Tales of Legendia

"Tales of Destiny 2, Tales of Rebirth, Tales of the Abyss...WHY did Namco localize the worst PS2 Tales?"

In Japan, the Tales series is one of the most popular RPG series out there. It's so loved that the Japanese will go out and buy them without knowing anything about them; just the fact that they're out is enough reason to buy. In America, well...the series isn't quite so loved. Out of three adventures into the American market, two were complete failures, and one did reasonably well. While Tales of Destiny and Tales of Eternia (renamed Tales of Destiny II for its American release) were complete flops, 2004's Tales of Symphonia did surprisingly well, causing Namco to consider bringing over one of their PS2 installments. They decided to bring over Tales of Legendia, the first "true" 3D Tales (Symphonia was cel-shaded). Apparently there's this stereotype that Americans hate 2D games, so Destiny 2 and Rebirth probably weren't even considered. Rather than waiting for Tales of the Abyss' release in late 2005, they went ahead and translated Legendia, despite it being called the worst in the main series.

Namco says that they're trying to popularize the Tales series in America, but their actions say otherwise. Since they were wary of how well Legendia would do, they put an extremely strict budget on the translation. The result? Legendia, noted for having more voice acting than any other game in the series, has only half of the voice work translated. What is there is great, but it's sorely missed in the second half of the game, where the only voices you'll hear are doing battles. Now, I repeat, the voice acting is excellent. It's just not there in the second half of the game, which is a real shame. Several people have completely given up on buying the game just because of this which completely defeats the purpose of being conservative in the translation.

Now, on to the actual game itself...

Legendia is noted for having the best story and characters in the series. If you're the kind of person who plays RPGs for story, you'll want to consider buying this. The game tries an interesting concept: there are 2 distinctly separate stories, each ~25-30 hours long. The first story, the Main Quest, is the typical RPG-esque story. However, what really sets it apart is the amazing character interactions. The game is full of humor; all but the most serious scenes will have you at least chuckling. Each of the 8 main characters is full of personality and life, and its unlikely that you'll really dislike any of them. ...Well, you could make a case for hating Shirley, but that's about it.

The second story is the Character Quest. Like the title implies, it focuses more on the characters than any big conflict. Each character except Senel and Shirley gets their own section that focuses specifically on them and gives them astronomical amounts of depth. For example, throughout the entire Main Quest, you don't really know anything about Jay or Grune. The Character Quest gives them backstories and depth that were nonexistent in the Main Quest. And you don't have to worry about Senel and Shirley not getting their own sections; the Main Quest focuses on those two more than anyone else, so they don't have a need for it.

Now, the story does have its flaws; I'll avoid going into to detail so as to avoid spoilers, but there are a good number of plot holes. However, that's fairly easy to look past, as almost every RPG has quite a few plot holes. What really irked me was the extreme idealism that each of the characters has, especially in the Character Quest. Several times per hour of play, you'll probably get to hear each of the 8 playables shout out their reason for fighting. It gets extremely cheesy, as it pretty much just goes down the line of characters as they list their reasons. I understand that it's normal to have the characters do this before, say, the final battle, but they do it just a wee bit more than that. The amount of redundant dialogue in this game is absolutely...astounding.

The graphics are...mediocre. Outside of battle, the graphics are very bad. Walking animations are extremely awkward, the character models are not detailed at all, and environments are bland and repetitive. The camera never zooms in on things for this very reason; there's simply nothing to zoom in to. Players of Symphonia that are weened on dynamic camera angles and close-ups are going to be extremely disappointed. Fortunately, the in-battle graphics fare better. While the character models still look rather awkward, they're far more detailed than they are outside of battle. However, due to the way the damage numbers are displayed, it can be very difficult to tell just how much damage you're doing with each it. It pops up as a small, narrow number, then disappears a second later. While you'll eventually get used to it, it's very irritating at first. If there's one positive thing I can say about the graphics, it's that the artwork is excellent. The 2D character portraits that pop up during skits and cutscenes are very nice to look at, unlike the 3D models.

