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The
Tales franchise has a long and venerable history, most of
which has passed us by for one reason or another. The series
started with Tales Of Phantasia way back in 1995, when the
Super Nintendo Entertainment System roamed the Earth. Tales Of
Phantasia was extremely impressive for its day, featuring full
Voice-Acting, a Theme-Song complete with lyrics and a fast-paced
Combat System that played like a Fighting game, but it failed to
make the journey to the western hemisphere; until now.
This
release of Tales Of Phantasia is significantly easier than
the Super Nintendo version, and shouldn’t present a whole lot of
difficulty for the average gamer. It is, however, a reasonably long
game, taking around 45 hours to complete. The game also has one or
two very involved Side-Quests, which may pad the completion time
out a bit, but the game’s habit of poor-prompting has the same
effect.
The
combat system used by most Tales games is known as the
Linear-Motion Battle System, which works like a little like a 2D
brawler with RPG conventions mixed-in. To explain; when combat
begins, the player is dropped into a 2D playing field with player
characters lined-up on one side and enemies on the other. The
player can advance and use Techniques, Magic, or other attacks to
string together combos, much like a Fighting game of old. The
system does a very good job of eliminating the idea of alternating
turns associated with Turn-Based Combat Systems, and feels very
free-form and active. The Combat System does play a little slow in
the early parts of the game, but it picks-up significantly as the
player collects more characters and more varied forms of attack.
The only real problem with the game is in a lack of control over
the A.I. of allies. Whereas other Tales games presented a
wealth of settings that allowed for a great deal of control, Tales
Of Phantasia has only a few. It never really becomes a major
issue, but it can be irritating to have allies wasting TP, or to
have to manually reset every A.I. Setting after every Boss Battle.
The
Linear-Motion Battle System routinely provides the main-draw of
this series, as the story presented in many Tales games have
been somewhat sub-standard. Unfortunately, this is one place Tales
Of Phantasia doesn’t break with tradition. The plot has a
very simple set-up involving the quest for revenge of one Cress
Albane, which in-time becomes an attempt to save the world, but it
tosses its characters around without any real direction and some
very cliche motivations. The characters themselves are reasonably
likeable, but the translation makes it very difficult to get a feel
for them. It also takes some liberties with the plot presented in
the original game, attempting to tie it in to Tales Of Symphonia,
but these are largely unsuccessful and, if anything, take away from
the original feel of the game. They also have the effect of making
it feel unfinished, as the game ends on a highly inconclusive and
cryptic note for those unfamiliar with the GameCube exclusive
release; Tales Of Symphonia.
As
for the translation itself, there are simply too many errors and
changes to have it feel like an acceptable adaptation. Certain
scenes have been altered to make the game more kid-friendly; such
as exchanging "sake" for "snack," but the
biggest problem in the translation is the homogenisation of the
characters. For most Tales games, the actual happenings in
the story are of secondary importance to the characters, and Tales
Of Phantasia is no different. However, the translation alters
or erases large parts of the characters personalities, to the point
where they cease to be unique. In the end, the translation kills
the story through a simple lack of interest in the characters.
This
Game Boy Advance iteration is actually the second remake Tales
Of Phantasia has seen, and its visual style combines aspects of
the Super Nintendo original and the PlayStation remake. It isn’t
completely unsuccessful, particularly considering the somewhat
lacking character design present in the original, but the end
result is a little fractured. For example, the field visuals are
extremely detailed, full of minor details such as grass blowing in
the  wind or ripples on the water, but the Menus are simple
white-on-blue text. The only real gameplay-affecting issue with the
visuals is that the contrast level can make it difficult to see
properly in some of the darker dungeons, but the disjointed visual
style is a bit of a black mark on the game, and could certainly
have been avoided.
The
problems with Tales Of Phantasia have a definite theme to
them. While the underlying design of each aspect of Tales Of
Phantasia is quite solid, they are executed with a lack of
technical excellence that plays havoc with the overall experience.
This is clear nowhere quite so-obviously as in the game’s audio,
in the music and Voice-Acting in particular. The Voice-Actors
themselves show a certain amount of talent - not spectacular, but
certainly honourable. However, static-filled audio combined with
the repetition of a limited number of clips makes the Voice-Acting
very hard to listen to, and very easy to turn-off. The music
suffers similarly, with very bad sound quality and poor instrument
emulation marring one of Motoi Sakuraba’s finest soundtracks.
Though
the game suffers a bit from its age, its real problems are
technical. Tales Of Phantasia has very bad sound quality, an
extremely poor translation, and a visual style that tries to squish
together the look of the original SNES and PlayStation remake with
mixed results. Though the underlying quality of the game is
undeniable, technical issues relegate Tales Of Phantasia to
being just another example of the strained relationship between
NAMCO and
North America
.
The
Tales series has always had a somewhat mixed relationship
with North America. Missed sequels, altered translations, and Theme Songs removed
time-and-time-again, have now bred a certain level of irritation
amongst the series' fan base. While receiving Tales Of Phantasia
after having been denied it for so long may go some ways towards
soothing this disappointment, the fact is that the Game Boy Advance
remake of Tales Of Phantasia simply isn’t a very good
version of the game. Though the overall design is quite good,
technical issues and a rough-ride through the translation process
make it difficult to enjoy, and in the end the game is just
outclassed by later, more technically proficient Tales
games. Tales Of Phantasia may be fun for the die-hard Tales
fans who have not yet had a chance to play it through imports or
other means, but, for other gamers, Tales Of Phantasia will
most likely not be worth the effort.
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