Tales of Rebirth

"A pleasant surprise echoing of great adventures past"

I'll admit I was not a big fan of the Tales games before. I played Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicom back in the day and thought it rather average with an annoyingly high encounter rate. Not owning a PS2 (or PS) until recently, I never had a chance to play the PS1 Tales games nor the PS2 games Destiny 2 & Symphonia (the latter first released on the GC). However, this past Christmas Tales of Rebirth caught my eye as a promising RPG release with its lush "lovechild of a Sega Saturn & Neo-Geo on steroids" 2D graphics, full voice, compelling real-time trilinear battle engine, and intriguing story. So I picked up a copy of Rebirth a day after its Japanese release date of December 16th as the game I would wile away my spare Christmas vacation hours with.

I am happy to report I think I made a very good decision. Rebirth is a beautiful epic the likes of which makes me wax nostalgic of classic role-playing masterpieces like Lunar, Seiken Densetsu 3, and Eternal Arcadia. The main character in Rebirth is a lad named Veigue. Well, he's older and more mature than a mere lad, and he talks in a very manly Japanese sort of way to boot. Veigue's childhood “friend” (ahem) Claire gets kidnapped early on, and thus sets in motion the storyline leading to a complex, intricate tale focusing on themes of the “Force” (not in the Star Wars sense but rather referring to X-men-ish powers certain people have which have been awakened), race relations (the two races in the game are the Huma and the Gajuma), bigotry, discrimination, and love that is more than skin deep. It is a fairly well written storyline, albeit with its fare share of cliche and Saturday-morning cartoon plot twists, but this is complemented by hours and hours of spoken dialogue and plenty of well-done anime and CGI intermissions. Regardless, the story effectively pulls the player along throughout the game, and I often found it hard to put down the game due to the storyline, despite its occasional silly and “been there, done that” moments.

The graphics, as I mentioned earlier, are just gorgeous. The hand-drawn 2D towns and environs shimmer on the screen like some Neo-Geo programmer's wet dream, and the 3D battlefields are as smooth as butter and twice as sweet. The animation is fluid, the frame-rate stable, and slowdown only occurs for a split second in those rare moments in a battle when two or three ougis (an ougi is a special technique a character can use at the end of a combo, there are also hiougis, which are rare two person combo attacks done with much eye-dazzling flare) are firing off simultaneously on multiple enemies, and in fact it's rather welcome at times as it breaks up the often insanely hectic battles (which I'll talk about more a bit later).

The music and sound effects are of similar quality to the graphics, and further heighten the gaming experience. I particularly enjoy some of the town themes; the themes for the snow towns in particular echo of some of the brilliant music in Seiken Densetsu 3, and fit the game just perfectly. I really have nothing bad to say about any of the music in the game. The overall soundtrack is varied and rich, with some really beautiful town themes, and a sweeping overworld theme. Very good stuff. The voice acting is really superb as well, and the sound effects in the battles are crisp and clear.

The gameplay comprises two main modes, the 2D town and dungeon navigation, and the 3D battles (trilinear motion on 3D environs, similar to Guardian Heroes). The sprite movement in the 2D segments is a bit floaty, and doesn't feel as “tight” as in other games, but you get used to it rather quickly. Similarly in the dungeons there are times when you have to hit a button to jump over a cavern, and the control could be a bit tighter in these situations. In the 3D battles, however, the control is nearly as tight as Street Fighter II and the combos are lots of fun to pull out. It reminds me a lot of Samurai Showdown, actually, complete with Neo-Geo-esque scaling in and out during battles. Basically, you normally combo in the sequence Normal hits (usually up to 3)>Jutsuwaza (translation “special technique”)>ougi>hiougi (rather rare to put in a combo). Depending on the character (without giving too much away, there are 6 total characters you can play as, and you can have any combination of 4 of these you choose in your fight party), a chained combo of Normal hits>jutsuwaza>ougi will usually net between 10-15 hits. However, if you're comboing while one or more other characters in your party are comboing, you can net some crazy combos between 25-50 hits! There are tons of jutsuwaza and ougi for each character (you learn more and more as you progress through the game and level up), making the combo possibilities rivaling that of a top fighting game. In addition, there are a variety of Normal hit combinations, and you can even jump in battle, and use jumping attacks within your combos. Each of the 4 members of your fight party can be customized as being Manual (you control everything), Semi-Auto, or Auto (the computer controls the character based on your preset battle parameters). Suffice it to say, I think this is an extraordinary fighting engine which works surprisingly well in an RPG. Overall it feels a lot like a hybrid of Samurai Showdown 1/2 and Guardian Heroes, which I think most people would agree is a very good thing.

And then there is the cooking (ryouri)! Since you cannot use the healing jutsuwaza of characters like Annie outside of the battles, you learn recipes in the towns, gather a stock of ingredients, and when you need an HP boost for the party you can cook up some grub. There are lots of recipes, and “Fresh Farm Groceries” shops strewn about the land. Of course, you can still buy healing items as well, but cooking is often more effective in the long run, especially when healing the entire party at once.

The weapon system in this game is ridiculously complex and very, very fun. After each battle you get “enhance” points, which you can use to upgrade different parameters of one of your weapons or armor. Every time you enhance a weapon it gains an internal level, finally maxing out after a certain number of upgrades. However, the true depth comes in the fact you can “inherit” this upgraded weapon to a new, more powerful weapon you buy at a shop or get in a dungeon, transferring the upgraded parameters to the new weapon, effectively allowing you to further upgrade the new “fused” weapon! The inherit/fuse combinations in the game are nearly endless, and there are even rare “miracle” fusions, where you get a rare blend resulting in an ultra powerful weapon or piece of armor, totally by random chance! I only had this happen once in my first play through, with one of Mao's attack weapons. I've heard the chances of this happening are quite rare, and some people have played through the game 3 times and still have not had it happen yet.

This is a long game with lots of replay value (my first play through was about 50 hours), and in addition you get “Graded” after each battle. Accumulate a certain level of grade in your first play through, and in the subsequent play through the game you can start with certain bonuses. There also opens up a Mania difficulty mode after the first play (you set the difficulty of the battles from Easy>Hard, the higher the difficulty the higher the grade you get if you perform well), and if you beat Mania you get the “Unknown” difficulty. Agh! I doubt I'll ever play through Unknown (or even Mania), but the option is there, and I respect and thank the developers for giving gamers incentive to play through again.

Overall, I love this game. It's the best RPG I played in 2004 (and I played most on the PS2 released in 2004 in Japan, except DQVIII), and with a complete walkthrough FAQ available on gamefaqs, I really recommend all Japanese-RPG loving PS2 owners to buy this game NOW, regardless of Japanese language ability. If you love the fighting of Samurai Showdown and Guardian Heroes, the epic exploration and adventure of Eternal Arcadia and Seiken Densetsu 3, and just a darn good gaming experience, you must play this game. All indications are this won't be translated into English, which is a shame. But that shouldn't stop you from playing one of the best RPG experiences of this generation.

RATING: 97% (9+/10)

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/13/05