yayapex2's Full Review: Tales of Symphonia for GameCube
It was a little over a year ago when three of my friends and I decided to host a HALO tournament at our local arcade. I paid $10 to enter for both the HALO and HALO 2 tournaments, and out of the two, my team won the HALO tournament. The prize ended up being $20 in cash money which I used to buy Tales of Symphonia from the Kmart next door to the arcade. It was all worth it.
“My Pet Cat Symphonia’s Tail!”
The beginning of this game takes place in a world called Sylvarant. A group of people known as the Desians are attacking villages and capturing humans to torture them. There is also folklore that a “Chosen” will arise and revive the world of Sylvarant. Lloyd Irving’s childhood friend Colette is the “Chosen.” After Lloyd learns that Colette must sacrifice her life for the sake of replenishing the word with mana, he feels that he needs to find a way to save her life as well as the their world.
One of the things that really get the player involved in the story are the “skits.” As you’re walking around in a town or the world map, two or more of the characters will start conversing with one another. I remember one time when the main character commented on another character’s cooking skills saying, “That food was excellent, what’s your secret?” The character that was cooking relied back saying, “Yeah, I use my feet to get that flavor.” These “skits” are great to get a better understanding of the story and funny too. You’re also not obligated to read all these skits but I chose to see all the ones that were available. The story as a whole was engaging and I like the whole idea of these skits too.
“To Fight, Or Not To Fight? That Is The Question…”
Battling is usually what makes or breaks a game and I have to say that I love it. One thing that I can’t stand is random battles. You’ll take a couple of steps, the screen will spin, and you’re in a battle. However, Tales of Symphonia isn’t like that, you can see the enemy walking around in a dungeon or the world map, and if you’re not in the mood to fight, run past them. Some of these monsters are standing still, walking around aimlessly, or charge straight at you from behind a tree. This is one the contributing factors that determines whether or not I get sick of an RPG. I can’t stand being forced into a battle with an opponent that I can’t see.
The battles are all in real time which makes impatient people like me happy. When I started playing this game, I though that this game was just going to be nothing more than a button masher. I would see the enemy and when I pressed “A,” the fighter would walk up to the monster and slash every time I pressed the button. When you approach the enemy there is a line that you have to walk to get to that monster. If you wanted to, you couldn’t dodge to the right or to the left, but it didn’t bother me. But as the game progressed, I started using the directional buttons to allow me to do a variety of moves. There are also many combos that you can do to increase the damage you do by using techniques and magic. The best part of these battles is that they are short. Most are about ten to fifteen seconds long while boss battles are literally minutes (OMG!). The loading for a battle is very quick too.
Your party consists of four characters that will battle at one time. You can control only one character at a time while the others are using AI. You can actually set up the other party members to use strategies. For example, I could set up a character to stay out of close combat and cast magic to damage the enemies from afar or to heal allies in need. I could also have people with stronger melee attacks to constantly rush and start slashing the enemies like crazy. There wasn’t much depth to this strategy setup but it was enough to get the job done. If you wanted to, you could even choose spells that you don’t want them to ever use and keep the effective ones.
There’s a great sense of customization in this game. Like any other RPG, you can equip new shields, swords, axes, armor, and bracelets just to name a few. Every time you get a newer weapon it would increase a characters attack power; new armor would increase defense. Each character also has exspheres that can hold up to four gems that have a variety of effects. Some will allow you to do longer combos, increase your health, and increase your attack or defense, and many other things. One character even had the effect that every female person he spoke to would give him an item or money. Each character also has a title that can increase or decrease some attributes. For example, being a brawler or a master comboist would increase attack but maybe lower defense to compensate. The customization was deep enough to make me spend hours trying out combinations.
When you’re not kicking Desian butt, you can take some time to explore. There are many towns, villages, and ports where you can stock up on items and talk to people. There are also dungeons that must be explored to progress through the game. These dungeons are all different because the puzzles are always changed. One dungeon may need you to ignite some torches to open a gate, while other one will make you freeze water to make an ice cube to walk over a gap. These puzzles are used just to slow you down make the game a little more interesting. They were actually easy too and I never needed to go to gamefaqs.com for assistance. You can even open chests. The camera angles are also fixed so sometimes there may be a chest behind a tree where it’s out of site. You can travel to these places by walking, sailing or flying on the world map. The only thing you can do on the world map is fight enemies, find chests and enter cities and dungeons.
“Are Those Real?”
I have a history of not liking cel-shaded art; I usually don’t find it interesting. However, Tales of Symphonia wasn’t so distasteful as far as the graphics are concerned; I actually liked it. This game is basically anime styled and very colorful. I never played another game that looked anything like it mainly because I usually play realistic-looking shooters. When you walk through the towns you can see some nice detail. You can see individual stones in the walkways, big light stands, and people just walking around. Even though the battles were short, I saw more action in these battles than I did in any other RPG. All I ever saw was lightning and fire spells being cast while other characters were slashing their swords really fast. None of the battles ever looked the same; it was just chaos. Weapons would also change there appearance if you equipped new ones. I remember having a fire base sword that would flare every time it was swung. There are also very few anime cutsecnes that look excellent. It’s a shame that there were very few of them.
“Listen to That Chaos!”
Tales of Symphonia has a soundtrack that never got sickening, even though they use the same battle. You also have to take into account that the battles weren’t long enough to get sickening. You already get the adrenaline as soon as the song begins. Almost every area in the game has its own unique song or tune. For example, you may go into a cave and hear eerie music and then go into a town and hear festive music. The music always fits the setting which is important. The sound effects are fine, but aren’t anything spectacular. Everything you should hear will be heard like foot steps and sword clashing. There are also some cutscenes where the characters will speak and the acting is decent. At least the voices match the personalities of the characters.
“Sergio, Is It Really As Good as You Say It Is?”
I’m just going to tell you straight out… yes. As I have said countless times, I am very impatient when it comes to playing games especially RPGs. I like fast battles, being able to avoid battles if I want to, and interesting stories. The game is also very simple that my younger brother can beat it and he’s twelve years old.
Random Information:
Only On GameCube
Player(s): 1 - 4
Genre: Role-Playing
Release Date: Jul 13, 2004
Developed By: Namco
Published By: Namco
Memory Card: 3 Blocks
Disc(s): 2
T for Teen (13yrs)
Fierce, action-packed battle system with hundreds of special attacks, spells, and combos Fully customizable character growth system -- change your fig...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.