I remember the year I purchased this game! It 2000! I love this game back than! It introduced me to a whole new way to play RPG's! This was before I discovered it's sibling Phantasia on my emulator or it's clone Star Ocean, but for it’s time, it was new. Not the best looking game around, especially for 1998, but a fun adventure none the less!

GAMEPLAY ~
Remember, this is the first Tales title to hit the states, so many players were either turned off by the new battle system, or loved it like no other! I personally loved it (I also personally loved my GameShark as well! hehehe) The button layout was easily grasped and the D-Pad felt ultra sensitive... maybe too sensitive. Anyway, the buttons during battle were Circle to regular attack, X to special attack, Triangle for the menu and Square to defend. Unlike later games where you auto defended, this option added in alot more depth to the game, like a real fighting game! If you run into a battle head-first, you'll end up in an unmarked grave.
Anyway this game introduced to America the linear battle system. This means no more turn based action, no! It's all man for himself! An it worked... to some sorta lesser extent. True, the AI did what it was told, but unless the limitations were placed they would exhausted all their special power and than do nothing but melee. The enemies on the other hand came so frequently (I believed I clocked it at 5 seconds apart) it made dungeon exploration so damn irritable!
True, you leveled up fast, but leveling up didn't really seem to help the matters much when you have an item cap of 15! Lastly, translation... this game feels terrible translated and almost completely void of effort...
Other than that, it brought originality to the RPG table, not an easy feat!

STORY ~
you are a country boy named Stahn who stores away on a massive cargo ship named the Draconis. Monsters attack and the ship is seized. From there you acquire a swordian named Dylmos and it informs you of your hidden talent and the world now needs saving... yeah... it flows something like that... Can’t remember everything I read in this day an age!

GRAPHICS ~
The graphics were basic with sprites with Chibi action! Their heads were huge! Anyway, it gave you a nice campy look, like the graphics of an SNES title, but ported to the PSX. water and mirrors reflect, characters have emoticons appear over their heads and each character had their own personality, especially the air-headed antics of Mary! But sadly the over-world graphics are horrendous! I use this analogies alot, but the world looks like a vomit eaten than re-vomited by NAMCO in a vomitorium! Everything is blocky and pixilated, the towns look like paper cut-outs and everything else over-world-ish (besides sprites and ships) look overly outdated!
The battles have a nice hand-drawn look to them with some massive spells later in the game and a nice combo look, the biggest problem with action is that there is too much going on in a linear battle... so you'll miss the actions you aren't controlling. Overall, Sprites look good, if this was a SNES title and the over-world is one of the worst designs I think I’ve ever seen on the PSX!

SOUND ~
This game had a nice soundtrack. Every song related to the surrounding areas and are nicely arranged. The SFX are alright, can't ask too much from them. The most addictive song is the battle music! An why is that! Because you'll hear it every ten steps (or 5 seconds! you make the call) this grates on my nerves an than we come to the voice-overs! What bad ENGRISH we have here! Spells like "ANTIDOTO!" and the long winded "ICE TORNADOOOO" all sound so bad coming from Rutee's mouth. An none of the victory voices are in English except for Stahns "YA-HOOO!" which I think is kinda stereotypical! Anyway, music good, SFX OK, voice acting terrible!

REPLAYABILITY ~
There is a few small side-quest you can experience around the end of the game plus recruiting additional characters is fun, but once it’s done, there isn’t nothing more to do but search out ToD2, which has nothing to do with ToD1. Anyway, the puzzles aren't too tricky and than there is the error presented during one of the "password" puzzles which is, again, badly translated and impossible to figure out... without the right walkthrough that is.
This game shouldn't take you over 40 hours to beat, an if it does, it's because you ran round in a circle's because the game doesn’t give you a good outline on where to go next. Also there is a no item / monster compendium for references nor any smaller objectives like in later Tales games there is title hunting as well as cooking options... but I guess all games need to start somewhere!

OVERALL ~
Now, I’m not saying the game is bad. Because it isn't! It's actually a very fun an action packed RPG! An it's rare to say that about an RPG! But I believe that if the game was maybe two disc's instead of just one than maybe the graphics would of had an upgrade and the over-all product would have been view in a better light. Yet as it stands, not the best looking adventure around, but ToD can never be considered boring!
DEFINATLY needs a rework! Maybe with a title change it could look fantastic on a portable system (Phantasia was re-released for the PSX an than re-re-released again for the GBA with PSX graphics!) so... sometimes... there is life after… well… you know the rest!