Review
Release Date: 03.06.2006
Platform:
Game Boy AdvanceDeveloper:
Namco, Ltd.Publisher:
Nintendo of America, Inc.Reviewed by
Ashton Liu on 3.18.2006
| Review Rating: 3/10 | User Rating: 6.5/10 |
Assessment of a game such as
Tales of Phantasia is exceedingly complicated due to the fact that the version currently being reviewed is a four year old port of a game that was released over a decade ago. There is some credit to the game in that it's the pioneer of
Namco's mostly stellar
Tales series, but the fact remains that
Phantasia is still a game from the vintage year of 1995. Does this help or harm its case? Unfortunately, reviews are written not to praise an old game for whatever mark it made on the game industry, however large it may have been; they are written to inform readers of the quality of the game in question. While there is certainly no doubt that
Phantasia was a truly groundbreaking game at the time of its release, the truth is, it really hasn't aged well.
The game begins with teenaged hero Cress going out on a hunting trip with his best bud, Chester. While they're away from the village they find the great tree of mana, Yggdrasil - which doesn't look exactly like it's in tip top shape, either. After marveling at the giant tree (or what's left of it, anyway), the two head back to town, only to discover that it's been completely annihilated, all of its inhabitants murdered. Enraged, Cress leaves Chester behind on a mission of vengeance to find the perpetrator and exact his revenge. The story takes a few twists and turns, but they're nothing the seasoned RPG player won't expect; the plot here is strictly by the book, except made more dynamic and brought to life by the lovable cast of charismatic and colorful characters, whom are arguably some of the best developed in RPG history, though the localization is a bit half assed in execution. Obvious grammatical errors and robotic dialogue are rampant in the storyline, and while it doesn't completely destroy the game's narrative, it does tarnish the otherwise engaging story somewhat.
The graphics are competently done, though nothing unprecedented. The game attempts to recreate the detailed sprites seen on the PlayStation remake of the game relased years ago, and succeeds, for the most part - the character sprites are done quite well. However, well detailed sprites have a pretty much 'been there, done that' feel on the Game Boy Advance, and while the mostly accurate recreation of the PlayStation graphics is admirable, it is hardly a remarkable feat. Still, the graphics are done quite well, and it deserves credit for that.
The music of the game hails from an age when Sakuraba's work wasn't branded with the dishonorable mark of mediocrity. Unfortunately, the sound quality is abysmal. The voice quality is tinny, the sound effects are barely audible, and the music, which by composition is good, is horrifically reproduced due to the GBA's limited sound capability. The voice acting is also ear bleedingly bad, though on a completely different level: the voices just aren't any good.
Tales of Phantasia's voice acting ranks down there somewhere near
Shining Force III and
Resident Evil. And I mean the original PlayStation one. Yes, it
really is that bad. Fortunately, the voices can be easily switched off with a trip to the customization menu.
But it's not the graphics or the sound that bog down
Phantasia, because both are competently done and are still acceptable. What brands the game with the mark of unplayability is ironically the aspect that defined it eleven years ago - its battle system. While the core remains the same - an action oriented real time combat playstyle - the execution is rather poor by today's standards. Combat is incredibly slow, and the controls are frustratingly clunky and unresponsive. The battle also pauses whenever a spellcaster class character invokes a spell, so if you have one or more magicians in your party (and you will, if you want to survive), the combat is chopped up even more by their incessant spellcasting, and though this was something that happened in every
Tales game pre-
Eternia, when combat is
this slow, all it does is serve as another annoyance as the melee-minded player attempts to assault the enemy. It doesn't really help that the game is really hard, either - though admittedly this may be a direct result of the battle system itself. While difficulty can be a boon in a game such as this, the one-two combo of undesirably poorly-done battle controls and the sky-high difficulty make it more a practice of frustration and anger than one of skill and persistence.
As if the complete outdated atrocity that is
Phantasia's battle system isn't enough, the game also has a lot of little problems that nag at the player until they just give up in total frustration. The status menu, for example, fails to show some important information (such as say, the amount of money they have currently) to a player until he or she presses a certain button. While this isn't a problem itself, I pretty much went through half the game until I discovered this function, so an icon alerting the player how to see the information would have been appreciated. Also, usable functions and greyed out functions are barely differentiable due to the two being only half a shade away from each other. I had to literally squint and stare closely at the screen to see which items/commands were greyed out and which ones weren't. These problems are just the tips of the iceburg, as the game suffers from poor design in other aspects as well - such as being able to learn certain moves before it is logically possible to use them.
However, the game deserves recognition in that it updates the gameplay system to coincide with at least some of today's standards. A surprisingly deep cooking system and character titles make an appearance in this game, as well as a myriad of side quests and updated and better looking character art for the status screen, so the game doesn't feel QUITE as archiac as it could have if it had been a straight port from the SNES version.
While
Phantasia isn't all bad, charismatic characters and a well told story won't save an RPG if the battle system and interface is just going to alienate the player, and
Phantasia's does just that, marring an otherwise well done game. Clunky controls, slow as molasses battle speed, numerous cuts of certain content, and a frustrating interface combine to make
Phantasia all but unplayable. In the end, the only people who will even remotely enjoy
Tales of Phantasia are people who just want a trip down memory lane or people who can ignore flaws so glaring that they might as well stare directly into an eclipse. Anyone else need not apply.
