Simply One Of The Best RPG's This Gen!
User Rating: 9.5 | Tales of Symphonia GC
Tales of Symphonia has an Interesting and Compelling Storyling, Which is very important in RPG's as it drives the game along. The Gameplay is very good and entertaining, And the game has a Real-Time Battle System, Which might take some getting used to at first. But when you do, It's works really well. The Game Is Set in the world of Sylvarant, Which is starving for "Mana" which is required for Magic Use and To support life itself. But "The Chosen One" Who is a servant of the Goddess Martel, Is sent on a quest for World Regeneration, And if she sucessfully completes it the world should return to it's original state. You will play the role of a teenage boy, Called Lloyd Irving who will join "The Chosen One" Also known as a Teenage girl named Collete. So you will set out with a group of Companions on the quest for World Regeneration. The Story will keep you entertained throughout and offers a number of unexpected twists. You will meet alot of Characters along your journey, Who all have interesting Back-Stories and Personalities. When you are on the World Map, You will not encounter random battles, Like games like Final Fantasy for example. You will instead be able to see your enemies moving around the world map , So you have the ability to evade a battle if you wish, Which is good when you want to get to place to place quicker. Now to the battle system, Which as i said before is in Real time.... When you enter a battle you will gain control over your character (Usually Lloyd) And your companions will act upon their A.I, The battlefields are 3D but your movements are 2D, So you can only move Left and Right, Aligned with whatever enemy you are targetting at the time. You can often inflict damage on a group of enemies at a time if they are clustered together in a group too. The A Button will let you perform Normal Sword Slashes, And the B Button will let you do special Tech moves, You can appoint different Tech Attacks to the B Button and you perform them by Pressing the B Button and holding the Analouge stick in whichever direction it specifies. The X Button lets you block enemy attacks, Which becomes more and more helpful in the tougher boss fights. As you get more advanced with battling you'll be able to string Tech Attacks and Normal Attacks together, To make combo-like attacks. When your party inflict damage on enemies, A bar will increase with each blow. Once this bar fills up, You will be able to perform Unison Attacks, Which is where all members of you party will perform special attacks in unison, To pull these off you have to press four buttons in a short time limit for it to be effective. You will also be able to use Summon Spirits in battle, Summon Spirits are spirits of the elements (Water, Electricity, Fire, Earth,etc.) In order to use them, You need to find them and form a Pact with them. The Dungeons in ToS consists of Puzzles and usually a boss at the end of some sort, To complete the puzzles you will use an item called "The Sorcerers Ring" Which most of the puzzles are based upon, This item will change powers by using another item which is usually at the start of most dungeons. An example of the rings various abilities are, You might use it to shrink yourself to access previously un-reachable area's, Or more commonly the rings abilities will be of a certain element (Fire, Ice, Wind, Etc.) But mostly the puzzles are pretty easy. The game world is pretty big, There are lots of people to talk to and towns to visit. When you are travelling around the game, You will be able to enter conversations between your companions, By pressing the Z Button when it indicates it on the screen. These conversations add alot to the story and are pretty good to read. The convos are presented in little picture frames of the characters faces and you will read the dialouge and often the Characters facial expressions will change in them. I did not find them tedious, Because they added to the story. But some less patient gamers may, So theres the option to skip them if you wish. The game has a very clean 3D cel-Shaded graphical style, Which looks very nice. The game just looks very well presented, The Audio is great, The soundtrack is instrumental and fits the game well, The Voice acting is usually good too. The game easily offers 40hours+ of play time, And theres a truckload of side quests to complete too. So all in all the game is a must have for any one who likes RPG's.
