Tales of Symphonia Game Review
Hi everyone. My name’s Aori, and I’ll be one of the new guys taking care of some other parts of this blog; namely video game reviews. Mostly because that’s what I do all day; I play video games. Don’t expect the usual western style video games, such as Call of Duty, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, or others. I mostly play on Nintendo consoles, so those are the games I will be focusing on, although I may play the others. First up is a game that’s nearly ten years old now, but is more relevant than ever due to its re-release this February. It also happens to be one my all-time favorites; Tales of Symphonia. Tales of Symphonia was originally released on the Nintendo Gamecube in 2003. It was one of the first Tales games to have an English release, and is considered by many to be one of the best Tales games ever made. This game is great, to me. It has mostly likeable characters, with an exciting plot that ends up looking more and more like a Quartic function at times and an endless sphere at others, wrapped in action-based battles that work fluidly and really, really well. The general plot is easy enough to get. You have the “Chosen”, who’s destined to seal away the Desians (the bad guys) and keep things from blowing up. Your job, is to protect the Chosen as she travels across the world. Plot twists abound as the game deconstructs what it means to really be a “Chosen” one.
I will try to avoid any plot spoilers, but this is a very long game. The back of the box boasts an impressive 80 hours of gameplay, which isn’t wrong. You just have to search for the content and gameplay sometimes.
Which leads to my biggest ire with this game. This game is long, exceedingly so. At certain points it seems like another plot point suddenly popped up as filler and did nothing for the actual main plot, and just seems to drag it out. That isn’t necessarily true, of course, but when you’re sitting at the 28 hour mark, having a member of your party getting captured, again, it certainly feels like it! The music in this game is also good. There are a few places when the music seems out of place, but then continues on to be amazing. Sadly, one of the most awesome themes in the game, its main theme, only plays at one point in the game. During a cutscene. Granted, the scene is great, and the music only makes it better, but it seems like a waste to have an extraordinary song only get one scene. The battle music, regardless of where you are, also works very well.
Which is good, because you will be doing a lot of battling. This is a JRPG, and grinding is par for the course, but this game is a bit more skill-oriented than most. The battles are done in real-time, along a 2D plane. However, the game automatically switches which 2D plane you’re on in order to fight the enemy you’re targeting. It’s a system that works well, but is difficult to explain.
Now, I really love this game. It’s one of my absolute favorites, and I’ve played it too many times to count. However, there are a couple of lackluster areas, such as the puzzle and level design of some of the areas. Some of them seem a bit too arbitrary, and many of them are ridiculously easy even the first time through, when you don’t know what you’re doing, with the exception of one puzzle (which even I give up and just look up a guide for that one. I solved it once correctly, it only pops up once, and for any of you that played this game you know exactly which one I’m talking about.). The character design for this game is also pretty good, although the out of battle animations could use a bit of work. The characters for the most part are likeable when supposed to, and you never really see certain things coming until it’s right about to happen. That said, this game also has one of the things I love in games; an antagonist that makes sense in why he did what he did, all while being as crazy as necessary for it to work.
Needless to say, it didn’t work. But that’s because his motives, as good as they were, put him at odds with the protagonist. Neither of them are wrong in their actions, and I think it’s that point that really puts into it how solid the story for this game is. When a game with as many plot twists as this as that solid of an antagonist, you know the designers put a lot of thinking into it.
There are so many memorable points in this game, it’s kind of scary. Whether it’s the beginning of the game, with the voice-over of one of the more awesome characters explaining the base plot, or the main character (Lloyd, the one in red to the left) getting hit in the head by an eraser thrown by his schoolteacher. Or Colette (the blonde one) running into a wall and proceeding to go right through.
This is a game that will last with you. Even if you don’t enjoy it, you will always remember it, for better or for worse. There are few subtleties in this game, and few choices, but the choices you do make will always make a meaningful impact on the endgame, even so much as deciding who dies and lives. Granted though, the sequel did kind of screw with that a bit. But that’s for another time.
9/10
