Tales Of Symphonia

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 7:37 pm Post subject:

This is as quoted from one of the review for Tales of Symphonia.

[quote]July 6, 2004 - The GameCube has been without a solid, original RPG for far too long. Some will cry out for Skies of Arcadia Legends love -- but as good as it is, it's really nothing more than a director's cut. Others will demand recognition for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles -- but it's not really a RPG. This leaves us with nothing until Namco steps up to the plate with two RPGs later this summer -- both exclusive to the GameCube. The first is Tales of Symphonia.

Back it up. Across the Pacific Ocean, Tales Studios (responsible for the popular Japanese RPGs Tales of Destiny and Tales of Phantasia) was working on the next Tales installment -- Tales of Symphonia. However, regardless of the series' Japanese renown for its action oriented battle system and beautiful 2D art, Tales never took off in the United States. In fact, most US gamers were never aware that Tales existed. Namco had a dilemma. Should it release this hot new Tales game in the previously unreceptive but potentially larger US market? And if one were to release it in the US...how do you break a Japanese RPG series out in the States? The simple solution? Put it exclusively on a RPG-starved system.
But just because it's exclusive to GameCube and comes from an acclaimed pedigree doesn't automatically make it good. A lesson we've already learned this year. Should GameCube owners invest time and money in TOS or continue to look to other consoles for their RPG needs?

It takes no more than a glance at the side bar to know how we feel about Tales of Symphonia. It does not disappoint. It's fun and endearing... and holds up after an eternity of play [equivalent to around 80 hours] by continually changing locals, revealing new conspiracies, and introducing elements that solve major annoyances right when you're ready to "set down" your controller out of frustration. But Tales isn't perfect.

The tale of Symphonia takes place in the land of Sylvarant -- a land suffering from mana depletion. As the amount of available mana decreases, the amount of monsters roaming the world and the amount of humans suffering (primarily at the hands of the enslaving Desians) increases. In order to restore mana and peace to the land, a Chosen is born every generation. This soul is charged with regenerating the world by opening/praying at a number of seals that have the power to bestow the Chosen with various angelic attributes. Once all the seals have been opened, the Chosen will become a true angel. This newborn angel will then ascend the Tower of Salvation and wake the goddess Martel, who will regenerate the world. It's a tall order -- especially when there are complications.

Sylvarant is bound to a mirror world -- Tethe'alla. Sylvarant's prosperity means Tethe'alla's demise. As the Chosen progresses through her quest, the more she learns of her mission's repercussions. It's up to the Chosen and her party (here's where you come in) to learn how to save both worlds.

Not necessarily an easy plot to follow, but it is basically a typical "must save world from imminent doom" scenario. While it's not without its surprises -- there are several instances where those you think are evil aren't and vice versa -- but once you're about 20 hours into the game it gets predictable. By the time you reach disk two, you'll find yourself wanting to skip most of the dialogue because you "know" what it says. And that's a big problem -- especially for a story heavy RPG. It's not that the story is boring because that's not true; it's simply not as engaging as it could be.

This lack of attachment is easily attributed to one thing -- dialogue (both spoken and written). While Namco spent a lot of time and money localizing Tales of Symphonia (hoping it would shed some its Japanese-only appeal), it didn't get it quite right. The dialogue is often awkward and drawn out. Word choice ranges from overly formal to random slang -- the style is all over the linguistic map with little regard to who's speaking. This same quality is shared by the voice acting. While the talent is good (including Tara Strong of Power Puff Girl fame), the delivery is flat and stilted. Emotion is often expressed at the wrong times (or not at all) and conversations rarely sound natural.

Luckily you can turn off the voices and instead pay attention to the score, which is pleasantly decent. A lot of the music sounds the same -- and two scores are played most of the time (one is a battle score and the other appears on the overworld) -- but there is a broad range of powerful crescendos, quiet melodies, and the occasional burst of techno. It's just unfortunate that most musical variety corresponds to a dialogue-oriented event.

However, the story elements have never been the Tales series' strongest attribute, and it's far from awful (simply not great). And while many play RPGs for the storyline/character development, Tales is a game solidly focused on the gameplay mechanics -- which makes it easy to overlook the story's faults.

