Unlike Radiata Stories in which you could move anywhere you pleased in the battle map, Symphonia forces you to move in a 2-D plane even though the battle fields themselves are rendered in full 3-D. It is here where my main gripe with the battle engine arises. But there is an option that allows the player to control any character of their liking), can slash and do tech attacks at the touch of a button he can also block (an amazingly un-useful feature which I never used), and run back and forward in a straight line in the battle field. Tales of Symphonia features a fully fledged action RPG engine, which means you don’t wait for turns and neither do the bosses, Lloyd (the main character which I controlled 99 percent of the time, except in rare instances in which the party was split into two. The battle system is as easy to learn as RPG battle systems can get.
I was able to see the credits in 39 easy hours and I only died once (it didn’t happen in the last boss, I lost the battle at the beginning of the game in one of the field battles, where I ventured too far and was overwhelmed). These features are there for the sake of being there, but nothing truly special is gained from them. Both the customization shops and the cooking skill feature are more side distractions than anything else. There are customization shops, and a rare cooking skill. Besides leveling up Symphonia stays true to the genre by making shops the next necessary stop in order to fully maximize the character’s stats. In Symphonia you simply level up by fighting battles, this is the way to earn battle Tech skills, which are preset to button combinations in the controller in order to unleash powerful attacks. Unlike Star Ocean 3 – which tests the boundaries of hardcore, because of its complex battle and item making systems -Tales of Symphonia keeps things simple. One of those reasons is the easy to pick up gameplay. Not only that, but I would say that it is even money with Star Ocean 3 in terms of quality and depending on how long you have been playing RPGs, you might actually see Symphonia as the superior game of the two for a few reasons. However, used Gamecubes are a dime a dozen these days, and Tales of Symphonia is a far better (and bigger) game than Radiata Stories.
Unfortunately, the game plays too much like Radiata Stories and Star Ocean 3 for PS2 owners to venture into GameCube waters. While this might sound bad for a system that only has two or three good traditional RPGs, in close inspection you will see that the reason this game is not the best in the system is because it has the misfortune of competing with Skies of Arcadia.
The long running Tales series carries a lot of prestige with it, so it is my pleasure to say that Tales of Symphonia does not disappoint and lives up to the reputation of quality that the series has been known for.īut is it the best RPG on the ‘Cube? Is it worth buying a ‘Cube if only to play this game? The answers to those questions are no, and not necessarily. Namco’s 2003 Tales of Symphonia is along with Sega’s Skies of Arcadia, the only J-RPG star in the dry RPG dessert that it is the Game Cube’s landscape.