Took me 25 hours to beat this game and sincerely, those were really really long hours.
The story is pretty simple, but fun. All the lore with the Aether vs the Er'ther and the Swordians is pretty cool. But unfortunately, the good story is hard to appreciate when the gameplay is awful... especially when you know that Final Fantasy 7 was released a month before.
The interest of an action RPG is to have full control of your character... but you ALWAYS have to fight against the AI of Stahn and against the IA of your teammates. Also, there's a lot of Sacred Stone spread accross the map... but to get them, you need to farm a lot to gain some level. You almost need to be level 60 to have them all.
Problem is when your AI is broken, farming is just awful and when you finally have the Draconis to move freely on the map... you already have more than 20 hours of gameplay, of broken AI and long useless dialogs. You just want to finish the game and beat the final boss.
Another major problem is the world map. On the PS1 version, you have a world map... but no mini-map. If you want to see it, you need to open the menu, check the valuables and open the map and it is SO SO ZOOMED OUT and on top of that, there's no pinpoint of your position. Good luck not getting lost.
Also, only towns are marked, not the forest, caverns, etc.
If you really want to play this game, play the PS2 version. I never played it, but I wish I had choose this version.
The story is pretty simple, but fun. All the lore with the Aether vs the Er'ther and the Swordians is pretty cool. But unfortunately, the good story is hard to appreciate when the gameplay is awful... especially when you know that Final Fantasy 7 was released a month before.
The interest of an action RPG is to have full control of your character... but you ALWAYS have to fight against the AI of Stahn and against the IA of your teammates. Also, there's a lot of Sacred Stone spread accross the map... but to get them, you need to farm a lot to gain some level. You almost need to be level 60 to have them all.
Problem is when your AI is broken, farming is just awful and when you finally have the Draconis to move freely on the map... you already have more than 20 hours of gameplay, of broken AI and long useless dialogs. You just want to finish the game and beat the final boss.
Another major problem is the world map. On the PS1 version, you have a world map... but no mini-map. If you want to see it, you need to open the menu, check the valuables and open the map and it is SO SO ZOOMED OUT and on top of that, there's no pinpoint of your position. Good luck not getting lost.
Also, only towns are marked, not the forest, caverns, etc.
If you really want to play this game, play the PS2 version. I never played it, but I wish I had choose this version.
I recommend the remake over this, but the original has the some things it does better (namely the soundtrack) the gameplay is abysmal and the difficulty is non-existent though. had fun with a friend.
The only Tales game I really have fond memories of. Very memorable soundtrack. I still prefer this 2D combat to the 3D action combat of modern Tales games. Never beat it, but I've gotten close a few times.
One of the best jrpg ever , way better of the overrated remake
The good:
- A fun story with charming characters and some well written lore
- Cool asf talking swords that breathe personality
-2D sprites that look very good and are adorable
- Some bopping battle and world map themes
The bad:
-the battle system is very simple and halfway into it, it becomes painfully easy
-the last third of the game has some asinine dungeons that are just annoying to explore
-the optional party member could have been a bit more developed
- A fun story with charming characters and some well written lore
- Cool asf talking swords that breathe personality
-2D sprites that look very good and are adorable
- Some bopping battle and world map themes
The bad:
-the battle system is very simple and halfway into it, it becomes painfully easy
-the last third of the game has some asinine dungeons that are just annoying to explore
-the optional party member could have been a bit more developed
a pretty bland RPG all things considered. Has pretty sprite art and the characters were relatively memorable so that was pretty cool, but otherwise yea this game just be how it is yanno. The combat is also pretty neat too since its more real time, as the tales of series is famous for. I liked the talking sentient swords though that was pretty cool
全体にとても良いけど、最終的にはこちらがわが強くなりすぎて戦闘バランスが崩壊してしまうのが悩み。OPアニメは何回でもみれちゃうね。
Simplesmente maravilhoso.
É um jogo com história boa, divertida por causa dos personagens humanos e ainda mais interessante por causa das Swordians.
Os saves se tornaram muito mais frequentes e a dificuldade bem reduzida comparado ao Phantasia.
Mas ainda dá pra ficar perdido por ai.
Os gráficos são bem bonitos e as batalhas são divertidas.
É um jogo com história boa, divertida por causa dos personagens humanos e ainda mais interessante por causa das Swordians.
Os saves se tornaram muito mais frequentes e a dificuldade bem reduzida comparado ao Phantasia.
Mas ainda dá pra ficar perdido por ai.
Os gráficos são bem bonitos e as batalhas são divertidas.
How the hell did this series get so popular with such slow-ass gameplay?
I remember it being janky as hell but I absolutely loved it.
Bamco pls put out a re-release and maybe someone translate ToD2 PLEASE
Bamco pls put out a re-release and maybe someone translate ToD2 PLEASE
My first Tales game- amazing, I'll never forget it.
I'm a bit baffled as to why this isn't that well-liked in the context of the Tales series. It's definitely more fun than Phantasia, due to the larger number of characters and more exciting battles. I believe this is the first appearance in the series of the combo counter, which is a wonderful mechanic that adds another layer to the otherwise painfully-simple combat. By rewarding long combo strings with extra exp, it incentivizes good timing, aggressive play, and liberal use of special skills.
Two things I can see working against it are the presence of some less-than-likeable characters and a relatively weak score by Sakuraba's standards.
Two things I can see working against it are the presence of some less-than-likeable characters and a relatively weak score by Sakuraba's standards.
Played this in Japanese and thought it was pretty good, the main cast is really solid.
