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»Tales of Phantasia
"GBA is still a King of the RPGs."
A breeze drawn from the northwest brings with it a hint of smoke.
Disregarding it, you and your friend continue to stalk your prey: a
gigantic boar that is rumored to be in the western depths of a
purportedly magical forest. This is your playground, having spent a
good portion of your childhood playing and hunting in these very woods.
As you finish up your hunt, you notice an oily column slinking into the
heavens. All of a sudden, you place the hint of smoke you smelled
earlier that day. Heart pounding, you and your buddy race home, hoping
against hope that everyone is alright.
In the opening scenes of Tales of Phantasia, we are introduced to Cress
and Chester, two natives of the small village Toltus, who return only
to find their families slaughtered and their home in ruins. From here,
they embark on a mission to find the murderer and enact revenge, even
if it is at the cost of their own lives.
From the get go, an age-old RPG cliché is presented to the player: ‘Oh
no! My poor peasant village has been destroyed. I must seek vengeance’.
This is the entire motivation behind the actions Cress, Chester, and
their inevitable allies turn into a surprisingly deep and multi-layered
plot, spanning three eras. This ultimately results in a surprisingly
long 35+ hour experience that held my rapt attention until the final
boss.
The gameplay presentation may be lumped into two separate portions:
overworld and battle. The overworld portion plays out like any other
JRPG. There is a nicely illustrated world, with the typical towns,
towers, castles, etc. Most functions are menu-driven, which also
contains the traditional commands other RPGs utilize. There are a few
differences, however: cooking, which adds the ability to craft your own
restoration items via “foodcraft”, and titles, which, while fun to
collect, don’t have any real impact on the game whatsoever. The six
NPCs you gain control of will earn titles based on their profession.
Cress, for example, will get ‘Master Swordsman’, while Arche, a mage,
will receive ‘Sorceress’. One thing that is particularly neat in this
game is that if you happen to enter a town from a particular side
(they’re all arrayed in a ‘square’ formation anyway), the side you
chose dictates where you pop up in town. Enter from the bottom, you
appear in the south entrance of town. Pretty cool, eh?
Battle is something completely different. Traditionally, JRPGs have
their characters in a line, battle actions conducted via menu. Tales
titles take the menu-based battle system and put it into a
side-scrolling, action RPG format. You directly control one of the
characters, having him or her execute attacks and skills with flurries
of the D-Pad. The other three characters take a more passive role.
While you can switch on or off the abilities you want them to be able
to use automatically, their AI is content to only cast spells or use
abilities only moderately, even if you have them set to ‘Full Magic’,
‘Full Defense’, or whatever. This lackluster NPC AI has a tendency to
subtract from the enjoyment, as you’re having to micromanage every
single action if you want to be able to survive a battle.
While Tales of Phantasia is far more action-oriented then your
traditional JRPGs, battle has a tendency to be addled with several
annoying problems. If you want to cast a spell, you had better choose
it before another spell animation goes off; the game doesn’t seem to
like you accessing the menu during them. Also, even when running to
cover a little distance in order to execute a melee strike on an enemy,
the controls feel a tad sluggish when trying to break the sprint back
to the original position. More often than not, you have to break the
return spring right away if you want to be able to follow up an attack
with another one.
The fun part of SNES ports is that you get to compare their graphics to
a modern day standard. Luckily for Tales of Phantasia, they seem to
have aged well on the GBA. In all honesty, they highly resemble those
found in Final Fantasy 4 Advance. Some things were changed and updated,
but the majority remained unchanged. I have to say, I love the
overworld map. It reminds me of a shiny, new toy that is fresh out of
the box. I messed around on it more than I probably should have, as it
caused me to over-level and beat the final boss a little too easily.
But I loved it. The environments are absolutely breathtaking as well. I
particularly enjoyed the exterior of the mountain just prior to the
Wind Spirit.
Where there is good, there is also some bad. This comes mainly in the
form of the sprites. The important sprites are all completely unique.
This includes your party, many of the important enemies, and even the
few non-playable characters (NPCs) who join your party—these ones even
have viewable status-screen portraits! Bonus! Beyond those, though,
they all begin to look alike. There is the old man, the cloaked woman,
the pirate, the king. I couldn’t even begin to tell which elves were
male and female.
Musically, this game is haunting. This isn’t to say that it will give
you nightmares, because that would imply that you would be able to fall
asleep. The music in this game is catchy. Actually, catchy would be a
misnomer. The musical scores found throughout this game are nigh
hypnotic. I would find myself humming or whistling the various midi
tracks around the house, driving, sometimes at work. It’s scary. Of
particular note is the battle music and the ‘castle’ music. You’ll know
it when you hear it.
Where the music itself was spectacular, the voice acting was just
painful. As impressed as I am with the amount of voice talent Namco
managed to cram into a GBA cart, they probably would have been better
off without it. Every time Arche shouts ‘Indignation!’ for her
lightning spell, I keep imagining it is because whoever’s below her
(she flies around on a broom because she’s a witch) is looking up her
robe. Everything sounds as if it is being said with a slur or a lisp,
and more often than not it is too muffled to even make the difference.
If there’s one category that many RPGs flounder in, it is the replay
department. Unless you’re playing through for the challenge of Hard
mode, or New Game +, there isn’t really much point to playing through
it again. You already know what’s going to happen, and it’s going to
take a long time to get there. In fact, it can take as long as a full
work week…with overtime! If you wish to subject yourself to the torture
that is New Game + (new game with your previous stats and abilities
saved), have at it.
In addition to these two features, beating the game also unlocks a
Crazy Taxi-esque mini game called ‘Let’s Go Arche’. In it, you fly
around on your broom, trying to accomplish various tasks before the
clock runs out. It may offer a little bit of play value for some
diehards, but I didn’t find it particularly interesting.
There you have it. Eleven years after Namco released this gem of a
title in Japan, they finally decided to bring it over to the States to
give us Yankees a taste of a good, old fashioned RPG. If you enjoyed
the Final Fantasy remakes that are already abound on the GBA, and are
anticipating the release of 5 and 6 in the coming year, this one may
very well sate your appetite in the interim. It’s very much worth
playing.
Article by: getahl
Posted on: May. 30th, 2006 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| Very fun, albeit sometimes frustrating. |
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Graphics |
| Beautiful overworld, androgynous sprites. |
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Sound |
| Catchy tunes and sound effects. Voice acting makes you want to give yourself a lobotomy. |
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Replay Value |
| It’s like re-reading a book…right after you finished it. What’s the point? |
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Comments |
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June 1, 2006 |
CrazyJOE |
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Yuck this game is yuck. Why do these little anime-looking chracters have voices that sound like they should be at a boxing match? Not to mention the slow-moving story. Just wait for the re-releases of final fantasy III and VI for your RPG needs, okay?
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June 2, 2006 |
Ack |
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Did they edit any of the conversations, or do we get the great amounts of swearing they had in the Japanese version?
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July 1, 2006 |
CrazyJOE |
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Well, as you can see with the remake of Final Fantasy II/IV (which was rated E 10+ as TOP is), swearing isn't a major issue anymore when it comes to video games. However, I beleive they did tone it down a bit in this case.
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