PixyJunket

My prediction for Best Game of 2004 (2nd Best if Metroid Prime 2 is released).

From Magic Box:
Namco announced the release date of Tales of Symphonia for GameCube in US, the game will be out on June 30, 2004.

I'll dig up some more info eventually.

Superboy

I never liked the story in Tales games. The quasi-real-time-part-turn-based battle system ruled though.

Tigger

I for one am completely excited about this title. Tales of Destiny was one of the most underated RPG's ever. Just sucks it got delayed even further. I remember this was slated for March.
Amazing Music and love the Japanese VO during Battle.

PixyJunket

True.. oh so very true. I should have Tales of Destiny 2 in about a week.. the TRUE sequel to Tales of Destiny, not Tales of Eternia renamed (US version of ToDII). Main chracter is Stahn and Rutee's son!

I'm just glad they are going to release it here.. already 2 games in the series have been skipped and will never see light here. Tales of Phantasia has been released on 3 systems in Japan and Namco does not release any of them here.. newest version in Japan for Gameboy Advance, and 2D RPGs are so popular on the GBA here. But instead we will get Dead to Rights 2 and and more Spawn games from namco US.

Symphonia I have heard is VERY awesome.. I was hesitant that the battles are on a 3D field now, but I've heard it allows you so much more control over everything and still retains the great action of the battles from the previous 4 games.

Outlaw

I was going to make a thread on this game but you beat me to it . I love the Tales series, and this a game looks awesome. It also got really good reviews in Japan. I've watched some of the movies and the animation and music is very nice. And the battle system looks like its going to rock again, seems they did a good job in the translation to 3D. Its my most anticipated RPG of 2004.

PixyJunket

Outlaw, have you played Phantasia? SFC or PS1 version?

I'll let you know how Tales of Destiny 2 is when I get it.. or when I'm able to play it.. I'll probably have it before I'm able to play it. I have some videos of people doing 150-200 hit combos. Plus, it has EASILY the best 2D graphics I have ever seen.

Outlaw

I played the SFC version of Tales of Phantasia, did they release it for PSOne too? But back then I couldn't really understand a whole lot of it, especially the kanji. In the SFC version they fit an entire vocal song on that cartridge, with space to spare for voices during battle amazingly. But I liked Tales of Destiny a bit better.

trigun

Is Namco killing themselves by developing these games for the GameCube? Symphonia only sold about half of what they targeted, and Baiten Kaitos has only sold 80,000 copies. Both were expected to sell 500,000 copies.

PixyJunket

Man!! If you're a fan you MUST play the PS1 version of Phantasia. It's probably one of the best remakes I've ever played of a game. The battles are SO much more improved, and are based on ToD system. Chester has all kinds of new bow & arrow magic, and Suzu the ninja girl joins your team as a new character.

I know what you mean about kanji.. I need to take a serious crash course on that sometime.

Outlaw

Sweet, looks like something I'll have to look into if it uses the ToD system!

IGN has some impressions of Tales of Symponia here:
http://cube.ign.com/articles/436/436098p1.html

It sounds pretty good.

Tom Banjo

So... is this still scheduled to come out on the 30th? I haven't seen any recent release date info on it.

DARTH GAMER

Last I checked, it was scheduled to come out on July 13th.

Setzer

EGM scored it....

8.5, 7.5, 8.5

Good: Exciting battles, stylized visuals
Bad: Painful difficulty spikes, dull cut-scenes
Previous Tales Experiecnce: Not required

The reviewers pretty much all had the same gripe and that the boss fights were very difficult unless you put a lot of time into leveling your party. My response to that is, thank God it isn't easy. Looking forward to this one.

Setzer

I was looking at screen shots of the battle system and it looks kinda similar to that used in Valkyrie Profile...? Been a while since I played VP so I could be wrong.

PixyJunket

Much props to difficult boss fights and leveling up your party. I'm going to love this game.

My previous Tales experience: Played them all!!

