the child antics of the prologue ends about the 3-hour mark and it’s worth it to setup the character arcs Asbel, Sophie and the others go through in this epic.
Tales Of Graces F Remastered is out now on PS4, PS5, PC (Steam), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.