Tales of Phantasia

"Accept the sudden revelation of reality, will you?"

Tales of Phantasia, the very first of the popular series about adventure through different countries and vast lands by Namco. A classic that some say is still the best between them all, brought back and remade over and over again, but never made it's way to being officially translated in the west for reasons never told.

What makes it so special? It's because it was made by a special team, a team of great people who later break up and etched their names on some later great games which we will surely be very fond of. Tri-Ace, the guys who made Star Ocean, are in fact a piece of this team. Results? Beautiful music by Motoi Sakuraba; well done classic storyline; magnificent graphics; never-seen before effects like water ripples, shadows, and mirror-reflections; and a whole new kind of excitement never experienced before this game came out.

Anyway, Tale Phantasia, the original title of the storyline, which was originally written by Yoshiharu Gotanda, tells the journey of Cless and his friends in pursuing a malevolent being which exists beyond the boundary of time and space, a legendary bringer of ruin from age to age. It begins when Cless sees the image of a woman on a great, withered old tree. She pleads him to find ways to save the dead tree before she disappears. Thinking it was his hallucination, Cless and his buddy, Chester, continue their hunt in the forest.

However, something incredibly wrong occurs as Cless flees his village clinging to the last hope of what his parents have said. A chain of occurrences, which threatens the lives of the people he knows, leads a desperate Cless to realize the fact that something his parents once got involved in, must now be finished by his own hands. But when he finds out that what he was facing was something more than just a seek of vengeance, everything was already too late.

The story involves a memorable cast of characters designed by Kousuke Fujishima (‘Ah! My Goddess', ‘You're Under Arrest!'). All of them, though never really developed much until the end, are portrayed very well in behaviour, motive, and characteristics. Each of them has their own way of fight. Cless, the only fully-playable character in the game, wields multiple types of weapons which he uses with different kinds of techniques and, later, fusion-techniques, which can be mastered after a certain number of proficiency. Mint is a healer, Arche the half-elf is a sorceress, while Klarth makes use of summon-elementals met through the game and Chester uses a bow (In the remakes, Suzu, the ninja, is also playable; and there will be more development in everyone's battle system too.).

The gameplay is good. Though in some parts of the game the rate of random enemy encounter could be absolutely annoying. In battles, the linear-motion system is put to use. Where all your enemies and allies are put on a two-dimensional straight line and pit each other like in two-dimensional fighting games, only with the fact that you have many fighters in both sides plus effects of items and magics.

There will be lots of side quests to do too. It surely goes in a world as huge as Phantasia (this is not really the world's real name). From being a cupid for two lovebirds to a journey in search of a dead pirate's treasure. There's also a bonus dungeon which is accessible once you reach the very last save point in the final dungeon.

Every mood in the game is well-portrayed by the sounds and BGM. Like I've said, Motoi Sakuraba did a quite a fine job in making the game's scores. The voice acting in battles, though not much, was simply the best at it's time too.

Tales of Phantasia is a very memorable RPG. It could be boring at some times, due to the repetition of the ‘dungeon to dungeon' formula and the fact that the second half of this game was more like a quest of power with not too much storyline. But in the end, everything is fine, which means Tales of Phantasia is definitely worth a try.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/16/04