Tales of Symphonia

"Review for TOS"

Introduction
Tales of Symphonia is produced NAMCO, a Japanese company. Namco has produced quite a few RPG games and most or likely to be all of them start with the word TALES (just like Final Fantasy, don't you think so?). There are few aspects that are same in all Tales game. One of them is battle system, another is the graphics.

The battle system is quite unique compare to other RPG games in the past. The battle field is 2D and players can have four characters in the battle field fighting enemies. The battle system is more towards those fighting games. This means players can fully control a character's fighting style where battle skills are more important than strategies.

Meanwhile, the graphics of Tales game has always been the same. The characters are always 2D except when they on the world map. The world map has a 3D graphics and other places are all 2D graphics.

Storyline
The main two characters are Lloyd and Colette. Colette is the Chosen One, which needs to accomplish a mission to save the world. While Lloyd and the gang helps her out. This is just the beginning of the story. After you have played 1/3 of the game, the plot of the story starts to change. Well, I am not a “story spoiler”, so I will just let those who are interested in this game to find out the rest of it. To conclude, the beginning of the story is quite lame, but the storyline gets interesting when you reached to a certain level of the game.

Graphics
As I had just mentioned at the beginning of this review, most of the things in the game are 2D. Although the characters are 2D, they still have a good look when they are shown in an animation. But in the game, they look so tiny and immature. This is the main weakness of this game. If Namco designed the characters, towns, monsters and so on in 3D, it will probably be the best game of all time. There is a chance that Tales will be more popular than Final Fantasy.

Sound
In battle, the sound effect is really good. Every slash or hit could be heard clearly. Moreover characters will call out their skill name when they use it, which gives players a sense of reality. Besides that, the game have great opening theme song. The music is really good, and the singer has a beautiful voice. The best part is the voice of each character represents their personality perfectly.

Game Play
This game is fairly easy if players just intend to finish game. Like all RPG games, it has dungeons and side quests. Most of the dungeons are very easy to be completed. Although it is easy, players still need an hour to finish a dungeon later in game because some of the dungeons are very big. Although some dungeons are big in size, these dungeons aren't so confusing compared to the dungeons in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.

The battle system in Tales of Symphonia lets players control one of characters in the battle. Players are only allowed to run in a straight line where the enemy is. In battle, players can use normal attacks and also skills of their own to defeat the enemy. Every character has their own unique skills. Some of them use physical skills and some of them use magic.

The best part of this game is it allows four players to play in battle, which make more unique than other RPG games. Therefore, players can always tag up with a few partners to defeat those powerful bosses.

There are also two main aspects in this game. These two aspects are EX skills and Unison Attack. I am not going to explain these two aspects because you will learn it early in the game. These aspects are very important in battle especially EX skills.

Besides that, Tales of Symphonia has another special aspect, which is each character has their own titles. Title is important for a character status because title can boost a character status when a character level ups. Every title differs in boosting a character's status. For an example, some only boost ATTACK, while may be others up all of the status. This aspect allows players to have their ideal character's status.

Overall 8/10
Overall, Tales of Symphonia would be a new experience for those who love RPG games. It is really worthy of buying if you don't mind the graphics of this game. Beside that, players must at least get used to Japanese word if you want to play this game. The main reason is the language of Tales of Symphonia in PS2 is in Japanese.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/07/04