This game is easily one of the two best RPGs available for the gamecube.
User Rating: 9.1 | Tales of Symphonia GC
Tales of Symphonia is a RPG made by Namco exlcusively for the gamecube. There have been several "Tales" series rpgs in the past, but you do not need prior knowledge of them to understand or enjoy this latest entry. In Tales of Symphonia, you start in the role of Llyod Irving, the young male swordsman hero with a mysterious past. The game takes place in the fantasy world of Sylvarant - a land of magic that is in a slow decline and facing many perils. The main theme of the game is centered around the restoration of the land. Lloyd joins up with the Chosen One, his grade school friend Collete, to assist in her vital journey of regeneration. Only through the completion of this quest, can the land be restored to its former glory. It sounds simple, but you will quickly find that there are many plot twists and turns typical of a good rpg. Although it is nothing revolutionary, the storyline is very good and will quickly draw you into the game. There are the typical "shocking" plot twists and betrayals that we have grown so fond of in rpgs. The character development is also done fairly well - much of their personal stories and background unfolds in certain skits and pre-rendered scenes throughout the game. By the end of the game, you will have learned much about the main characters and grown attached to them. The gameplay is where this rpg starts to shine. They have shifted away from the traditional turn based rpg and moved to a more action oriented style. The combat is all real time combat - very similar to kingdom hearts (for anyone familiar with that game). A typical battle consists of four of your party members versus a variety of different creatures. You can only control one character in the battle - the others are controlled by the AI. However, the AI does a superb job of controlling the characters and you can tailor the AI to your preferences (i.e. set other characters as healers, close quarter combat, long range combat, etc.). Although you can set your controlled characters as anyone in the party, most people will stick with Lloyd as he is easily the best character to control. You do have a variety of characters to put in your party, though most people will find a small set of characters that are more useful than the others. There are no random encounters in this game. Battles start only when you run into a monster icon on the main screen. Once this occurs, the screen changes to a battle mode. The combat system consists of a lot of combos, blocking, dodging, and special skills. Your characters will develop certain attack skills and moves over the course of the game, and these can be mapped to the controller. You can only have 6 moves mapped onto the controller at a time, but it's fairly easy to pick the good ones. There are also special attacks called unison attacks - were all 4 party members can execute special attacks together for a very powerful attack. For the most part, just simple button mashing can earn you victory in most battles. However, learning the right set of combos and how to defend yourself is helpful for the harder boss battles and makes the game more enjoyable. There are several minigames, hidden sidequests, and optional quests throughout the game. These were very enjoyable and add several hours of additional gameplay to the already lengthy game. I finished the game with about 80 hours of total gameplay, and I still had not finished all the extras. The graphics were done in a very anime style - some parts of the game look almost like a cartoon. Fans of anime will truly enjoy this aspect. The music and voice acting were decent. There were a few scores that were truly catchy, but the remainder were fair (not bad but nothing memorable). All in all, I found this to be a truly enjoyable game. It starts a little slow, but will soon have you addicted to its fun style of gameplay and interesting story. Any rpg fan with a gamecube should definitely not pass this one up. It's one of the best rpgs this gen.
