Tales of Symphonia

review by: mast.chief

Once upon a time, there existed a giant tree that was the source of Mana. A war, however, caused this tree to wither away, and a hero’s life was sacrificed in order to take its place. Grieving over the loss, the goddess disappeared into the heavens. The goddess left the angels with an edict “You must wake me, for if I should sleep, the world shall be destroyed.” The angels bore the Chosen One, who headed towards the tower that reached up to the heavens. And that marked the beginning of the regeneration of the world…

You play as Lloyd, a swordsman and a little on the stupid side. Your friends, Collette, the chosen one, and Genis, your best friend and an elf. You begin in a classroom and it seems Lloyd fell asleep in class. Then Professor Raine, Genis's sister, hits you with something that looked like a brick… Anyway, suddenly a giant flash occurs, which Raine supposes that the oracle is here so Raine leaves telling Collette to stay, if it’s really the oracle the priests will come for her. Thus leaving the students to study on their own… yeah right! Lloyd decides to find out whets going on, so he leaves the school along with Genis and Collette. By going outside Collette’s father warns the group that the Desians attacked the village, even though they had a peace treaty with them. Even so they decide to go on; when they arrive at the church a priest goes out to warn Collette but was extremely injured and died. When they arrive at the top they met the Desians. When you meet them, some big guy comes out to play. Suddenly when you’re about to be killed, this mysterious assassin appears and saves you. After beating the big guy, Phaidra (Collette’s grandmother) states that the Desians have left and that the oracle has arrived. It seems that the mysterious assassin was actually a Mercenary for hire; he gets hired by Phaidra to protect Collette when she goes inside the temple to receive the oracle, and so begins the chosen’s journey of regeneration. Sounds a bit unoriginal, but it’s hard to find original stories now a days. Besides, Namco did a superb job of making the story feel fresh, plus the story is always changing with the big amount of twists that it has, although some of them you can see coming.

Fighting here is all real-time hack ‘n slash. You can play as any of the characters, but Lloyd seems to be made with some type of advantage over the other characters, which isn’t positive at all. Still, it's nothing that detracts the experience at all. Depending on your character, you learn melee techniques, melee techniques and spells, or just spells. This allows for some strategy in battle, for example if you’re fighting with fast enemies, having a party with only mages is not recommendable because the enemies can easily interrupt your spells. On the other hand without a healer your chances of dying are very high, especially if you’re low on items, so strategy is defianatly needed. Also for the computer controlled characters you can assign different strategies and choose what to attack, which attacks to use, and which to not use. Of course all of this is optional, but recommended if you wish to survive. Still the AI is very good on your allies, but enemies can sometimes do some stupid things, like staying still some place waiting for you to target them, although this barely happens. If you don’t want to use computer-controlled characters then get some friends to play with you. Sometime in the game you learn how to perform unison attacks, which consists of the characters using the attack assigned at once, which inflicts some serious damage if you manage to hit the enemy. This allows for some seriously big combos and if you manage to make a compound attack, which is basically a mix of two spells, two techs, or a spell and a tech, the damage and combo count goes up. After every battle the end of battle screen comes out, with stats such as exp gained, Gald (money), how much time the battle lasted and the amount of grade won/loss. For those unaware, GRADE is like some special type of money, and if you fight like a pro you win grade, but if you die a lot or just fight plain bad, you lose GRADE. The amount of time taking to win also affects this. Basically you can use grade to buy materials for customization (more on this later) or buying EX gems. Plus at the end of the game there’s a GRADE shop in which you buy some neat things for your second play through. Also if you have the necessary ingredients and the recipe you can cook some things to raise your, HP/TP or cure status effects. Now for the problems, first, there’s a very big learning curve, I often found myself learning things even hours after starting the game. I have no problem with this, but some gamers will. And last but not least the difficulty is sometimes unbalanced, which is frustrating. Nonetheless the combat is very good and extremely addicting. Of course fighting isn’t everything, there’s lots of dungeons and puzzle solving involved, which is great for taking a break from the fighting. Some puzzles are easy, while others require a bit of thinking and luck. Still there well thought out and varied. Furthermore the game includes a good amount of side quests which can easily add hours to the game, some of these are fetch quests. These reward you with titles, attacks, items, money, and some cool new boss fights. They also complement the story and fill in some gaps. But wait there's more! With a small handful of mini games, you can also enjoy yourself, although I believe that some of these are completely useless and boring, but some mini games are fun.

The level of customization is high, and once again, depends on your character. You can basically customize the character from head to toe, but on the downside, hardly any of this affects the looks of your character from the outside, except some things, like the weapon he has. Titles are given based on different events, or things you do in battle. These are like level up bonuses, some effect different stats of the character when they level up. Also some of them can be used to change your costume. Another addition are the EX gems. These further amplify your character's ability more or give them special abilities.

On the technical side, the graphics are cel-shaded, and I must say, everything is incredibly detailed. The NPC models barely ever repeat themselves, which is VERY rare in RPG’s. The enemy variety isn’t as big though, but it’s still varied. The overworld, which is where you travel to different places (its like a map), looks like a N64 game, and with no variety at all except with a small desert here and a beach over there… the rest is grass. Why Namco did this I don’t have the slightest clue. Luckily it's just where you travel so it isn’t that bad. Towns and dungeons look and feel very different, which is another plus. Later in the game you can travel the overworld in vehicles which are **BLEEPING** great. Probably the coolest things are the anime cutscenes. Too bad there are very few of them, and in my opinion, most of them suck. The sound is good, but the battle music gets repetitive and old. Luckily the music from dungeons and towns are all different, and there all pretty good. Voice acting is good, but there are some un-emotionless lines, and like always, the Japanese voice acting is much better.

You must be tired of reading right now… so I’ll conclude. Tales of Symphonia is a great RPG, plus a superb addition to the small Gamecube RPG collection. This game is just shy from greatness, and even people who usually don’t enjoy RPG’s will get hooked. Overall this is one awesome experience, and trust it will last you for a while. Heck it’s lasted me 106 hours and counting… but for people who speed through the game and aren’t completionists, it can last at least 50 hours, not bad huh?

Final score: 9.5/10