Tales of Destiny II

"Another great game in the 'Tales' series."

Gameplay - First of all, this is one of the most fun RPG's I have ever played. It has a great active time battle system. The system in my opinion is MUCH better than the type used in Star Ocean: The Second Story. If you have played previous installments of the Tales series, the battle system is basically the same, with some improvements.
The difficulty in this game fluctuates from easy to hard, a lot of the bosses in this game were very, very hard, the difficulty level in the game is enough to keep you entertained, but not hard to the point where you want to break your playstation.

Story - The story of this game is solid, but not anything totally new. You discover a young girl in the forest, who speaks a foreign language and seems to be in some sort of trouble. You then get drawn into a huge adventure to find out who this young girl is. Also, the characters in this game are very well developed. They were all very likeable and had unique personalities. The hero was cool, which can't be said for all too many RPG's that have been coming out recently. This game did a good job of making the heroes very easy to like and the villains very easy to hate.

Audio/Video - The music in this game is superb, it always fit the mood of the game quite well. The game also had a lot of voice acting. I personally thought the voice acting for this game was great, the voice actors seemed to fit the characters personality well.
The graphics in this game have the same look as the other games in the series, but are vastly improved. They look great, and are very crisp. No complaints whatsoever.

Replayability - Hm, this game as many RPG's doesn't have TOO much replay value, but I can say that there is a good chance you'll play it again to do some of the sidequests you may have missed, to find more recipes from the Mysterious Wonder Chef, or just to enjoy the story one more time. This game has moderate replay value, but I doubt you'll play it through more than twice.

To buy or to rent? - This game is a definite buy. It is a very good game, besides, I doubt you could beat this game in a five day rental period anyway. Even if you could, I wouldn't want to rush through a great game like this one.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/23/01, Updated 09/23/01