Tales of Legendia

"You'll find yourself lost in this game. And not the good way."

{Note: character spoilers from this, so just see the final score if you don't want 'em}
The first thing to point out about Tales of Legendia is this: it isn't like Tales of Symphonia. It is not a sequel. It isn't even made by the same division of Namco. It was made by the Soul Calibur team. This means that you can expect fighting style gameplay, a weird storyline, and bad character sprites. That, you get. But there is still fun to be had. Let's break this down:

Graphics:
The graphics here are really the only thing that is reminiscent of Tales of Symphonia. The overall look of the game is good and crisp. You can get an interesting feel of the dungeons as you're trekking through them. They're not the best the PS2 has to offer, though, which you'll realize from getting lost in several rooms that look exactly alike. We also could've used a moving camera, so as to see everything better. They're still good, but not cel-shading good like other cel-shaded games are. Then there's the character design. The design of the women in your party is good. And when I say good, I mean Seung Mina good. Sheena Fujibayashi good. Other hot Namco girl good. All your girls (and Moses, unfortunately), are either in skin tight clothing or are "dressed to impress." And impress they do. Then there's Jay, who looks enough like a woman to be given a good sprite, and Will, who has the scientist look, so he doesn't need to dress weird. But Senel and Moses......argh. Moses hasn't even been given a shirt, so he is difficult to look at. And Senel. OMG, Senel. He has the WORST character sprite I've seen since FFX. That's saying something. Fortunately, the sprite is usually so small you don't notice. But they could've done better that THAT!
Locale: 4/5 - Character Models: 3/5
7/10

Sound:
As usual, I'll be quick here. Tales has been given an orchestral soundtrack, which has been done surprisingly well. Of course, I liked the music from Tales of Symphonia, so it may not be much from me. After that, there's the voice actors. They can range from okay to OMG-Why-doesn't-my-Silence-make-him-shut-up. While characters like Chloe and Will have pretty good voice actors, they had to put in the tiny blonde who the whole game revolves around and the guy in red who acts like an idiot. If you've played Tales of Symphonia, you know this automatically makes their voice actors suck horribly (more true because Moses and Zelos have the same voice actor). What you don't suspect is that the voice actors are WORSE than in the last game. And since they spout the same quotes over and over in battle, they get annoying quickly. The quotes can sometimes be funny, especially when one is said by Norma, but they can be ruined by the voice acting. Why, Namco. WHY?
Music: 5/5 - Voices: 2/5
7/10

Story:
Well, the story is better than Tales of Symphonia. I'll give it that. It isn't as predictable and doesn't use the RPG plot generator from the last game.......as much. There's still the sacrificial plot device and the plot twists are still layed out like a soap opera, where if you play the story sequences end-to-end, there'd be a bad plot twist every 45 seconds. Granted, I'm only at the beginning of Chapter 5, but the guys at the message board didn't say too many great things about the rest. If you want to hear specifics on the plot, then I'm sorry, because I don't wanna spoil anything. But it doesn't take The Oracle from The Matrix to know the plot in advance.
Story: 4/5 - Plot Devices: 2/5
6/10

Gameplay:
Remember how I said this game is a Tales game made by the Soul Calibur team? Well it lives up to that. The fighting system involves inputing a chain of normal attacks, followed by a special attack or two for your character. This can be broken a little to allow some customization. They've also have 8 different characters, to allow different gameplay types. However, 4 of these characters are magic users, so if you wanna use them, you'll have to just select a spell, wait for it to work, rinse and repeat. There's more action in turn-based games. So you're really only given 4 choices of character. Three of these, Senel, Chloe, and Jay, are basically the same but with different weapons. There's also Moses, who uses spears at long range. Sorry, but nobody uses guns or anything cool like that. It's swords, spears, bracers, hammers, knives, staves (not straw!), a jar, likely for whacking people with, and what at first looked like a dagger, but turned out to be, brace yourself, a PEN! A FREAKING PEN! I know they say the pen is mightier than the sword, but COME ON! And as for gameplay, it isn't as good as Tales of Symphonia (fourth time I've said that). You only have one attack button, and using the control stick with it seems to have no effect at all. Also, this game suffers from Shadow of the Collosus' One Minute Down Time trait, which is worsened when an enemy actually knocks you to the ground and gives you the old Judo. In the other game, the monsters you fought were visible before you fought them. Here, they've gone back to the random battles state, which hasn't changed in 20 years and needs to be retired. They've added special zones were more powerful monsters await, but there's usually only one, and his power isn't much stronger than the other random encounters, so there's no point in avoiding them. In fact, they actually point out where all the goodies in the dungeon are, so it's best to use them at every opportunity. That's Namco's idea of danger. You're probably thinking it'll tune up during the sidequests, but there aren't any. Sorry. They've even tuned down the cooking system so you can only make bread. And you'd be surprised how many things you can make with bread. But this is a big step back, and not exactly Tales class. Maybe they should've used a different license. It would've turned off less Tales fanboys.
Battles: 3/5 - Other Gameplay: 4/5
7/10

Characters:
It's impossible to say that the characters here are better or worse than those of Tales of Symphonia. Why, you ask? Because they're basically the same. Namco has a weird new way of making new characters. They basically just took one cast and rearranged it, changed some of the proportions and made up new names. Very, very clever. *Sarcasm Detector explodes* It's hard to sum up in words exactly what I'm talking about, but if you play both games, you'll see some definite similarities. And I'm not just talking about the voice actors, as some of them have also returned.
Interactivity: 5/5 - Originality: 1/5
6/10

Lifespan <READ THIS!>:
This game is pretty long. It won't seem so at some points, but it will quickly pick up again. That's good, right? Not so much, because due to the lack of sidequests and total elimination of an affection system, there's little replayability. This game is definitely a rental game, unless you wanna see the antics of these characters one more time. It will take a few rentals to beat it, but when you do, you'll have spent about as much money as this game is probably worth. Although I'm not surprised. Story Mode in SC3 had no sidequests. But that was actually addicting.
Length: 5/5 - Replayability: 2/5
7/10

Overall:
This game reminds me a bit of The Matrix Reloaded. The started off with something good. A work of art that entertained everyone. But then they cluttered it with a boring story where little of interest happens. With this, they took a good idea for part of a good franchise, and they handed it off to the Soul Calibur team, where they made so many mistakes in a good formula, they caused the original idea to be lost in it. However, this is actually good. This is one of few games where every single flaw is easily identifiable. If Namco can listen to what we all tell them now, they can eliminate all that and the next Tales game will be a masterpiece. Until then, we have this. And I will say that I've played much worse games than this, but this still isn't up to par with some others.

Final Score:
Locale: 4/5 - Character Models: 3/5 - Music: 5/5 - Voices: 2/5 - Story: 4/5 - Plot Devices: 2/5 - Battles: 3/5 - Other Gameplay: 4/5 - Interactivity: 5/5 - Originality: 1/5 - Length: 5/5 - Replayability: 2/5
= 40/60 = 2/3
= 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/23/06