Review NaN of 3
Price Paid:
$50.00
from Gamestop Summary:
In the future, Tales of Symphonia will be considered one of console gaming's greatest RPGs of all time. It is a fantasy/sci-fi RPG with very prominent action elements. If you took the best of Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, Skies of Arcadia, and Grandia II, you may just come up with something like this game.
From Zelda, you'd take sword combos (and combine them with spell and techinique combos, and character combos, too). From Kingdom Hearts, you'd take the team member user programmable AI (and enhance it five fold). From Skies of Arcadia, you'd take the vast scope of gameplay and the inability to put the game down (Tales also comes on two disks). And from Grandia II, you'd take an incredible story line that flows so very smoothly and that involves you emotionally so much it's scary.
And in the case of Tales, the final product is truly greater than the sum of it's parts. A unique, addictive real time battle system (though you can pause in mid battle to make changes in your characters' strategy) combined with unbelievable graphics intertwined with incredibly immersive gameplay. And so much more. That's Tales of Symphonia.
The amount of work that must have gone into this game is hard to comprehend. But I know this for sure. You should run, not walk, to your favorite retailer and get this game for your Gamecube. I would be willing to bet a paycheck that the price of this title will not be coming down for a long time to come. Get it and it will suck you into it's world so deeply that you will not want to come out until your eyes burn from fatigue and your fingers ache from combos.
Not including the menus (and there are many), Tales is played on four main screens. These are Towns, Dungeons, Battle, and The Field. In addition to these are cutscenes and Skits, which are 2D anime based dialogs that are superimposed over the main screen. These give clues to what is going on and advance the story line. In Towns, Dungeons and The Field you encounter enemies. Touch one and fighting commences on the Battle screen. The Field is where and how your party moves from one locale to another, with the locations shown as miniature buildings, fortresses, and so on. However, treasure can be found on the Field screen, as well as in Towns and Dungeons.
Encounters with enemies, especially in The Field, occur at about twice the rate of encounters in Skies of Arcadia. If you played that game, you may be thinking, ugh, no way can I stand that again. However, unlike that game, you will want to fight the enemies in Tales, not avoid them, because the battle system is such a blast. I can swear to you that you have never heard, seen, or played anything like the real time battles in Tales.
There are also puzzles of the moving block variety in Tales. And these can be challenging. Overall, compared to other games, treasure and rares, and even health items, are a bit scarce in Tales...until you master the Battle System. For each encounter you are rated and Graded. In addition to the tradional experience points, Grade is accumulated as well, and it can be used as barter for weapons and upgrades. In fact, Grade is but one of many unique gameplay elements to be found in Tales. For instance, in each Town, there is an Expedition shop. Here you can hire explorers to go out and find out if there were areas you missed, items you did not pick up, and they will make a map for you as well. For a negotiable price, of course.
The only bad thing I can think of about Tales of Symphonia is the name of the protagonist (the main character). You cannot change it, it is fixed. Not Vyse, not Link, not KOS-MOS, not Tidus. No, no. Namco gave this character an unreal name. His name is...Lloyd Irving. I'm not making this up. His teamates have cool names, but..Lloyd is Lloyd.
The game uses Save Points, and they are plentiful.
Anyway, get this game. It rocks! Report this review >>
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