Tales of Symphonia is composed of three parts, the overworld, dungeons/towns, and battle screens. The overworld is essentially a 3D map. Here you'll find basic representations of dungeons, locals, and ghost-like images of enemies. It isn't particularly pretty or detailed (the presentation resembles a PlayStation game), but it does give you a good sense of the size of Tales. The overworld is huge -- and there are essentially two of them. Several missions make the vastness of Sylvarant/Tethe'alla even more apparent because your party needs to backtrack through previously visited areas. This can be annoying (it begins to feel like sailing around the vast world of The Wind Waker). Fortunately Tales continually introduces new methods of transportation (once you're about a third of the way through) that thankfully speeds up this process.Dungeons and towns share a similar art style -- which is the predominate choice throughout the game. Although Tales has now moved to 3D, it still recalls its 2D sprite based heritage with a cel-shaded anime art style. While everything looks distinctly cartoony, it's also very detailed. Each town and dungeon has a distinct look regardless of whether it's a port town or a fire shrine. An amazing amount of detail shows off wood grains, speckled flagstones, creepy undergrowth, lapping waves, and light refracting off stained glass. Characters are all well modeled and unique. The somewhat clunky animation (complete with Harvest Moon styled emotion bubbles) perfectly fits the art style. Tales of Symphonia is simply a piece of art.

The towns themselves are places where the storyline progresses, clues are unearthed, and Ex Gems, status supplies, armor and weaponry, and save points can be found. Within each town, it's also likely that you'll be asked to run various errands (such as obtaining a potion for someone), need to dispatch the occasional villain, and partake in a few mini-games.
Mini-games are only uncovered by thoroughly exploring areas (which includes talking to all the NPCs). While they do serve as diversions, for the most part you'll be more than happy to continue on your journey rather then sit through simple quizzes, memorization challenges, or the stunning game of red light green light.

Which leads us to one of Tales' largest problems -- the difficulty. Instead of a steady curve, you'll find a scatter plot. It's all over the map. You'll encounter rather stupid mini-games and dungeon challenges late in the game, but early on you'll be confronted by brutally hard boss battles that force you to spend an hour simply leveling up your characters. You might have just solved a tedious block pushing puzzle, fought your way to a seal, battled a boss for 20 minutes, defeated it, and are about to exit the dungeon when you suddenly have to fight another boss. All without saving.

If you die -- either because you didn't have enough experience or used your items too freely -- you'll have to play through the entire dungeon again (and most likely again). It's frustrating, especially because you're hit with this one two combo on multiple occasions. What makes it worse is that Tales' linear but relatively free to roam around nature allows you to enter dungeons in various orders. It's quite easy to be confronted by a dungeon whose mere minions can kill your entire party. Unlike RPGs that feature random encounters, you can choose whether or not to egage in battle (if you avoid an enemies' movement pattern you don't have to fight), which means there's no way of gauging how many enemies you should be killing.

Fighting is fun though, which makes the requisite leveling up for certain bosses enjoyable. Unlike your typical RPG, Tales of Symphonia uses a real-time battle system. You still have to initiate fights. You still fight with your party. But instead of using a command input system, you're directly controlling one of your character's movements. Different variations of a directional and the A and B buttons initiate different attacks. You can also block, counter, and recover from blows. What's interesting is that while TOS' battles are in 3D, you're locked to a 2D plane dependent on who your character is locked onto (you can really only move forwards and backwards on one plane until you switch targets).

Depending on your character, you'll either have magic or strike skills (special attacks), which consume technical points and are generally more powerful than your normal strike. Once a gauge is filled, you can use these technical skills to unleash a unison attack on a targeted enemy (all characters attack at once). Certain combinations of techs will result in powerful new moves -- which means that you're encourage to experiment with attacks (and there are a lot of combinations)

Character's skills are developed in a couple ways. Traditional experience points will give you access to new moves and statistics. Installing Ex Gems -- performance enhancing jewels that give your characters super human strength -- occasionally unlock new attacks and always bestow some new skill whether its better accuracy or a new combo. But the most interesting inclusion is the ability to learn skills. By using certain combinations of attacks and repeatedly using the same attack, characters learn new abilities (often times a combination of two frequently used skills). You have full control over what skills characters use in battle (useful when adjusting to various elemental bosses), unison attacks, and hot spells (c-stick activated healing or attacks) in the menu system.

Computer controlled character actions can also be set to different levels of aggressiveness, attack styles (magic vs. strike), and how willing they are to assist you in battle. This helps with adjusting to different boss types and difficulties. Or if you have friends about, up to three others can join in for battles. It's plug and play technology -- simply plug in a controller to activate multiplayer. But even though multiple people fight, only one player can move about Sylvarant/Tethe'alla -- which can leave long periods of boredom for players two-four who aren't invested in the story.

