The Shrine

Well, I am putting down FF4A (as my main title) for a while since I am at the end and I don't feel like finishing the new areas and final dungeon quite yet. So I decided to start playing Tales of Phantasia. I must say, the game is tons of fun, it's just nice being able to run into battle and kick some ass yourself. This series has always been given lower than deserved reviews, so when looking for an opinion on the series, play the game yourself; it obviously won't be for everyone, I personally love it. Easily the most critically accepted title in the series was Tales of Symphonia, but the Tales of Destiny titles are also just as good. It might be that I just have a unique taste for the games, but I wouldn't exclude the idea that if it said Square/Enix on the box the North American reviewers would be loving the series.

After playing Tales of Phantasia for an hour more strait, I must say that I am in love with the title. Especially playing it on handheld. I am thinking I'll be playing this one right through from start to finish before I get back to FF4A or get moving on Riviera. I'll have more thoughts once I hit the 8 hour mark.

Alot of reviewers hinted that the ROM translation was actually better then this one and more faithful to the Japanese original, but who knows, hehe.

Eric wrote:Alot of reviewers hinted that the ROM translation was actually better then this one and more faithful to the Japanese original, but who knows, hehe.

I have no idea on the translation really, I honestly haven't really noticed a difference except Cless is now Cress. Translation aside, the gameplay is where, by far, the most improvement was made. Namco addressed the complaints I had in the original game (similar to what was done with FF4A by Square). Mainly the painfully high encounter rate (which has been reduced by A TON) and the useless battle AI (the characters used to run back and forth into the enemies and essentially kill themselves). The fact that the AI characters do not try to kill themselves every battle is a real treat; the AI quality is up to date with the more recent games. Also, the AI control methods are up to date with the latest Tales games. Graphically, the game is no longer pixelly, it has been smoothed out, overall though it's a very slight improvement.

The main complaint that reviewers seemed to have with the game was that it lacked much improvement over the original and had an old school feel to it. What I don't understand is how they could have could have missed the very obvious upgrades to the battle system which is a HUGE deal in my opinion. I also don't know why they critisize this game for having "too much of an old school feel to it" and then praise FF4A for the exact same thing! Just one reason that leads me to conclude that reviewers are biased towards Square/Enix label. Given just a Square label, any Tales game would receive 9.5+ (as opposed to the lower scores they receive). Another thing is that reviewers seem to score Tales of Phantasia significantly lower on graphics than Final Fantasy 4 Advance, when clearly Tales of Phantasia is WAY ahead of it; FF4A look similar to the original, so it scores very high, but since Tales of Phantasia looks similar to the original and is therefore not up to par with most GBA RPGs, so it scores low (even though FF4A is quite a bit below than even Tales of Phantasia). These are just a few reasons why I say DO NOT trust the word of anyone except yourself on this series, particularly this game.

Anyways, I am wondering if Namco will ever release their GBA "Tales of the World" series over here as well? They have three games in it so far.

Some DS news: Tales of the Tempest will be the first game in the series to have online multi-player co-op, it will support 2-4 players.

Also, the DS is doing quite well in Japan (a large part in thanks to the DS Lite release); it has sold more than all other systems combined this year. I think it is a very safe bet to assume that a lot more games will be coming to the system. Tales of the Tempest looks like it's going to be a big one.

Eric wrote:Alot of reviewers hinted that the ROM translation was actually better then this one and more faithful to the Japanese original, but who knows, hehe.

Actually, I have some interesting information on this one (according to a Japanese friend of mine who loves the series; which is consistent to a lot of messageboard posts on the topic). The fan translated version (which reviewers have been comparing it to) is actually not very true to the Japanese version. The fan version takes a lot of liberties and exagerates a lot of things. The official translation is actually fairly spot-on with the Japanese one.

After playing for 8 hours, if I were to attatch a score to it, it would be..... Forget what it would be, scores seem relatively misleading for games... If I were to say something more meaningful about it, I would say that it is one of the most fun games I have played from the SNES era. I am having a lot of fun with it. I would rank it in the area of Lufia 2, which is a game I really liked. When I finish it, I'll say more. This game gives me a craving to play Illusion of Gaia or Terranigma.