GreenMonkey

Whoo hoo!! An RPG that isn't pitifully easy (*cough* FFX! *cough*)

slop101

I lost all interest in the game after reading the following:

"Which leads us to one of Tales' largest problems -- the difficulty. Instead of a steady curve, you'll find a scatter plot. It's all over the map. You'll encounter rather stupid mini-games and dungeon challenges late in the game, but early on you'll be confronted by brutally hard boss battles that force you to spend an hour simply leveling up your characters. You might have just solved a tedious block pushing puzzle, fought your way to a seal, battled a boss for 20 minutes, defeated it, and are about to exit the dungeon when you suddenly have to fight another boss. All without saving.

If you die -- either because you didn't have enough experience or used your items too freely -- you'll have to play through the entire dungeon again (and most likely again). It's frustrating, especially because you're hit with this one two combo on multiple occasions. What makes it worse is that Tales' linear but relatively free to roam around nature allows you to enter dungeons in various orders. It's quite easy to be confronted by a dungeon whose mere minions can kill your entire party."


I don't have time for repetative crap like that, and I don't understand how anyone would - maybe 10-15 years ago in the 8/16-bit days, but not anymore.

It's too bad, because with some better balanced game-play, or a more generous saving system, this coulda' been a contendah'.

PixyJunket

Variety is the spice of life; they can't make every game easy enough for drooling vegetables to play.

slop101

Playing through the same dungeon over and over again is not my definition of challenging - it's my definition of monotony.

flashburn

Amen! Now with knowing that I could be confronted with a second nasty boss fight, it will just make me be more cautious after the first fight.

Setzer

Exactly.

I hated playing through FFX because they laid the path out for you and there wasn't any freedom to explore. The game became boring because it was too easy. Whatever happened to the days where you had to 'work' your way through an RPG?

GreenMonkey

One of the best thing about old-school RPGs was the need to conserve resources. Sometimes you had to keep enough herbs, etc on hand, and save enough MP, to get back out of a dungeon (Dragon Warrior IV comes to mind -a favorite of mine).

Like with FF, past about FF6 or so, it became normal to burn MP as much as you wanted, because there were always plenty of tinctures, etc laying around. Plus, there was always a save point right before the boss fight. You knew it was coming. No surprise. Stop at the save point, use a tent, back to 100% MP & HP, go fight the boss, kick his ass, get warped out of the dungeon. BOOOORING. Too easy. I liked FFX quite a bit, but it was pitifully easy. And I almost never level up.


I liked when you had to be careful, because if you messed up the Boss fight you had to go back through the dungeon. Or at least, conserving MP for the big fight. Conservation of resources through the dungeon was critical. I remember limping out of a dungeon with one poisoned guy, one dead guy, and like 2 MP left. FF's save points/recharge before the boss became almost standard.

What kind of bad guy lets you rest up after fighting his hordes of minions?



I also hate it when the normal everyday fights are zero threat. What's the point, then? Press attack, attack attack until they die, get EXP, next fight, repeat. I think that Lunar 2 is a favorite for me. Every fight is just hard enough you have to actually use tactics, and not just flail away on the attack button. Stop paying attention in Lunar and you end up dead.



I don't like leveling up, but I find most instances where people say this about a game, they just weren't being careful enough, or agressive enough. Too many attack, attack, attack habits. Even games that I thought used to require leveling (FF1, DWIV) - I have noticed are actually pretty easy now, given some careful tactics. Dragon Warrior VII required some leveling, but it was more class-building than anything else.



Bring on the surprise boss battles and the tough fights. I like to die! Yay, challenge! Bring it on! I haven't been challenged since I played Maximo, and DMC1.

Fodder1976

I agree with both sides of what all of you are saying. But the big problem I have with this is losing a bunch of time simply because they didn't allow me to save frequently enough.

There is a difference between a game being challenging because of clever bosses etc.. , and a game thats only challenging because you couldn't find where they decided to put the random save points.

Fodder1976

Another thing, regarding the games tendency to allow you into areas where you get your ass kicked... I think thats fantastic. The only game I can remember that allows this is the original PC Baldurs Gate. The reason its good is because it truly makes you feel like you are improving the abliites of your characters through leveling up, weapons upgrades, etc. At one point you get slaughtered, but much later in the game you can go back to that area and actually put up a fight. Its a good feeling.

Most games do it in parallel, as soon as your characters reach level two, the enemies become level two. Etc. You never get to feel like your characters just kick ass.

Setzer

I just looked and this game comes out next week!

I better get a move on and finish Arc the Lad.