Tales of Symphonia Review

So, it’s about time to take a look at one of those games. The one that brings a hitherto unknown series to the spotlight. It also happens to be one of the few Gamecube RPGs. Strange thing, but for a system that had so few RPGs total, the percentage of really good games is amazingly high. Or maybe it’s not so surprising. After all, I guess marketing an RPG for the PS2 was easier, and so a lot of borderline cases snuck in based on the idea that at least someone would buy it on PS2. Someone like me. Well, enough rambling. Tales of Symphonia review begins now.

The story starts off in a peaceful village school, where our protagonist, Lloyd Irving, continues the grand tradition of brave-but-dumb main characters. His friend, Colette Brunel, is a young girl who has been Chosen to be the savior of the dying world of Sylvarant. To accomplish this she sets out on a journey to revive the elemental spirits and revolutionize, I mean regenerate, the world. About halfway through, you learn that another world exists, that of Tethe’alla, which has its own set of summon spirits. If you’ve played any other Tales games, this plot should be immediately familiar. And, indeed, the foreshadowing in this game makes it such that there really aren’t that many big surprises in the plot. O at least, the big surprises come when the plot element is first foreshadowed, and not when said plot twist actually occurs. For all that, it’s an interesting tale, with plenty of fairly sophisticated issues of prejudice, balance, and redemption mixing it up with the more lighthearted character dynamics.

Good characters have been important in previous Tales games, but Tales of Symphonia features some exceptional personalities. In addition to Lloyd, who is good but dumb, and Colette, who is almost painfully bland (but still somewhat sweet), there are seven other playable characters. Zelos Wilder appears on the Top Ten Cutest RPG Boys list. Sheena Fujibayashi is the game’s resident tsundere ninja, who offers more volatile emotional makeup than Colette, partially due to quite different backstories. And of course there’s tormented-by-his-past Regal Brayant, who pulls out the stops in pretty bad-ass ways. Really, going into the other characters would take up too much time, but it should suffice to say that they are all well-developed and likeable. Really, the latter is the most important thing. You get attached to the characters in Tales of Symphonia, because you can be privy to a number of short skits, which are mostly tangential to the story. These skits involve the characters talking to each other, and give you a good insight into the character’s personalities. Quite apart from the playable characters, many of the ultimate villains are believable and sympathetic. At some instances during the game, you might wonder if you are really fighting for the right side, since the reasons the villains give for their actions are quite compelling.

In a fairly noticeable change from previous games in the series, Tales of Symphonia does not feature any random battles. Instead, you can see enemies on the overworld map or in the dungeons, and avoiding battles is as easy as avoiding touching the enemy. Unfortunately for those people who find random battles annoying, the battles in Tales of Symphonia are actually quite fun. Like in previous installments of the series, you can control one character at a time, and issue orders to the others. The action this time takes place on a 3D stage, though you can only move in two directions: towards and away from your currently targeted enemy. It looks pretty cool, and somehow feels a bit different from a strictly 2D perspective. An added bonus is that it’s actually quite fun to play this game with friends, and because it’s on the Gamecube, you don’t need a rare piece of hardware to play with three other friends (unless you count friends as rare. Or hardware.)

Quite apart from battles, some significant puzzles crop up in this game, and for perhaps the first time, the sorcerer’s ring is properly utilized. In basically every dungeon, you change the function of the sorcerer’s ring from shooting fire to shrinking you, shooting sunlight, or something like shooting even more fire. Naturally, the puzzles related to these changes are complex, and if not overly difficult, at least strong enough to keep your attention.

I may have said that Chrono Trigger invented replay value, but as far as I’m concerned, Tales of Symphonia perfected it. Not only does it have multiple endings, based on which character Lloyd has the closest relationship with, but there’s also a new game plus feature, where your grade accumulated over the course of the game can be spent on carrying various features over into a new game. Each character has two different skill trees, which you can only explore one of each playthrough. There are alternate costumes for all of the characters, and you can’t even come close to getting all of them during one game. The titles, allow you to customize what ability scores characters gain when they level up, which allows you to customize how you play each character in a multitude of ways. You want to make Genis, the squishy mage, into a close combat monster? Well, it’s tough, but you can do it. There are even multiple difficulty settings, which can give you quite a challenge on settings higher than normal. Basically, this game is “maybe not the only game you’ll ever need, but not too far off.”

Obviously, a scale is pointless if you never have an example of both the end-points. I don’t even bother having values less than five, because as far as I’m concerned, no RPG is ever gonna be worse than a mediocre game in the overall scheme of things (oh, the hubris). On the other hand, I can’t ignore problems with an otherwise perfect game. Tales of Symphonia is excellent, and pretty much as close to the perfect game as I’ve played, but I can still imagine that it might be better. It clocks in at 9.9 out of 10. The story, while quite good, is a little heavy-handed with the foreshadowing, and isn’t hugely original. But it’s enjoyable, so that’s not the main issue. The biggest gripe I have with the game is that none of the “minigames” are even remotely fun. Button pressing minigames all, and not even particularly sophisticated ones. Basically, if there were even one solid minigame that I would want to play more than once, I might be able to assign that perfect score.

Fun Fact: In Japan, they released a PS2 version of this game. It had a few extra costumes for characters, but was mostly the same. But, of course, they never decided to bring this game stateside.

Quick Tip: If you want to end up with anyone besides Colette at the end, focus all you attention on the one character you choose. Colette’s starting affection is very high, and basically anything you do will increase it.

If you liked this game, you might want to try some of these games. Tales of Destiny II and/or Tales of the Abyss are very good, and have many significant similarities with Tales of Symphonia. Wild Arms 3, for some reason, has a similar feel, and has a comparable amount of optional material to complete. Star Ocean: The Second Story was made by many people who had worked on the Tales series, and it shows in the relationship systems, the Action RPG battles, and to some small degree in the storylines.