The Game Boy Advance is nearing its final years, but that doesn’t stop the little guy from delivering some great software before the final good-bye. Tales of Phantasia is one of those games, and while you may have heard the name before, this is technically not a remake, but rather a new entry in the series –- remember, we never got the game in the SNES years, so this is basically the first time the game will be seen on American shelves.

If you’re a videogame fan, you probably know that this is the first game of the Tales series, Namco’s biggest RPG franchise. Tales of Phantasia is very much a classic, and you will certainly see how it has influenced other games in the series like Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Legendia. Ironically, being too much of a classic is what stops it from achieving the true greatness it had back in the day.

Facts and Features:

• The rebirth of a classic that never made to America!
  
• Battle in real time: The Linear Motion Battle System puts the emphasis on action as players attack their enemies without the use of menus.
  
• New game events, dialogue sequences and other features enhance the adventure on this release.
  
• Players can crack open the Monster Dictionary to view the strengths and weaknesses of the enemies they meet in battle. Players will want to collect data on them all.
  
• Players use the innovative Cooking System to collect ingredients and recipes to brew up meals that restore their health and magic.
  
  

A Phantastic Quest
In Tales of Phantasia, we take the role of Cress Albane, a young boy that decides to travel with his best friend, only to find out that his life may never be the same when he returns. Naturally, he will embark on a journey to try and fix everything that has gone bad in his life, and that’s the start of a long and ultimately rewarding journey. Throughout the game, Cress will meet up with different characters, and everyone (surprisingly connected to the core storyline) will help him out in many different ways. I know, you are probably wondering why we haven’t seen a storyline as innovative as this one before, but thankfully, someone tried to be original! Seriously though, at first glance, Tales of Phantasia’s storyline may sound like every single RPG story you’ve read, but as a whole, the script is very interesting, and the character development is solid.

If you’ve played Tales of Symphonia, you will find that the combat system is not what you would expect from a typical RPG. Or let’s just say that if you’re used to play games like Final Fantasy, this will be quite a different type of battlefield. Whereas Final Fantasy made you take turns in order to “attack” your enemy, Tales of Phantasia gives you direct control of the character you’re using, and even helps you by automatically making your partners attack. Before you ask, no, you’re not limited to using Cress (though you will probably end up using him more than the other characters), and you can certainly use your friends, but most of the time, the rest of the party will be CPU controlled.

The battle system isn’t limited to just slashing your sword (or using magic spells), either. You can create combos that will be a killer aid in battle, and you can also mix up the attacks a little, just like you did in Tales of Symphonia. It’s refreshing to find such a dynamic battle system in the game, because gamers who are used to avoid RPGs because of the boring combat scenes will now have no excuse to try this one out.


We love the old school look! Yummy!

Yet even with all the bells and whistles that the combat system has, it has a major drawback, and that’s the fact that it becomes too repetitive after a while. Think about it, with an action focus, the customization and strategy part of the turn based battle system disappears, and all you are left with is with battles that –- while energetic –- will only increase in difficulty, but will generally have the same feel throughout the entire game.

So what do you get in the end? Too many battles. Yes, the exaggerated number of random encounters is just too annoying to ignore, and it is undeniably one of our main complaints about the game. Seriously, there was a point where we simply stopped playing the game, or just ran away from the battlefield because it was just too much. Again, we understand that this is old school RPG design, but balancing the combat system with the ratio of battle encounters is exactly what a remake should do to really craft a classic experience.