Even though Tales features a real-time battle system, which at first seems a lot like button mashing, it involves a lot of strategy. Knowing your enemy and your party's fighting styles is key to victory. Adjusting elemental spells, choosing powerful attackers vs. support types, or even whether to hang back and use items or be the leading attacker are important decisions that can turn the tide of battle. The action heavy battle system offers more than simple playability.All this fighting is augmented by simple puzzle solving in dungeons that is somewhat reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda. You'll be confronted with various block or switch pushing puzzles that must be completed to reach new areas or unlock doors. You'll have to fill pots with water, light torches on fire, push invisible blocks, shrink so you can walk along tiny pathways, or navigate a labyrinth of warp pads. Each dungeon is accompanied by a new sorcerer's ring attribute that might reveal hidden items, shoot an element (water, fire, wind, etc.), create an earthquake, or interact with doors/vehicles. All are associated with various puzzles that, for the most part, require some thought and are rewarding to solve (although some seem to be included simply as busy work). It's a nice break from non-stop exploration and fighting -- and opens up Tales' appeal to a far broader audience than your typical turn based RPG.

However, some of these puzzles (especially later in the game) send you on numerous fetch quests. You might need to use a certain ice producing plant to get across a lake of water, but the only way to touch the plant is by wearing special mittens. You have to find the correct materials, find someone that can make the mittens, and then find the plant. Or, to get past one dungeon obstacle you'll have to travel to another dungeon on the other side of the world and give an item to someone. These instances feel like they were included solely to make the game longer.
But, it's easy to look past these faults. Sure close inspection reveals a pockmarked surface, but if you step back, these blemishes practically disappear. Tales of Symphonia can be annoying and frustrating, but even with multiple moments where the difficulty or lack there of cause pained sighs -- it's still fun and you'll want to keep playing up until the end.

Closing Comments
I've played far too much Tales of Symphonia... in both English and Japanese. But, it's a testament to the game that I still plan to buy it. I'm not sick of it yet. And that's what makes rating this game so difficult. This descriptor has been used far too often, but it's true -- Tales is a lot of fun. Plain and simple. And, due to its hybrid RPG/adventure game nature, it's got the customization, strategy, and experience system that RPG fans admire, as well as a battle system and puzzle solving elements that appeals to action/adventure oriented gamers.

Tales of Symphonia has a broad appeal and its excellent art style and score tie the whole adventure together. But it's not perfect. There are some truly evil, frustrating moments. And, if you didn't get vehicles later on that cut travel time between locations by 3/4, I probably would have given up. I don't mean to directly equate Tales of Symphonia with Wind Waker (they're very different games), but they share many of the same annoyances -- namely traveling gets old and both seemed abnormally lengthened thanks to fetch quests.

That said, for those able to look past the game's faults, Tales of Symphonia offers one of the best experiences on GameCube (RPG or otherwise) and is an excellent way to spend those precious summer hours.[/quote]

Obviously a well thought of game. After decades of not having it's own RPG, the Gamecube seems have landed quite the large one. Amazing cell shading and an itriguing storyline with plenty of twists and turns. The replay isn't so good but you can challenge yourself with mini games and setting the battles on agressive. So, who's played it yet?

click for pics

_matt_ · Has No Life Joined: 11 Nov 2004 Posts: 582

Why don't you tell us what YOU think of the game?

dolphinprincess · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 6:56 am Post subject:

I have played the game!! I liked it a lot, but I haven't to get to the second disc yet, because my gamecube is working very well, and everytime I try to change the discs, an error occurs.
_________________
It took me about ten minutes to defeat Giga Bowser, Ganondorf, and Mewtwo from Super Smash Brothers Melee using Peach.
How long did it take my brother to defeat those characters using Yoshi? Two minutes.
I like to obsess over stuff. Here are all the things I'm obsessing over:
Song: Seize the Day by Default
Anime: D.Gray Man
Anime character(s): Kanda
Video Game: Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Video Game character: Wolf O-Donnell from Star Fox Assault
OC: Ray Eclrida, copyright of me (duh!)
OC Quote: "No, he just keeps getting beaten in the head with his own stupidity."-Ray Eclrida

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 7:54 am Post subject:

That's too bad, did you try banging on the side, works for me sometimes, just don't hit it too hard. Like I said, I think it's a super fun game. It's definitely worth buying. It has a great storyline and the battling system is a lot of fun. The coloring is great. The dungeons can get a bit frustrating but hey, that's why they're called mazes. I just think it's a really really fun game.

LightningAurora · Still very bored Joined: 06 Jun 2004 Posts: 370

Played it, loved it. The battle system was superb. Really superb!

dolphinprincess · Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2005 6:53 am Post subject:

Thanks Silentsoul, but I don't think it will help.
_________________
It took me about ten minutes to defeat Giga Bowser, Ganondorf, and Mewtwo from Super Smash Brothers Melee using Peach.
How long did it take my brother to defeat those characters using Yoshi? Two minutes.
I like to obsess over stuff. Here are all the things I'm obsessing over:
Song: Seize the Day by Default
Anime: D.Gray Man
Anime character(s): Kanda
Video Game: Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Video Game character: Wolf O-Donnell from Star Fox Assault
OC: Ray Eclrida, copyright of me (duh!)
OC Quote: "No, he just keeps getting beaten in the head with his own stupidity."-Ray Eclrida

