Namco Bandai has announced that Tales of Vesperia is now in retail stores throughout North America for the Xbox 360 and promises to deliver majestic storytelling and compelling gameplay experience on a massive scale.  Recently released in Japan, the game holds the mark for the highest first-week sales of any game ever released for Xbox 360 in that territory.In Tales of Vesperia, the world of Terca Lumireis is in transition where 10-years of peace have led to an uneasy truce between the Empire and independent groups of citizens known as guilds, which desire to live by their own rules. Controlling the ancient technology known as “blastia,” the Empire has provided safety and prosperity to its citizens, but dissent remains high as the people grow uneasy with the heavy hand of their government. As former Imperial Knight Yuri Lowell, players will explore the complex relationship between blastia, the government and its people, setting foot outside the safe confines of the cities to explore a mysterious and dangerous world.Featuring a real-time battle system, players can chain together powerful attacks to create combos on the fly and give detailed commands to the rest of their party to create cohesive battle strategies. All-new battle features and new finishing blows allow players to take down enemies in a single hit with correctly timed button combinations, while mission-based battles increase the variety of each encounter as players gain unique items by fulfilling various battle objectives. “Fatal Strikes”, “Burst Artes” and a multi-stage “Over Limit” provide more tactical depth to each encounter, while series traditions such as cooking and skits return with new twists to delight longtime fans such as the ability to use materials collected by successfully executing finishing moves to craft rare and unique equipment for their characters.Using an all-new graphics engine and character designs by the renowned Kosuke Fujishima (Ah! My Goddess, Sakura Taisen), the game delivers high-quality HD character models and environments that are indistinguishable from traditional cel-based anime.For mor information on Tales of Vesperia, check out our previous posts and the game page on FileFront.---Related Articles at Gaming Today:Namco Bandai Reveals Tales of Vesperia Special EditionDisgaea 3 Now Lurking in StoresTales of Vesperia DLC Will Let You Buy Levels, Gold, and SkillsTales of Vesperia Editor's Day Trailer and ScreensTales of Symphonia Coming to Next-Gen; Tales of Vesperia Coming to Xbox 360