Jeremy Gallen's Game Reviews

Critical Race Tales

Namco's Tales series began with Tales of Phantasia, which initially didn't see an English release, with American gamers instead getting Destiny as their first taste of the franchise. Since then, however, it was always a crapshoot about whether future entries of the series would be translated, with Namco, for some dumb illogical reason, adamantly refusing to allow other companies localize those entries destined to remain in Japan. However, the series would grow in popularity, with Tales of Symphonia on the Nintendo GameCube somewhat upping the franchise's following, and said entry receiving a rerelease as Tales of Symphonia Remastered. I remember the original being one of the best titles I played on the GameCube (and one of the chief reasons I purchased the system), but does it still hold up today?

Symphonia begins in the world of Sylvarant in decline due to the depletion of mana, essential to life on the planet; cue anyone who's played tons of prior RPGs with similar stories to instantly roll their eyes and lose interest, and I don't blame them at all. Anyhow, one day in the village of Iselia, Raine the professor is teaching a class consisting of her younger brother Genis, Lloyd, and Colette backstory about a war four millennia prior involving a sinister race known as the Desians whom the goddess Martel sealed away. They reemerge due to the weakening world, with humanity putting faith in the prophesized Chosen to bring balance to the Force revive the world and seal back away the moronically-named baddies.

Raine should have her teaching certification revoked.

There are a handful of good story beats, but the derivation of the introductory elements is a telltale indicator of the dismal disposition of the narrative, which filches elements from other RPGs such as Secret of Mana (including the protagonist being banished from his village due to bringing misfortune upon it), Lunar: The Silver Star and its neverending remakes and rereleases, Final Fantasy X, and even the Tales series itself, especially Phantasia (to which Phantasia is a distant prequel) and Eternia. The writers further thought it would be cute to steal twists from various films like the Star Wars franchise, Soylent Green, Psycho, The Hidden Fortress, and so on. Furthermore, who can take seriously the story of a video game that features a glaring misuse of "whom" in its opening cutscene?

Sadly, this isn't a glaring oversight in an otherwise-flawless translation; to call the localization and writing "piss-poor" would be beyond a gross insult to urine. The game is full of terrible lines like, "Whoa, that light is really coming out of the temple!", "Yay! Cleaning! Cleaning!", "Where is that Pete hiding?", and "Ow, my precious foot!", which not even the most inebriated human, child or adult, would ever say naturally. As well, Symphonia also maddeningly uses OK instead of "okay," laughter and screams are spelled out, and there's an idiot translator out there who still thinks people say "Yahoo!", which no one has ever done commonly for well over half a century.

Adding to this are tons of terrible names like the aforementioned Desians (which sounds too much like "designs"), Genis, Forcystus, Vharley, Derris-Kharlan, Pastor Marche, Governor-General Dorr, and most idiotically, "human ranch." You can't make this crap up; virtually any other name for them, like maybe, I don't know, "internment camp," would have sounded far more imposing and less dorky. Children watching Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney are treated to way better writing on most days; would it freaking kill to give a T-rated RPG's dialogue more credibility than that in a children's cartoon? There are maybe a handful of good lines, but otherwise, words alone cannot describe how horrible the localization is overall.

The idiot translator who came up with the term "human ranch" deserves a Lifetime Darwin Award for coming up with the dumbest name for a concentration camp ever.

That aside, the signature Tales gameplay is actually more than passable. Symphonia was the first entry of the series to feature visible encounters on the overworld and in dungeons, and contacting them, of course, commences combat. The game utilizes the Multi-Line Linear Motion Battle System, where the player's active party of four characters squares off against the enemy on the battlefield, and the action is not relegated to just a single line akin to prior Tales titles. However, the player's characters still have strictly linear motion, while the enemies can move freely, and the player-controlled character (AI controlling the others) can target one of these foes, in which case their linear motion range is shifted in the direction of that particular adversary.

As in prior series entries, the action of battle mercifully halts when the player decides to change their current target, something other real-time RPGs could take a hint from (*cough* Zelda and Kingdom Hearts *cough*). Offense-based characters like protagonist Lloyd can chain together attack combos against enemies, further adding skills that themselves can be linked, racking up huge combinations of hits that can couple with skills the AI-controlled characters can toss in. This primarily determines the Grade rewarded at the end of combat, used in towns to purchase EX Gems of different levels and materials used to synthesize equipment.

The player can use EX Gems on characters, with each having four slots, to grant them different kinds of abilities like increased stats, additional attacks for combos, or occasional increased magic damage, among others, with potential compound skills if certain individual skills are combined. There are four different levels of EX Gems, but unfortunately, overwriting one of a character's current EX Gems destroys it and doesn't reward it back, providing great potential for players to waste the Grade they spend to acquire them in towns. Fortunately, there are ample free EX Gems found in chests and from major battles throughout the game.

A Limited Ray is definitely better than a ray going way too out of control.

Winning battles naturally nets all characters who are still alive, alongside those not in the active party, experience for occasional leveling, alongside money to spend in shops. Characters will occasionally new skills, although they aren't instantly available and need to be "unlocked" through use of lower-level skills, many of which the game menus indicate. However, Symphonia isn't 100% crystal-clear about the requirements for unlocking these skills unlike other Tales titles like Phantasia and Legendia, and there were a few cases in which I had no idea how the hell to unlock certain ally skills, which were in my experience randomly unlocked by the battle AI.

Also after battle, all characters recover a certain percentage of their TP, which slightly lessens the need to constantly recover through the use of Gels. Players can further cook dishes using recipes obtained from the Wonder Chef in towns using various ingredients; outside battle, they can assign which character is to use it, with each having a maximum star rating that varies among characters. Repeated use following victories gradually increases a character's proficiency with the respective recipe, which can have various effects like curing status ailments and recovering differing amounts of HP and TP.