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:17 pm Post subject:

Well, at least give it try. Just tap the gamecube, lightly mind you, on the side after you put the disc in and close the top.

dolphinprincess · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 7:20 am Post subject:

Alright then.
_________________
It took me about ten minutes to defeat Giga Bowser, Ganondorf, and Mewtwo from Super Smash Brothers Melee using Peach.
How long did it take my brother to defeat those characters using Yoshi? Two minutes.
I like to obsess over stuff. Here are all the things I'm obsessing over:
Song: Seize the Day by Default
Anime: D.Gray Man
Anime character(s): Kanda
Video Game: Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Video Game character: Wolf O-Donnell from Star Fox Assault
OC: Ray Eclrida, copyright of me (duh!)
OC Quote: "No, he just keeps getting beaten in the head with his own stupidity."-Ray Eclrida

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 7:18 pm Post subject:

ok, who's beaten all the side quests, I mean ALL of them.

dolphinprincess · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 6:33 pm Post subject:

Obviously not me.
_________________
It took me about ten minutes to defeat Giga Bowser, Ganondorf, and Mewtwo from Super Smash Brothers Melee using Peach.
How long did it take my brother to defeat those characters using Yoshi? Two minutes.
I like to obsess over stuff. Here are all the things I'm obsessing over:
Song: Seize the Day by Default
Anime: D.Gray Man
Anime character(s): Kanda
Video Game: Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Video Game character: Wolf O-Donnell from Star Fox Assault
OC: Ray Eclrida, copyright of me (duh!)
OC Quote: "No, he just keeps getting beaten in the head with his own stupidity."-Ray Eclrida

Mew-Mint · Forum contributor Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 686

Ok I have heard of the game, I have heard that it is great, I have gone out to buy it BUT HAVEN'T FOUND IT YET!!! *pant pant pant* I've been looking all over the place for it..haven't found it yet...Im dying to play it...Im hoping the next time I go game shopping I'll find it. WHY EB GAMES!! WHY HAVE YOU BETRAYED MEEE!? Laughing

EN1X · Site Helper Joined: 27 Sep 2004 Posts: 764

I have heard some pretty good stuff about it, too. I might go buy it once I save up enough money. I'm in dire need of new GC games.

Side note:

dolphinprincess : resize that pic in your sig. It's WAY too large. Pics in sigs should be no more than about 150 pixels tall and 600 pixels wide. Fix it, before another Site Helper tells you to.

Mew-mint : I like that Advent Children clip in your sig. :wub: lol

Anywho, back on topic now ... o.0

But I want more opinions on this game before I go buy it. So I'll ask: What, in your own opinions, are some weak points in the game?

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 7:59 pm Post subject:

the worst I can come up with is how the monsters look on the world map. While your traveling around, there'll be these wierd black blobs, some of them look like dinosaurs, anyway, if you touch one of them, you engage in battle. They just look wierd, that's all. Everything else I foun great. The storyline and battle system were awesome.

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 8:03 am Post subject:

well, you can use your grade to by cool stuff at the end of the game. ^_^

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 9:28 pm Post subject:

huh, you have to have over 500,00 grae to do that. Exactly what level were you on when you ended?

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:55 pm Post subject:

well, I like completing all the side quests. I never get bored of that game. ^_^

LightningAurora · Still very bored Joined: 06 Jun 2004 Posts: 370

[quote="SilentSoul92 (Rita)"] the worst I can come up with is how the monsters look on the world map. While your traveling around, there'll be these wierd black blobs, some of them look like dinosaurs, anyway, if you touch one of them, you engage in battle. They just look wierd, that's all. Everything else I foun great. The storyline and battle system were awesome. [/quote]
I agree completely. The only bad point. I mean, even the voice acting wasn't too bad, and that's rare for any RPG. Rolling eyes

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 8:15 am Post subject:

bleh, cheesy lines. But hey, every single RPG I know has some cheesy lines. ^_^

SilentSoul92 · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 6:17 pm Post subject:

yeah, I was tempted to puch colette once, but I would've damaged my TV. Laughing

anyways, right now I've decided to go fight Abyssion. (or however that's spelled) I've got all the devils' arms and I'm raring to go. But first...*goes to level up more* I started a new game. I still never get bored. Laughing

Zeldafreak · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:41 pm Post subject:

I hated fighting Abyssion! It took me forever to fight that monster. Poor Raine she kept getting attacked by him. I finished almost all the side quest exept Colette's "Dog Lover" quest. One thing I don't like about the game is the ending. It leaves you haning! But whats really cool is that when you play it over again you get a whole bunch of hints from the first time. Like the mysterous laugher at the Martel Temple....