Tales of Destiny is a fun RPG from start to finish.
----------Battle System----------
Tales of Destiny is a 2D Action RPG. The game is for the most part, similar to any Final Fantasy title up to this point, but the battle system is a 2D fighter in a sense. About 90% of all battles are completely random, excluding boss fights. There are a few dungeons that have visible enemies though. You can have up to 4 people in your current party with 2 people as backup. When attacked, your team will be sent into a 2D side-view, with your team on one side and the enemies on another, and then you do battle. You only control one character, but you can give demands to your three partners and they'll do them instantly.
Each character has their own special skills, that they learn after they reach a certain level. Stahn can gain extra skills by finding gravestones that teach him secret abilities, but you have to be at a certain level to read them. Some characters can use magic, but only characters equipped with a Swordian, so they almost make you use the Swordian characters in this game, and that pretty much requires you to have a Swordian equipped at all times too, even though you might find weapons that are stronger than your Swordians. That's kinda limiting, but oh well.
There's a few under-developed areas in the game I wish was fleshed out more. You gain a Food Sack, but you can't really learn recipes like in most Tales of games. All you can do is throw food in it, and as you walk you gain HP, it's basically a second form of healing and almost pointless. It doesn't gradually give you HP, but hands it out in a bulk form. Also the skill system seems downgraded a bit from Tales of Phantasia, which also makes me wonder if they tweaked the GBA port of Phantasia to fit with the more modern Tales games.
The game is pretty simple, as far as the fighting goes, but the dungeons and the puzzles within them can get TOUGH. Some puzzles gave me a freaking headache at times too.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Stahn (Stan), a country boy who is looking for adventure. He decides to stowaway on a dragon ship to see the world, but gets caught. That's when he realizes that this ship is carries something very special, but as soon as he learns this is when the ship gets attacked. While looking for the nearest weapon, he finds a talking sword, that only he can hear. This was the special item that the ship was carrying and the pirates are after it. Stahn manages to escape with his life. The game kick starts after that.
The story was good, although very basic, and can be summed up in four or five bullet points. Not that a basic story is a bad thing, I enjoyed it. The characters all had strong personalties, although some were pretty cliche. The story has a few strong twists, but nothing that will shock you.
The most enjoyable thing about the storyline was the lighthearted sense of humor. I like a nice dark RPG now and then, but I LOVE lighthearted ones. Not saying this doesn't have its fair share of dark moments, but my most memorable scenes involve the party goofing off or talking to random NPC within towns getting stupid info. For example, you walk up to a gardener in one town and initiate a chat with him, he looks at a tree and says, "Ooooh, what a well-proportioned tree!".
----------Graphics----------
The graphics are pretty dated for the time, but it was a nice throwback to the 16 bit era for the most part. Comparing this to Wild Arms, I think the level designs, enemy/character models and towns are put together with a more creative thought, also there is more in-game cutscenes and action involved within the dialog scenes. With all of that said, I like nice and simple 2D graphics, the load times are really short and almost not-noticeable.
The game has quite a few anime cutscenes. The game opens with an intro cutscene each time you start the game, also there was 2 in the middle and 1 at the end. That's more than Wild Arms had to offer atleast. My biggest complaint towards the graphics is the lack of effort with the dialog boxes. There aren't avatars showing your characters who is talking, just a name, so you're basically reading a wall of text, and you have to make sure you read the characters name each time. I like having an avatar above the text so I can just glance at it and know who is talking. They do have a solid blue background for good characters, a red background for bad characters and a transparent blue background for Swordians, but that's not enough.
----------Sound----------
The music is freaking great. Very rememberable and catchy stuff. The sound effects are really good too. Your characters all have distinctive battle cries and grunts during battles. The voice work with these cries are obviously done by Japanese actors, not native English speakers. This makes some of what they're saying sound like gibberish, although atleast half of what they say is in Japanese, like their victory cries. Its cute though.
----------World Map----------
The world map is a classic RPG overview map, most similar to Final Fantasy III for the SNES. The graphics are decent at best on the world map, but the lands are generic and unrememerable. The town avatars are really good though.
You mostly walk throughout the game, but you can win a Tricycle that lets you roam around the lands without any random encounters, the only problem is it is slow. Towards the middle of the game you'll get a boat, but you can only go to four regions, then later you get a dragon that can take you anywhere on water. At the very end of the game you'll get a plane.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
28:27
The game ends with a short anime cutscene, and then credits. Thankfully after the credits there is a short scene with all the characters reunited. The end.