Continuing with aesthetic qualities, Legendia has an excellent soundtrack. Each song fits the occasion very well in addition to being pleasant to listen to. Previous Tales games suffered from the problem of having several outstanding tracks and many mediocre ones, but almost every song on Legendia's soundtrack is outstanding. There's really nothing else to say here, so moving on to...ah, the gameplay. The reason why this game gets a 5 instead of a 7 or an 8.

I'll start off with the battle system. First of all, it's gone back to completely 2D. While Symphonia had that psuedo-3D thing going on and Rebirth had multiple planes that you could move between, Legendia has gone back to the completely 2D style of Phantasia, Destiny, Eternia, and Destiny 2. The battle system shares the most similarities with Eternia's battle system; you're able to combo together several basic attacks into a special attack into a "super" special attack. The problem with this is that the main character, Senel, almost encourages you not to use special attacks, or eres as they're called in this game. Unlike previous Tales heroes who have used the sword as their weapon of choice, Senel is a fist-fighter (see Destiny's Bruiser, Eternia's Farah, Symphonia's Regal, etc.). The thing is, his 3-hit basic attack combo does more damage than any special attack can do in that time frame, so there is no reason to use them. At all. This isn't the case with other characters, but many people who play these games never change their lead character.

The most disappointing thing about Legendia's battle system is that THERE ARE NO HI-OUGIS. For you English-speaking people (which would be 99% of you), that means secret special techniques. Eternia was the first game to feature them en masse, and succeeding games had about 10 each (excluding the GC version of Symphonia, which only has 3). Legendia has not one, which is quite unfortunate. There's just something satisfying about pulling out a move that absolutely devastates the enemy.

The battle system doesn't add anything that hasn't been in previous games except for two things: the Climax gauge and throws. Senel has throws, which allow him to do a nice chunk of damage to a downed enemy. While this sounds nice, they really aren't very useful, as the enemies that you really need the extra damage against usually can't be thrown. The Climax gauge is a blue bar on the bottom of the screen that fills up as you deal out and take damage. When it's full, you can tap a button to freeze time for about 15 seconds as you tear through your enemies as you wish. Alternatively, you can just tap the button twice to do a Climax Combo which drains the whole bar in exchange for knocking off about 20% of the enemy's life. Obviously, Climaxes are only useful against high HP enemies.

Dungeon exploration is at an all-time low. 90% of the dungeons constant of mostly-straight paths that occasionally branch off to a treasure chest. There are very few puzzles, and the few that there are can be skipped completely. Dungeons are very boring to trudge through. As if the boring layout wasn't enough, the encounter rate is obscenely high. Tales games are notorious for having high encounter rates (Phantasia and Destiny especially), but Legendia's is just ridiculous. Fortunately, you can still buy Holy Bottles at the local item shop to lower it, but it's still worth noting. Also, you have to trek through almost every dungeon twice. Once in the Main Quest, and again in the Character Quest. The layout is exactly the same, with no changes except for the fact that treasure chests have been refilled. How exciting.

As with previous games in the series, Legendia does have a fair amount of replayability for perfectionists. There are a good number of titles to be attained for each character, the infamous GRADE shop that lets you play through the game again with new options (experience modifiers, costumes, etc.), and...that's about it. In terms of actual sidequests, there aren't any that consist of anything more than talking to people during certain small timeframes to get items. There is the battle arena, but it just seems much easier than in previous games. Also, THERE AREN'T ANY CAMEOS. From Eternia on, every Tales game has had a cameo battle in the arena where you fight characters from previous games. In Legendia, you just fight Legendia characters. Yawn.

In conclusion, I have to say that Tales of Legendia is undoubtedly the worst game in the main Tales series. Even Tales of Destiny was better, despite its pacing problems. While the character interaction is amusing, the story isn't really that spectacular, and the characters tend to be way too "happy-go-lucky." The story wouldn't be a problem if not for the horrid gameplay, which completely ruins the game. The uninspired dungeons and battle system just make the game not very fun to play. When all is said and done, Legendia just leaves you with a kind of "blah" feeling. It pains me to give a game from my favorite RPG series such a low rating, but I suppose every series has to have its black sheep.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/03/06