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Tales of Symphonia: Review; Score: 7.2/10
Topic Started: Jan 17 2008, 06:38 PM (516 Views)
Fayt
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Easy wins have never been my style
Full Name: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Action RPG
Developer/Publisher: Namco Tales Studio/Namco
Platform: GameCube (also PS2 – but Japan only)
Players: 1 at most times, but up to 4 for battles only
Release Dates: Japan - 29 August 2003 | US - 13 July 2004 | EU - 19 November 2004
Official Sites: Japan | English

Description: The fifth installment of the Tales series is probably the most popular of them to date. Symphonia takes places in the lands of Sylvarant, where the main character Lloyd Irvine starts the story with his school friend Collette who is the ‘Chosen’. She is one who is about to embark on a ritual path to awaken countless summon spirits, which is in order to restore the mana flow to gain ‘world regeneration’. But as usual with RPG’s things vary from that line numerous times throughout the game, with a menacing group known as the “Desians” around running human ranches for power something is clearly amiss. As the story unfolds your in for a number of twists and turns to keep you on your toes.

Story Review: I’ve known some in the past to call is rather basic, or too linear. I feel it’s far from that, real issues - such as racism, twists that hit you from absolutely nowhere, a great assembly of characters. There is a lot to like about the story, it’s unpredictable at times and done very well to be enjoyed by all RPG fans. Might not get the all time RPG story of the century or anything, but there are also far worse then it around.

But not just that, you also get to be involved with some excellent characters, well with the exception of whiny Lloyd who annoys the crap out of me. Kratos is almost god-like, and also have a fitting voice actor in the amazing Cam Clarke to back him up. He truly in an amazing character and alone just makes things more enjoyable.

It’s not all serious either; you can witness some hilarious animated scenes along the way, and some additional nonessential ones too to really boost character interaction. Some of the best examples in my opinion involve the beautiful Sheena, and the rather confident Zelos, who clearly tried to catch her attention, and despite getting shot down in flames time and time again he keeps on trying! The characters will surprise you, frustrate you and make you smile, that’s just about perfect for a set of characters if you ask me.

Overall you’ll get to be part of a great story, but not only that find a few laughs along the way as well. This is definitely one of the best things about the game. 9/10

Battle System: It’s a somewhat linear style battle system, while it involves 3D movement its generally the left side attacking the right side. It’s clever, while essentially remaining rather simple. With Lloyd you can simply get in the enemies face, block, and then counter attack, then rinse and repeat. Doing this while your allies attack, and heal from afar makes fights rather easy unless you have poor stats & equipment. It gets boring after a while that’s for sure, and there are better action battle systems out there. But for a simpler fighting system that gives you full control its works.

You can also play battles with friends, which can no doubt make up for stupid AI (or create fights with your other player for not doing what you would like). Sadly, I’ve never experienced this side of battles to comment further. But it does have the added bonus of been able have multiple players for battles, which is rather rare in Action RPG’s. 7.5/10

Gameplay/General Navigation: Navigating around dungeons is not that easy of a task in Tales of Symphonia, like most Tales games actually. Not due to poor controls or crazy camera angles or anything faulty like that, but due to high difficulty and dungeons full of nasty puzzles along the way. The areas are often riddled with strategic surprises that need to be solved before you can move to the next area. For some this is welcome challenge, for others myself included it can become downright frustrating at times. I will admit I’ve had to resort to guides a couple of times to figure out how the heck to navigate through them, I don’t think dungeons should be this difficult complete, it’s one thing that’s a real sore spot for me.

Thankfully though, the enemies are visible, meaning no random battles wasting even more of your time while you’re roaming around lost, believe me this helps! Sadly though the detail in the visible enemies is terrible, every enemy looks very generic and does not reflect at all the type of opponent you will face in battle at all. It almost defeats the purpose of the feature, you contact a small black monster, and then suddenly you’re in battle with a large dragon…uh…what the hell? Because of that I think it makes even less sense then random battles, because at least when you think about it, random truly are random. This feels like it’s lost somewhere in-between. Games such as Final Fantasy XII, or Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is no doubt superior in this department. But at least you can see them in advance…

Outside in-between towns includes a normal, but also a unique overhead view which can be unlocked for easier navigation, but sacrificing the ability to find items by doing so. When you are travelling from town to town on repeat occasions you know you’ve already searched for the items before, so this can help cut down travel time. Enemies also freeze movement while you are not moving in this mode as well, which doesn’t just make this a faster method of travel, but also a safer one.

Overall there are some great ideas in the ability to navigate your areas – like the dual views in outside areas. But others which are half assed - the attempt at visible enemies are a joke. Then dungeons are quite difficult and frustrating, I mean, navigating is harder then boss battles, sorry but that is just not right for an action RPG at all. If I want to really think when navigating, I play Fire Emblem or any other Strat RPG - something that does it, and does it well.

You really need to have some patience and enjoy a tough puzzle to put up with these. 4.5/10

Graphics/Detail: For a GameCube game it’s actually a little disappointing, the GameCube is capable of high quality detail (Just look at Resident Evil 4) yet the FMV’s in Symphonia are very choppy and slow, something you’d expect from early PlayStation 2 days. The detail in travel around towns etc is also rather poor in my opinion, just look at the lack of detail in world travel and the ‘visible’ enemies (more on this later).

Although thankfully the detail in battle is of a quality standard and suffers no ill affects whatsoever due to lack of detail. I just feel as though it’s missing that little bit extra, oh well. It’s good; just I just think it could be much considering the power of GameCube. 6/10

Music: The soundtrack of the game is another of it’s strengths, as is often the case when Motoi Sakuraba is involved. Several video games before this have his beautiful scores in them, (common in Namco, tri-Ace, tri-Crescendo games in particular) and there are no let downs here at all. 8.5/10

Final Thoughts: Overall the game is alright, but I also believe overrated by many in the gaming world. I believe Tales of Symphonia is a good game, but not a great game. It features an enjoyable story, with some fascinating (and some terribly annoying) characters. The game will make you laugh and smile, but also at times make you want to pull your hair out due to nonsensical dungeons.

If you are a Tales fan there is no reason why you would dislike it, but if you haven’t played a Tales game before I’d be a little wearier before coughing up big bucks to find a copy, which is becoming rare. If you can, borrow it off a friend, hire it or take advantage of a 7 day return policy offered by some game retailers to try it first.

Rating: 7.2/10

*This review is based on my personal opinions from my own experiences with the game, which is a PAL GameCube version.
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