Tales of The World: Radiant Mythology

"Tales of the many many many fetch quests."

The Tales series has always been a very good series. Well, Tales of the Abyss was excellent and Tales of Symphonia was wonderful. I was hoping for more Tales games to hit the United States and when I heard there was going to be a Tales for the PSP. I was excited, but then this game met some expectations and failed to meet some others. For all the Tales fans. You'll be able to recognize some of the Tales characters in previous Tales games. For non-Tales fans this game might come off as being bland and boring. Because the inside Tales jokes will be hard to understand and the fetch quests will turn some people off.

There are colorful graphics and I guess that's kind of good. The graphics are good for a PSP game and they manage to bring the 3D environment into such a small disc. The character models look nice and I like how you can change the main character's clothes by what equipment they're wearing. All RPGs should do this to add some more creativity to the game and Tales is on the right path.

The soundtrack is decent. The songs are somewhat catchy. (Especially the ice dungeon place) The voice acting is something else though. Some of the voices are good and some of the voices are just annoying. Some of the older Tales characters have the same voice as their previous games, but then some of the Tales characters have new voices and they don't sound as well. Especially in battles when the characters say "How do you like that" for like the umpteenth time.

Let's start with the story before we head into the gameplay section of the review. The story is something that isn't amazing at all. No good points at all and barely and good plot twists. You'll be asking yourself. Why am I playing this game for? Well, you get a half baked story about saving a world that is losing all its mana. That's basically it and you're trying to get this girl's memory back. And in between all the story quests. You get like more than 200 boring fetch quests. The fetch quests wide from a big range from finding an old man on the fifth floor of this dungeon or defeating ten of these monsters for no reason at all. You'll be wondering how did this old man get to the fifth floor of the dungeon and avoid all those monsters. And then when you find the old man, he'll be right next to a monster or something and the monster will be totally just walking around him as he sits still as a statue being unharmed.

Or maybe the fetch quest will be collect a certain number of a certain item. I wouldn't mind the game if they didn't use the same ones over and over again. But then you'll be doing the same quest like twenty times before you get a new story quest. Like maybe you'll have a quest where you have to kill ten of a specific monster. So, you go off into a dungeon and fight ten of those monsters while fighting some other monster. Then you go back and you'll get another monster quest where you have to fight ten different specific monsters in the same dungeon as the previous one. Can't we take two quest at the same time to save time. But the problem is that Tales needs to do this to add some meat into the game. And when I mean meat I mean play time.

Another thing that bugged me is that you start on floor one at a dungeon every time. That's not bad, but then when you get quest that make you go up to like the fourth floor multiple times. You'll have to start on the first floor again and make your way up to the fourth floor and that will take like ten minutes. After that you get another quest that says to go up to the fifth floor. Guess what? You're on the first floor of that dungeon again and you have to use another ten minutes getting all the way up there while dodging all the monsters that come at you. Another thing to add some more meat into the game.

Let's get into the gameplay. Shall we? The game is like other Tales games. What? You have never played a Tales game. Okay. Your character is put onto this 3D looking grid and you fight monsters on a 2D line, but the good thing is you can use your little PSP control stick to move your character in a 3D motion. Unfortunately the monsters can move freely as well. So when you're about to use a super strong awesome skill the monster moves a little to the left and your attack misses. This wouldn't be so big of a problem. If the enemy didn't do that so often. Speaking of fighting monsters. You also get party members that fight along with you. Two problems. Your party members can be totally useless sometimes and they'll be just standing there in a daze while you're working your butt off fighting the monsters.

Second problem? Okay, when you get a quest you get to invite a certain amount of party members. Depends on what quest you're taking and you can take up to three or sometimes you're limited to none at all. So you take your party members walk all the way up to the fifth floor and complete the quest. Then you take on a new quest and you're off to kick some butt. But what's the matter your party members are scatter across the world again and you have to go to different worlds to recruit them again for another quest. Big mistake, Namco! This gets extremely annoying when you get a whole bunch of worlds. You have to travel a whole bunch just to get your party members. And when you finish your short quest, you have to find them all over again. Again. More meat to the game.

So, let's see we have around three minutes getting your party members and seven minutes going up to the right floor to do your quest. That's like ten minutes wasted for nothing unless you really like to train a whole bunch. I mean you'll probably have at least 1000 encounters at the end of the game. I know some crazy people that have up to 3000 encounters on their play log. And there are like 300 different quests. 300 multiply by 10. That's a lot of minutes being wasted.

The gameplay sometimes for the weak monster and sometimes for the medium leveled monsters. You just have to mash the A button and if you're on semi-auto (which means the computer will move automatically for you) and your character will automatically fight the monster for you. Sometimes I would just mash the A button while doing something else. Like playing a different video game or watching TV.

Let's talk about items. You can make items if you get the right material and to the right level. The level system is a bit dumb and makes you have to cook the lower recipes multiple times. That means there will be a whole bunch of ingredient collecting. YAY! Even more battle mashing, because most of the stuff you'll need later in the game will come from weak monsters. When you use items in a battle you pause the game and go to items to heal you or your party members. Unfortunately, your party members will almost never heal themselves. So, you're in charge of all the healing that your party has to do.

It's hard to recommend this game. For non-Tales people this game might not give you a good first impression and I would have given this game a way lower score if I wasn't a huge fan of the series. Maybe, I would have given the game like a five or something. But since I'm a Tales fan I'll give this game a six and I'm being really generous here. I hate to say this, but Tales: Radiant Mythology is just another typical RPG with a lacking storyline and way too many fetch quest. For Tales fans, I also have a hard time recommending this game for you. Because all of those other Tales games have a good storyline without the stupid fetch quests. Why didn't Namco just give us Tales of Rebirth instead of this? Instead we get a game where there are constant people that nag you to get them potatoes or something just so you can feel good about finishing all the quests.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/12/07, Updated 03/16/09

Game Release: Tales of The World: Radiant Mythology (US, 07/17/07)