Hey, good news on this version of the game. Dhaos's castle is actually beatable, and there appears to be a lot more to the game after this section =)

I still have some stuff left to do. Usually I don't do extras, but the extras in this game have a lot of little entertaining segments.

Overall the game is surprisingly good, the puzzles are all very well done, they are moderately difficult, there were a few that stumped me, but never for long. Dungeon design is excellent, among the very best on SNES (up there with Lufia 2). Lots of fun.

A lot of people critisize the story of Tale of Phantasia, but I felt the story was one of the better ones on this generation of systems. The GBA one is slightly different from the fan version. Though it should be noted, that many of the critics are incorrect when they say that the fan translation is more true to the Japanese version; it is actually the other way around, the fan translation takes liberties on the dialogue, whereas the GBA version is fairly direct. Either way, I didn't even find the differences noticeable, but it has been some time since I played the SNES version.

The most major complaint was how they changed the name of Cless Alvane to Cress Albane and Tornix became Trinicus, and how other names were changed; as I wrote before to those reviewers, this is just stupid, not only is this a very trivial feature to complain about, but it is obvious that the fan translation had it wrong; it would be like complaining if a remade version of FFT, corrected the original translation errors, including Orlandu's and Wigraf's names (Orlando and Wiglaf are what they should be).

In the GBA version, you can chain combos and attacks together, and there seem to be a lot more moves available. Also, Suzu, the Ninja Girl, is actually a playable character now, making for a total of six of them. I find Suzu is also quite an asset to have in battle. The AI has also been improved considerably, and the encounter rate and battle difficulty as well; difficulty probably dropped due to better AI (and it was not the kind of didifficulty that was good before, it was the irritating annoying kind, due to faults in the AI).

All in all, the game took me 38 hours to finish, though I still have a lot of extras left to get. This is the longest or second longest RPG available on SNES, that I have yet played. The only exception may be Lufia 2 which may have taken me over 40: I think I recall about 44 hours.

The towns in this game are quite excellent, nice and atmospheric some of them. My favourite town is Arlee, the town of Darkness (hey, the town of Darkness, Treno, was my favourite by far in FF9 as well =P). The towns are among the best in the game. It is also a game where I found it entertaining to go around and talk to everyone. So overall, locations are quite excellent. The locations, I like, as much as almost any game from the SNES era, I would say that only a handful top it: Earthbound, Terranigma, FF3, and Chrono Trigger (possibly Mario RPG as well; it would be a very close battle).

The characters and story are not quite the level of Chrono Trigger, but they are above Lufia 2 and most other SNES RPGs.

Overall, I quite liked it. If you are a fan of action RPGs then you might like this one. I quite enjoyed it, and I'll miss it when I am done completely.

Terranigma on GBA would be sex.

Eric wrote:Terranigma on GBA would be sex.

I have been saying that for years =)

Eric wrote:Terranigma on GBA would be sex.

Really? I always thought it would be an entertaining, old-school RPG :-)

Zeus wrote:

Eric wrote:Terranigma on GBA would be sex.

Really? I always thought it would be an entertaining, old-school RPG :-)

No dude, it would be sex.

Eric wrote:

Zeus wrote:

Eric wrote:Terranigma on GBA would be sex.

Really? I always thought it would be an entertaining, old-school RPG :-)

No dude, it would be sex.

Damned sex-ed teachers! Making me believe all this time it was about the penis entering the cleft!

Wow, if all it was is simply putting a video game into a video game system, then aren't we all nymphos? :-)

Zeus wrote:

Eric wrote:

Zeus wrote: Really? I always thought it would be an entertaining, old-school RPG :-)

No dude, it would be sex.

Damned sex-ed teachers! Making me believe all this time it was about the penis entering the cleft!

Wow, if all it was is simply putting a video game into a video game system, then aren't we all nymphos? :-)

Now we're on the same page.