Here’s a quick look at the Tales of Xillia Collector’s Edition

Missed your chance to pick up the Collector’s Edition of Tales of Xillia? Can’t afford the inflated prices that resellers are charging on eBay for it? Well, fear not my friends, because now you can live vicariously through me! (Translation: This is the part where I show off my latest purchase.)

So today I dropped a hundred bucks on the Tales of Xillia Collector’s Edition. I’m a just a simple, struggling college student, so there were probably a million other things I should have spent that money on — food (real food, not the microwaveable bullshit that I eat everyday,) drinks, clothes, text books, tuition, illegal substances, high quality porn on Blu-Ray, etc. — but I’m a goddamn nerd, so I decided to spend my money on video games and video game branded tchotchkes instead.

The responsible side of me keeps telling myself that I should have spent that hundred dollars to go see a doctor and have the weird lump on my neck checked out, but my fanboy side regrets nothing — The Tales of Xillia CE is one of the best Collector’s Edition packages that I’ve ever picked up (and I buy a lot of this type of shit,) and while I initially balked at its $99.99 MSRP, now that I actually have the CE in hand, I actually think the price is pretty low considering what comes inside.

The first thing you noticed about the Tales of Xillia CE is how big it is — I knew it came with a statuette, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this large.

The box art itself is price nice; the front of the package is adorned with a group shot of the game’s central characters, and the title is embossed with foil lettering. The inside flaps of the box are also adorned with character art of Jude and Milla, which is a nice touch as well.

The reason the box is so big is because it has to house the included Milla statue, which is much, much larger than I was expecting: I was expecting something akin to your usual $10-$20 Japanese collectible trading figures, but in terms of detail and scale, Milla is on par with the character statues that anime shops usually sell for $80 and up.

Just to give you an idea of how big she is, here’s a comparison shot of Milla next to some standard sized action figures (a Transformer, a Halo: Reach figure, and a figma of Yukiko from Persona 4.)

I’m usually underwhelmed with the quality of the statues that come with Collector’s Editions, but the Milla figure in the Tales of Xillia box is really nice. The statue alone is probably worth the extra $40 that the Collector’s Edition costs over the standard version of the game, but there’s actually two more bonuses inside the box…

A hardcover artbook and a soundtrack CD.

While the Milla statue was bigger than I expected, the artbook is a little smaller than I hoped it would be — it’s about the size of a PS3 game case. Despite it’s small size, it’s still a really nice bonus item — all of the pages are printed on thick, high quality paper, the images are laid out nicely, and the short blurbs about each character in the book are thankfully free of major spoilers (P.S. Fuck you, Mass Effect 3 CE art book, for spoiling a ton about that game.)

All in all, I’m completely happy with my purchase. I’ve been a huge fan of the series ever since Tales of Symphonia was first released more than a decade ago, so I’m really glad that Namco’s American branch is finally starting to give the release of each new Tales Of game the fanfare that it deserves. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to actually play the game now.