Tales of Symphonia

"A Clichéd Treasure"

A Cliched Treasure

Intro
Tales of Symphonia is game produced by Namco that is as cliched as they come. It starts off with the time-old beginning of a boy's village being burned down. Surprise, surprise. What follows is a course of events that is common to a majority of the "Tales" games. Tales of Symphonia is of the RPG genre, and is a good game to play if you're bored.

Story - 7/10
This story is a very complex one, with about half a dozen plot twisters in it. You start off with the knowledge that a blond girl named Collette is the Chosen of Mana. She will apparently go on a journey to regenerate the world and become an angel. The world needs to be regenerated because they are at a lack of mana. Mana is an energy source. When this happens, the antagonists, the Desians, show up and mercilessly torture others. Also, when there is a depletion of mana, progress and technology is lost. Lloyd, her best friend and possible lover, accompanies her on this journey after upsetting the Desians and causing their village to be burnt down. I will not go any further, for I fear I will spoil the story completely. The beginning of the game is boring and seems to drag on at times, but keep playing and you'll eventually reach the good parts.

Graphics - 7/10
The graphics are not the best, but they aren't bad either. The game switches off from 3D to 2D, which is a major weakness. If the graphics had been fully 3D, this game might have been astoundingly beautiful, much like Kingdom Hearts. Major cut-scenes are anime, which should be a nice surprise to all the anime fans out there!

Sound - 8/10
Not much to say about the sound...it's sound! Actually, the sound is probably the best part of this game. You can hear everything! Every hit in battle, every word. It truly is one of the games best features. The soundtrack was not the best, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. My favorite was probably the altar music and the Sheena music.

Gameplay - 8/10
I'll begin with the battle system: It's in real time and it's fully 3D. Up to four players can battle at a time (each player represents one of the four characters in the battle). Only four characters can battle at once, which is pretty good, in my opinion. Any more and it would be a pain to handle everyone.There are three types of settings for these fur characters: Auto, Semi-auto, and Manual. These settings do exactly what they say. Set your character on Auto and the battle is performed automatically based on the set strategy. In Semi-auto, the character is controlled by the player, but support features such as defensive abilities are automatic. Finally, in Manual, you control the character completely with no support features enabled. Because you are most likely going to have three out of four characters on Auto, the techniques and strategies you set are going to impact your success in the game greatly. This would have bothered me more had the techniques been crappy, but you barely have to alter them for some characters. It is not a hard battle system to master at all.

Tech, or magic, is very useful. This was a really fun aspect of the game because you have so many choices for what spell you'd like to cast! Each character will be either a type T (Tech) or a type S (Strike). This is very important, as what spells they can learn depends on the character's type.

Honestly, you'll only use maybe three characters for magic: Genus, Sheena, and Raine. Raine because she's an awesome healer, Genus because he has spells no one else can learn, and Sheena because she can summon. I found it pointless to use anyone else. You can also "forget" magic, but I also found that pointless.

Finally, there's the Unison Attack. You don't get to use this until you've gone through the tutorial on the Ossa Trail. The Unison Attack is basically a combined magic attack. It can do awesome damage, but actually setting it up is time consuming. I maybe used one Unison Attack on my first play through of the game.

Next I'll talk about the dungeons and boss battles. These dungeons are NOT easy. They go on and on until you are bored and frustrated out of your mind. Granted, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time was MUCH harder, so if you got through those dungeons you'll easily master these ones. The boss battles aren't that hard if you're levelled up. The final boss does not emit the kind of damage you'd expect. In fact, I was rather bored during the final battle. I mean, come one! If you have Raine using her healing abilities, you have basically no chance of dying. This goes for all boss battles. It's getting to them that's difficult!

Finally, random battles. These random battles aren't so random: You can see the monsters, giving you a chance to avoid them. I suggest that you fight these battles to level up, though. I liked that they let us see the monsters.

Re-playability - 10/10
Definitely replay. There's tons of stuff you can miss, and besides, when you replay after beating it once you get all sorts of special features, such as being able to hold 30 items and such.

Play Time
I'd say it took me somewhere between 80 and 100 hours to complete with a majority of the items and all. It wasn't bad, but it did drag on at times.

Buy, Borrow, or Rent?
If you are good at beating games quickly, I'd say Borrow or Rent. However, I believe you can get a cheap copy, brand new, for about $20 at any game store.

Overall, this game is the perfect example of a cliched RPG, but
is massively fun to play - 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/11/06