Tales of Destiny II

"Intriguing story, Great battle systems, and Insane Fun Factor… Oh My!!"

Tales of Destiny II was a very pleasant gaming experience for me, as I imagine it will be for you. This game took me from the normal style of RPGs and delivered a game with a twist. Overall this game was one of the most fun RPG’s that I have ever played.

Game play: 10/10
Tales of Destiny II had a great fun factor, from making meals as a chef, to having a battle arena where you could win an assortment of items. Next getting into battles was fun, and in my opinion never gets old. Instead of just tapping the command button through menus you actually take control of one of your characters, and use button sequences to do moves as you would in a Street Fighter II game. The other addition added was the fact that with a multi tap you could control all four characters in battle with your friends help, making this a game that friends can play together, and eliminating the computers control over your characters. In game play I give this game a 10 because it was fun from start to finish, especially after learning an assortment of spells, summons and special moves with your weapons. You also receive different characters, and the control, and menus were never that tough.

Story: 8/10
Some reviews mentioned that this game may seem like a rip off of other RPGs. In some parts of Tales of Destiny II, I could see why they would say that, however for the most part I felt Namco did a great job in moving the story along, and making you stay interested. This story starts with a being from another planet or place crashing by our main character Reid. You then go on a journey to help this being, which leads to meeting new characters, a huge controversy, and a fun yet serious story unraveling. However there was times when the story would hit a slow moving part or when you could almost guess what was going to happen next. I gave story a 8 because overall it was a fun story to listen to, and there wasn’t really a part where I saved my game and just felt like not continuing which has happened to me in a few RPGs over the years.

Graphics: 8/10
The graphics for a PS game were quite nice. I felt the world map was a little Blah, however most of the game was filled with colorful environments, and a number of characters, townspeople, and monsters that didn’t all look the same. Battles shined through the most to me though which earned the graphics an 8, because on summons, and attacks you would have an assortment of colorful magic and action flying through the screen all at the same time.

Music and Sounds: 7/10
The music in Tales of Destiny II never really bothered me, in fact of what I heard it wasn’t that bad at all. There is great battle music, and many different tunes, in different areas; however one factor that made me vote 7 was the voices. Mostly the voices were decent, however you could sense that the same strip of dialogue was used over and over, meaning the emotions didn’t fit at times. An example would be an excited “YES” or “NO WAY,” that fit an earlier part of the game, was then used again when a sad or serious “yes” or “no way” would have been fine.

Replay Value: 7/10
Tales of Destiny II was very fun to play, and battles were even more fun. So replaying the game wouldn’t even seem that bad, however all RPGs are hard to go through again since it is the same story. The one positive though is after beating the game you get secrets for when you start a new game using your cleared save. This feature helped boast the replay value up. (The beating the game secret would be a spoiler, so if interested check out an FAQ on the Gamefaqs website!)

Overall: 8/10
This game overall deserves an 8 in my book, for anyone who loves RPGs or fun games I would recommend picking this one up. It includes puzzles, some great characters, a fun story, and one of the best Battle systems which in my opinion is only beat out by a few other multi player RPGs, one being Secret of Mana. So have fun with this one, and I definitely recommend you buy it, over renting because you’ll want to spend a lot of time enjoying the great game play.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/02, Updated 07/29/02