Only started playing it fairly recently. It’s been hanging out in my Steam library for some time after I received it from Humble Monthly quite some time ago. Decided to try it on my Deck. Runs flawlessly despite being marked as “unsupported” by Steam.
English voice acting is surprisingly good. In a JRPG I’d always find someone who’s jarring to listen to, and it’s pretty terrible if that’s the main character. But so far I haven’t found any character that annoyed me, and like you said, the actress of Velvet seems to have no weakness in voice acting skill; she can sound soft and tender, moody and dark, and scream with rage. I wish anime had more English VAs like that, instead of the default 3 voices everyone seems to use.
Not sure how I feel about combat, though. I know it’s a staple of the Tales series, but I’d much rather fight enemies on the map than being sucked into an encounter like a turn based JRPG.
I’m at the part where Velvet joins with a pirate Reaper to take over a fortress to clear the way forward. I’ve cleared out the control room and soon will be capturing an enemy battleship. So far the story has been… incredibly edgy. I’m not sure if it’ll change, but Velvet is basically female Sasuke from Naruto Shippuden in attitude. I really like the presentation, however. Cutscenes are animated in-engine and transition to animated anime slides. Very clever.
I think the only game you mentioned on that list which is actually open world might be Final Fantasy. None of the other games are open world.
Open world games are The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, Conan Exiles, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Forza Horizon, Shadow of the Colossus, Eden Ring, Insomniac’s Spiderman.
Some of these have unique traversal mechanics, some of these use only generic kinds, such as walking.
So the skirmisher is a spear-throwing foot soldier with a shield. Historically a foot soldier would have a shield, a few throwing spears, and then a melee weapon. But in Age of Empires II the spear throwing and the melee are divided into two separate units.
Age of Empires II does have a light cavelry line, though, and they’re pretty quick. But only civs historically known for their good cavelry have bonuses towards them that make the viable (i.e. There are various steppe-civs in AoEII, as well as Mongols and Huns, and I’m sure Turks and Saracens have some benefit to light cav as well).
In this regard Age of Empires IV is more historically accurate, as that game can have completely unsymmetrical civs, whereas Age of Empires II has far more symmetrical gameplay.