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.
-Insert Inspiring Quote-
