Tales of Phantasia

"Triace's first effort; a sign of things to come."

Curiosity is a funny thing. It'll make you wonder why the sky is blue, why dogs whiz on trees, and why people go ape spit over games that you've never heard of. Take in case this game: Had Tales of Destiny not come out in the US Market, I wouldn't have been tempted to see the game that is the prequel to it.

(Note: This game was published by Namco Co., Ltd., but was developed by Namco's acclaimed Wolf Team, who later partially split from their home company and became known as TriAce. I'll just call them TriAce from hereon out for simplicity's sake.)

These are my thoughts on one of the best RPGs for the Super Nintendo system:

STORY: Take in mind that this game was made in late 1994, so don't expect to see things like the female lead exploding into a giant winged beast spewing goth poetry or supporting characters that commit suicide because they don't get enough play time.

It's a pretty simple story of your 'everyday neighborhood' Hero (Cless Alvein), and his adventures through varied landscapes (even time!) and tribulations. Although Alvein and his cohorts, archer Chester Barlight, summoner Klath P. Lester, priestess Mint Adnade, and witch Arche Klein, are the standard archtypes, the personalities given them by the TriAce writers makes them a little more than the usual soulless, swordswinging puppets that proliferated RPGs in that day. The story also has some very surprising twists and turns later on; go play the game to check them out. *10*

GAMEPLAY: In TriAce games, gameplay (arguably) is where it's at. This game got a lot of notoriety in Japan due to its battle system; instead of just pulling up a menu and hitting 'confirm' over the correct option, you instead control your character manually, sort of like a rudimentary Street Fighter. You can move them around, attack in various ways, use special moves, and so on. This real time system was very innovative, and I kind of wonder why more games didn't use it. My only gripe is that only one character can be manually controlled (Cless), and the rest of the characters' skills must be accessed via menu, and fights can quickly get repetitive (due to a slight lack of strategy, and the fact that you simply get into random battles on a maddeningly frequent basis).

Another thing I really like about the gameplay is the process in which techniques are learned. Unlike most RPGs, where mindless levelling up is encouraged to grow characters, in Phantasia characters learn their skills in various ways, be it reading books, fighting bosses, or using a combination of two skills. It's fun to hunt down all the hidden items in a attempt to master your character. *8*

SOUND/MUSIC: Composed by Motoi Sakuraba, the synthetic sounds in this game are both etheric and astounding. From driving dungeon and world map beats to soothing sounds in less hostile conditions, Tales of Phantasia's soundtrack easily rivals (dare I say surpasses) anything composed by Nobuo Uematsu during the same time frame.

Unique to this game are voices for the individual characters, an oddity back in the early 90s. Voices come out crisp and clear, although only one character has the brunt of the voicework in the game. Sound effects are a little lacking (my ears literally scream during the 'Tractor Beam' spell), but that was typical of games at the time, so I can't really complain. *9*

GRAPHICS: Absolutely astounding. Although I have to play this game on an emulator due to translation problems (it makes the graphics grainy), I can still easily tell this is the most beautiful game I've ever played. The use of the Mode 7 technique on the world map is commendable, and the town and dungeon graphics are excellent as well. In fight scenes, it's like Street Fighter II: Loads of parallax and line scrolling add to the ambience of the arena. Another thing that took me was the fact that the characters are so animated. I didn't even know developers could get this kind of fluid animation back in 1994! *10*

OVERALL: I wholeheartedly suggest that you go and get (or download if you need English translation) this game. It's an awesome addition to anyone's RPG library.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/15/01, Updated 07/15/01