GameSpy: Tales of Symphonia - Page 1 (original) (raw)
Reviews
By Benjamin Turner | Jul 5, 2004
Put away that tattered copy of Skies, as the arrival of Tales of Symphonia means that the GameCube finally has another tradional RPG worth playing.
Good
Pros:
Fast and fluid battle system; likeable characters; good graphics; lengthy quest.
Cons:
Weak audio; story has a lot of downtime.
Namco's "Tales" series dates back to 1995, when the first chapter appeared on the Japanese SNES. Since then, only about half of the games have come to America, and the latest to make the journey is Tales of Symphonia. "Tales" games have two main traits: lush artwork and innovative real-time battle systems. Both of these are well-represented in Symphonia, making it a solid and unique entry in the GameCube's RPG-starved game library.
However, one thing Symphonia doesn't have is an original story. In fact, you'll be forgiven if you snort a bit upon hearing mention of the Mana Tree that controls the fate of Sylvarant, the game's generic fantasy setting. It seems the tree is on the wane, and a rag-tag bunch of adventurers from a small village must perform a legendary pilgrimage around the world to awaken a goddess and regenerate the land. While this undoubtedly sounds familiar to RPG veterans, Symphonia manages to distinguish itself through solid and enjoyable gameplay.
Tales of Efficiency
By "enjoyable gameplay" I mean the battle system, which is a lot of fun. It's entirely in real-time, and extremely chaotic. Each of your four characters can be controlled by AI or a player (up to four). If you're solo, you'll probably want to set Lloyd, your main hero, to manual, and everyone else to AI. From there it's a matter of hitting the A button a lot to swing your swords and blending in special attacks with the B button to form many-hit combos. There's also a guard button, which greatly decreases the impact of enemy blows.
Dunno what's going on, but it looks fun!
The AI for your allies is not the sharpest, but you're given many options to tailor their battle strategies to your liking, right down to the ability to disallow the use of certain spells and techniques. This is important, for example, so that a certain character doesn't use a 100 TP-wasting summon spell in every minor little fight. Thankfully, you can also pause battles and issue specific commands at any time, so you never have to fruitlessly wait for, say, your healer to fix you up in mid-battle.
While there are certain tricks and techniques to learn, this is certainly not the deepest or most strategic battle system you'll ever see. It is, however, wonderfully fast and to the point. If you're the type that gets impatient during long, drawn-out battles, you'll love that many of Symphonia's fights take less than 30 seconds. Boss battles? Maybe two minutes, or three if it's a very tough one. In this and other ways, Symphonia doesn't waste time for pleasantries.