Tales of Symphonia can be a very enjoyable, exhilarating and fast-paced game to play. It can also be boring, predictable and slow. Yes, this is the paradox that occurs when developers create an excellent and innovative battle system, but fail to create a story that is in any way truly meaningful, coherent, or fresh.
First the good: Tales of Symphonia has an exciting, exhilarating and quick battle-system. Consider the engine something like a soup'ed-up version of Nintendo’s classic The Adventure of Link. Enemies on the world-map appear as simplified icons—if you encounter the icon you enter a fast-paced battle screen where you have complete control of your character and are thrown right into the thick of things. You have to think fast and act fast -- battles are 100% real-time. The option to fight with up to three of your friends also works great. Inputting character AI to your tastes, in which your team-mates are all computer-controlled, works surprisingly well. You can even set your main character up to be auto controlled, which while not ideal (and certainly not as fun) is useful for quick leveling-up opportunities while fighting minor enemies. It’s a fresh change from the usual turn-based formula, where battles can sometimes plod on for as long as an hour. You can adjust the AI of your computer-controlled party members to change their tactics, give them specific commands, or supply them with items using the “pause” menu (action is thankfully suspended when you issue most of these commands). Fights are very speedy in this game, (even the final boss battle should take little more than five minutes), and many shorter battles can be completed in as little as 30 seconds. This is not to say that you don’t need strategy in this game. Different enemies have their own weaknesses, and it’s up to the player to discover them. A player also needs fast reflexes and must decide quickly when to guard, when to attack, which attack to use and when to save tech points (TP — the cost for skills and magic).
The lack of random battles adds some additional strategy to the game. The choice is largely up to the player to decide when and where to fight and as such, decisions can be made on whether it is important to level up your characters for an upcoming boss fight, or avoid enemies to save strength and increase the challenge when fighting major opponents.
A feeling of satisfaction should be obtained while leveling up and customizing your characters. True to the game’s battle formula, in which fighting gives you gratification and a sense of accomplishment without eating away at the clock, players will be able to enjoy tweaking the different abilities of the party members without spending inordinate amounts of time in the menu screen. Customization is enhanced largely by items known as “ex-gems”: they come in four types that can link with each other. Combine the gems in different ways to achieve immunity from status abnormalities, extra strength, extra Hit Points (Health), and so forth. Which gems you place on which characters affect how they develop; yet each member of the party has their own unique abilities and skills (Lloyd is the warrior, Raine is the white mage, etc.), so they’ll each retain their own style and purpose in battle.
As for the graphics, the game utilizes a true 3-d engine using 2-d style anime characters. Some will enjoy this visual style, other won’t. Regardless, it fits the context of the game very well. The music is also well done, if not original. Battle tunes are comprised in the typical energetic Japanese pop-like style, while world-map music has a more laid-back feel.
Unfortunately, Tales of Symphonia has a major flaw -- the story. It is terribly clichéd, predictable and plodding. This can contribute to gamer apathy, where many players won’t care about traveling to the next destination because the events that occur in each new locale end up being quite dull. In fact, sometimes the story-line comes to a complete standstill, leaving the player trudging along with no sense of in-game purpose. As a result, even the joy of battling can get boring at times.
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Perhaps in an attempt to help rectify this situation, the developers added various optional character sketches which you can access by pressing the Z-button at designated times. On the surface, this actually helps the situation somewhat. Although optional, these “skits” often reveal plot elements, character motivations, and additional aspects of their personalities that we would normally not know, and this is especially useful for obtaining a better understanding behind the true motivation of the main villain. Unfortunately, the lack of voice-acting in these sketches makes this part of the game seem like a last-minute touch, even though it clearly is not. It is a shame, because the voice talent is actually quite good, earnestly attempting to put life in an otherwise lifeless story. There are many scenes where voice-talent is used, but there are also many of these optional character skits. Because the player will get used to the different charms of all the various voices for the differing characters, he/she should be able to almost “hear them” during the sketches, when the dialogue is often at its most colourful and humorous. This is why it is such a pity that the American localization team did not take the time and effort to use voice acting for these instances, unlike the Japanese version.
The lack of cinemas is another downer. Being a two-disc game there was definitely enough space for anime shorts at various portions in the story. Instead, we get what deceptively appears to be a montage of future clips at the beginning of the game, but in actuality end up with little else. Perplexingly, most of the few cinema scenes that are tacked on are almost wholly irrelevant, as well as completely unnecessary in video format.
At its core, Tales of Symphonia is still a very fun game to play despite its faults. Even if you insist that your RPGs have stellar and well-crafted stories, something this game lacks, keep an open mind. The rapid-quick battles make fighting less a chore and more something to look forward too. The customization is deep, but not so deep as to be lengthy, and the game itself looks crisp and well-polished. Furthermore, with approximately 75 hours of gameplay time, you may be busy playing for a while. In the end, playing Tales is a real treat for the eyes, ears, and adrenaline, and the uninspired plot that hinders the game does not detract from Symphonia’s strengths as much as you might expect.