The player can have any of their characters use items in combat, which necessitates they wait a few seconds before they can use another, adding some semblance of strategy to Symphonia. As the party attacks the enemy, they build up a gauge that, when full, allows them to execute a Unison Attack where the player has some time, if the lead character strikes the enemy, that they can execute their skills on the targeted adversary. Sometimes, a combination ability can follow up the Unison Attack for more damage. This system works decently, although there were numerous times where I wasted it and had to recharge the gauge from the start.

How the hell can a bone not be a bone?

The battle system is mostly fun to the point where I gladly and deliberately encountered most visible enemies in dungeons and on the overworld, although there are other issues alongside those I mentioned. For instance, there are no indicators of spell charge times for the player's characters, alongside issues with the AI, like characters not getting the hell away from the enemy when low on health. The multi-line disposition of combat also frequently runs the risk of the player-controlled character constantly going off-center when performing attack and skill combos that can easily muck them up. Otherwise, Symphonia's game mechanics are a blast.

One cannot say the same, however, of the gameplay without battle, and as with the writing, the term "piss-poor" would be insulting to pee in this aspect as well. Symphonia mercifully sports skippable text during most cutscenes, and the main menu interface isn't too-too bad, with good quality-of-life perks like optimal-equipment when deciding what stronger gear to put on characters. As with other series entries, moreover, the player can use the overworld map accessed in the menus to see which shops in which cities sell which items. There are also various plot points where players can "quick jump" to other places to avoid tons of backtracking.

Most dungeons utilize puzzles involving the Sorcerer's Ring, which has variant effects depending upon the dungeon. While some of these puzzles are decent, there are many others that are incredibly frustrating and needlessly spoil the fun. Regardless, the dungeon-trekking experience was for me overwhelmingly negative, and I had to spend endlessly hours trying to hoof it through even what would theoretically be the simplest ones, and the total absence of maps doesn't help at all. There are also numerous puzzles and points that don't involve the Sorcerer's Ring that were downright terrible and endlessly drove me to reference the internet.

To the developers who include these stupid sliding puzzles in their games, screw you.

Symphonia also lacks tons of basic quality-of-life features that the remaster could have easily resolved, such as the lack of autosaving and a suspend save, with the player solely needing to rely on hard saves on the overworld and at fixed save points in dungeons. Most dungeons have save points that you need to "unlock" using Memory Gems acquired from certain enemy parties, but alongside entrances and exits, these are often very poorly indicated and hard to see, and I frequently found myself facing bosses without any warning. Cutscenes are also unskippable, making possible moments where you have to scroll through truckloads of dialogue again and again if bosses kill you.

Adding insult to injury is that the franchise's staple skits have totally-unskippable text, forcing players to sit through every line (voiced in the Japanese dub players can select, but left undubbed in English due to the original's localizers cutting corners and the remaster team not bothering at all to add voices), with the only alternative being to cut them short entirely. The game is also frequently as clear as the muddy Mississippi about how to advance the main storyline, and the long load times when transitioning between areas is often noticeable. In the end, Symphonia is one hell of a user-unfriendly game.

However, the soundtrack, chiefly composed by Motoi Sakuraba, is the other major high point of the game alongside combat, with tons of great melodies, each character having their own musical motif and a nice variety of town tracks. Granted, there is similarity to Sakuraba's other compositions and a few bad themes. The voice acting is a mixed bag; while the voices, English and Japanese, fit the characters, the bad writing frequently makes the former sound awkward, and the Japanese convention of characters shouting the names of their commands rarely, if ever, sounds good in English. The Japanese voicework has its kinks as well, mainly with the seiyū butchering English words for skills, and I never really understood why weeaboos think that sounds remotely good. Nonetheless, the sound helps Symphonia more than hurts.

Though in Symphonia's defense...

In contrast, while the visuals look superficially pretty, the term "polished turd" still applies. The rare anime cutscenes are good, the cel-shaded characters look nice, and the environments are nice and colorful, but the remaster team didn't put a whole lot of effort into improving the flaws of the original's visual presentation. For instance, all the characters look happy all the time even when angry or sad, and during an overwhelming majority of cutscenes make exactly the same damn gestures over and over when talking. Symphonia also lazily uses emotion bubbles, which even the original Final Fantasy X, released a few years before, didn't do. The skits further look asinine, with the character portrait panels bouncing around, swinging back and forth, and growing larger or smaller, accounting for terrible supplemental storytelling. In the end, the remastery team could have put far more effort into making the game appear more modern.

Finally, one could theoretically finish Symphonia in as little as forty hours, though it took me somewhere over sixty, and this was even with skipping the skits. There is potential lasting appeal in the form of a New Game+, a few plot variations, Trophies, different difficulty levels, tons of stuff to do, collecting things, finding and mastering recipes, grinding for EX Gems, and whatnot, but things such as the unskippable cutscenes, the terrible plot, the core game being too long, and the need to reference the internet to find absolutely everything, can really deter mainstream gamers from investing extra time into the game.

In summation, Tales of Symphonia Remastered really made me realize that the original, which I considered to be probably the best title on the GameCube, wasn't actually all that great, since the remaster failed to address the myriad issues of the original like the terrible narrative and writing, the endless degree of user-unfriendliness, the lazy visuals, and overall putting quantity over quality. However, it does have its redeeming aspects such as the fun battle system, the great soundtrack, and the crapload of extra content that I'll admit I mildly indulged in. Even so, it's still one of the most inaccessible series entries to date, and there are far better RPGs within and without the franchise.

This review is based on a playthrough of the physical PlayStation 4 version.