Symphonia of the Night
Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 10:10 pm
I'm just about to finish Symphonia, and while of course there's a slew of stupid-hard extra stuff I'm not going to bother with, I still wrung a solid 90 hours out of it. The game as a whole came as quite a pleasant surprise to me, though there are a couple of major issues that I think keep it from becoming a classic the caliber of Grandia or Skies.
There are a couple of seemingly subtle adjustments to the combat that catapult it far and away beyond anything the Tales series had achieved prior. The addition of a third dimension makes it much easier to target a specific enemy and keep track of him. Plus the AI now actually feels like AI. Though you only have control over a single character at any given time, for the most part, you can count on your teammates to react more intelligently than the mindless slashing puppets they were in previous Tales games. Refill/Raine, the healer, knows she's useless for combat and will spend most of her time running from the melee to cast healing spells based on how much damage your party has taken. Melee slashers such as Regal and Presea will automatically head for any enemies casting spells in an attempt to stop their incantation. The only character I ever had trouble keeping under control was Shiina, who piddles through TP like it's okay and enjoys wasting her summon spells at the most inappropriate times.
The story starts off extremely formulaic, but well-played nonetheless. Most of it's pretty predictable, though there are still a couple of curve balls here and there. I felt it started getting a little out-of-hand around the time I was able to travel back and forth between the two worlds, and I started losing track of who was who and what was going on around that point. Despite the old-school, simple charm the story starts out with, its fifth grade philosophies get really irritating later on. "There's no meaning in death, that's why you have to live!" "I can't believe I failed to notice it before now, but you're right." It really just gets corny, despite the light-hearted cartoon look. In some situations, characters don't even seem to act accordingly. Colette gets kidnapped so many times she could give Princess Peach a run for her money, and it's a plot device that shouldn't be used more than once or twice in a single game. Worse, your characters never react as though it's the fucking bazillionth time that stupid blond gets her ass carted off by the bad guys. I swear they used the exact same dialogue every time it happened.
Some of the later dungeons are also a bit over the top. The stupid wind riding dungeon and the shadow dungeon in particular had me frothing at the mouth screaming for salvation. Those puzzles were just flat-fuck annoying.
The characters have more presence and are more memorable than previous iterations. And again, while I don't think it's appropriate to dub a foreign game, regardless of cultural context or lack thereof, most of the characters are pretty well acted. (Most of them.) There's also a "friendship point" system that determines certain events later in the game, though it still didn't award me enough opportunity to mack on my beloved Shiina. (Shiina, incidentally, seems to be the only character in the game with boobies, female or otherwise. I thought Zelos was a chick until I heard him speak.) It's also interesting that, later on, you can acquire additional costumes for each character. That's pretty unusual for an RPG, but welcome.
Though the game has a bad habit of going cheeseball just when it matters, it's delightfully conscious of itself on the sidelines. There's a giant GameCube model that controls a mechanism in one of the early dungeons, and Pac-Man serves as the identifying icon for every village inn. If you spend a particularly long amount of time in any one dungeon, Lloyd begins whining that he's sick of it (which usually mirrors your own thoughts at the moment). My personal favorite was while revisiting a certain dungeon. Usually, the game offers a "Quick Jump" option for dungeons you've already completed, so you can travel back and forth between areas without slogging through the dungeon again. In this one instance the option wasn't offered due to a story event that takes place within the dungeon, and while hacking your way to that point, Lloyd whines that they should've been offered a Quick Jump option. Then the other characters are all like, "Quick Jump? What?" And Lloyd's like, "Nothing, nevermind."
So it's got some problems, but it's far and away the best game yet in the Tales series, and is only the second good RPG on the GameCube (and the first that wasn't already released on Dreamcast). Oh, and incase I hadn't mentioned it:
<img src="http://www.namco-ch.net/talesofsymphoni ... shihna.gif">
<img src="http://www.openjp.com/inaprincehotel/im ... rt_ani.gif">
There are a couple of seemingly subtle adjustments to the combat that catapult it far and away beyond anything the Tales series had achieved prior. The addition of a third dimension makes it much easier to target a specific enemy and keep track of him. Plus the AI now actually feels like AI. Though you only have control over a single character at any given time, for the most part, you can count on your teammates to react more intelligently than the mindless slashing puppets they were in previous Tales games. Refill/Raine, the healer, knows she's useless for combat and will spend most of her time running from the melee to cast healing spells based on how much damage your party has taken. Melee slashers such as Regal and Presea will automatically head for any enemies casting spells in an attempt to stop their incantation. The only character I ever had trouble keeping under control was Shiina, who piddles through TP like it's okay and enjoys wasting her summon spells at the most inappropriate times.
The story starts off extremely formulaic, but well-played nonetheless. Most of it's pretty predictable, though there are still a couple of curve balls here and there. I felt it started getting a little out-of-hand around the time I was able to travel back and forth between the two worlds, and I started losing track of who was who and what was going on around that point. Despite the old-school, simple charm the story starts out with, its fifth grade philosophies get really irritating later on. "There's no meaning in death, that's why you have to live!" "I can't believe I failed to notice it before now, but you're right." It really just gets corny, despite the light-hearted cartoon look. In some situations, characters don't even seem to act accordingly. Colette gets kidnapped so many times she could give Princess Peach a run for her money, and it's a plot device that shouldn't be used more than once or twice in a single game. Worse, your characters never react as though it's the fucking bazillionth time that stupid blond gets her ass carted off by the bad guys. I swear they used the exact same dialogue every time it happened.
Some of the later dungeons are also a bit over the top. The stupid wind riding dungeon and the shadow dungeon in particular had me frothing at the mouth screaming for salvation. Those puzzles were just flat-fuck annoying.
The characters have more presence and are more memorable than previous iterations. And again, while I don't think it's appropriate to dub a foreign game, regardless of cultural context or lack thereof, most of the characters are pretty well acted. (Most of them.) There's also a "friendship point" system that determines certain events later in the game, though it still didn't award me enough opportunity to mack on my beloved Shiina. (Shiina, incidentally, seems to be the only character in the game with boobies, female or otherwise. I thought Zelos was a chick until I heard him speak.) It's also interesting that, later on, you can acquire additional costumes for each character. That's pretty unusual for an RPG, but welcome.
Though the game has a bad habit of going cheeseball just when it matters, it's delightfully conscious of itself on the sidelines. There's a giant GameCube model that controls a mechanism in one of the early dungeons, and Pac-Man serves as the identifying icon for every village inn. If you spend a particularly long amount of time in any one dungeon, Lloyd begins whining that he's sick of it (which usually mirrors your own thoughts at the moment). My personal favorite was while revisiting a certain dungeon. Usually, the game offers a "Quick Jump" option for dungeons you've already completed, so you can travel back and forth between areas without slogging through the dungeon again. In this one instance the option wasn't offered due to a story event that takes place within the dungeon, and while hacking your way to that point, Lloyd whines that they should've been offered a Quick Jump option. Then the other characters are all like, "Quick Jump? What?" And Lloyd's like, "Nothing, nevermind."
So it's got some problems, but it's far and away the best game yet in the Tales series, and is only the second good RPG on the GameCube (and the first that wasn't already released on Dreamcast). Oh, and incase I hadn't mentioned it:
<img src="http://www.namco-ch.net/talesofsymphoni ... shihna.gif">
<img src="http://www.openjp.com/inaprincehotel/im ... rt_ani.gif">
SHORYUKEN!