I tried to play the PS2 remake of this several times when I was younger, and I could just never stick with it. It was paced too slowly, writing was too boring, and the combat was just awful. I bought the PS1 original ages ago around the time I moved here meaning to give it a shot, but never really felt up to it until now. Well now I've finally sat down and played through the first PS1 Tales game, and it's given me a lot of valuable insights as to why I disliked the PS2 version so much (even if this also wasn't exactly my favorite thing ever). It took me around 33-ish hours to beat the Japanese version of the game playing on original hardware.
The story follows a young man named Stahn, who is discovered as a stowaway on a dragon airship and quickly forced to work upon the crew realizing that he's just some idiot and not a spy. However, once the ship is attacked my monsters, he discovers a mysterious talking sword, and as they fall to the ground in their escape pod, his grand adventure to save the world begins~. The game's writing is okay, but decidedly flawed. On its better aspects, the game has a fun sort of vibe almost like a 90's fantasy road trip anime. There's not a lot of meaningful dialogue, but the comedy bits are well written and the dialogue itself is well written. On the more negative sides, the game's pacing is still quite slow (especially in the back half), the false conclusions really hamstring the story, and the narrative overall is badly wanting in terms of focus. They end up coming down a bit too involved in societal issues to have satisfying closure with the more generalized "the world isn't worth destroying just because there are bad people in it" ending they settle on, and a lot of the more interesting characters and aspects of the plot slowly get weeded away until it's just against some random Big Evil Guy (TM). There's a lot of potential, granted, and it's a frankly frustrating amount of potential with just how good a lot of the societal critique that's present actually is. However, we only have the game we have, and what we have is a very mixed bag. It doesn't really stick the landing for its own story, but it's not hard to see how Tales games after this had far better stories with how close to being great this game so often comes.
The gameplay will be very familiar to anyone who's played an older pre-3D Tales game. It's the old Linear Battle System the series is famous for, with an ARPG that sees you fighting against random encounters on a 2D plane as you go along your RPG adventure. The fundamentals are fairly strong, but like with the story, the devil is in the details. Dungeons have some neat puzzles, but some puzzles are incredibly tough and dungeons are also quite long with only one save point at the very end. While combat often feels very fun and quick, the game's balance is sadly quite rough. Enemies and even bosses struggle to ever be much of a challenge, and the only time combat really gets tough is when you're fighting annoying packs of enemies with lots of powerful AOE spells. Adding to that is that, while your ability as Stahn to really be aggressive and dictate the flow of battle is strong, that is your best and only real way to fight, as your AI partners are far too unintelligent to be much use a lot of the time. Even adjusting their AI behavior, I struggled at all points to actually get them to be as aggressive as I wanted them to be, particularly towards the enemies I actually wanted them to fight against.
This is all not that much of a problem though due to the more favorable parts of the game's balancing. The game's EXP rewards are quite generous and the encounter rate is quite high, so I honestly felt over-leveled nearly the whole game as a result without even grinding deliberately. Your natural MP healing after battle is also VERY generous, so just using your healer's heal spells to heal will make it so you really never need to worry about healing with items and running out as a result. They're systems that, while frustrating, are still thankfully fun, but their design blind spots are not difficult to spot, and it struggles to be truly satisfying with just how easy things basically always are.
The aesthetics of the game are very nice. The music is very good, and the character designs are delightful as well. Especially in battle, the characters' and enemies' animations are really well done and pretty, and the special moves and spells have beautifully done pixel art. The voice acting is also good, but it's weirdly sparsely used. Most of the game's voice acting isn't in battle when characters do battle cries to announce moves, but in skits that happen on the world map. However, these aren't like later Tales games where there's a button prompt telling you to hit Select or something to see the skit. Instead, you need to just stand still on the world map for like 8 or 9 seconds before the scene triggers. There are over 200 of these things, but the game doesn't tell you they're there at all, and even realizing they're there is very hard to do by accident. Unless you come across that page in the manual that mentions them (which I did confirm is indeed there), you'd likely never notice they're there at all, which is a real shame for something they clearly put so much time into.
Verdict: Recommended. This game is far from excellent, but it's still a pretty good game. The pace of the adventure usually makes up for the less than perfect writing, and the action generally remains fun even if it is largely satisfaction from being powerful rather than overcoming genuine, well-designed challenges. While the following game in the series improves on these mechanics a lot, it's still well worth playing the original Tales of Destiny if you're a fan of the series and want to see its roots. It certainly doesn't meet the high bars set by its successors, but it was very fun seeing the seeds of where all that later excellence came from~.
The story follows a young man named Stahn, who is discovered as a stowaway on a dragon airship and quickly forced to work upon the crew realizing that he's just some idiot and not a spy. However, once the ship is attacked my monsters, he discovers a mysterious talking sword, and as they fall to the ground in their escape pod, his grand adventure to save the world begins~. The game's writing is okay, but decidedly flawed. On its better aspects, the game has a fun sort of vibe almost like a 90's fantasy road trip anime. There's not a lot of meaningful dialogue, but the comedy bits are well written and the dialogue itself is well written. On the more negative sides, the game's pacing is still quite slow (especially in the back half), the false conclusions really hamstring the story, and the narrative overall is badly wanting in terms of focus. They end up coming down a bit too involved in societal issues to have satisfying closure with the more generalized "the world isn't worth destroying just because there are bad people in it" ending they settle on, and a lot of the more interesting characters and aspects of the plot slowly get weeded away until it's just against some random Big Evil Guy (TM). There's a lot of potential, granted, and it's a frankly frustrating amount of potential with just how good a lot of the societal critique that's present actually is. However, we only have the game we have, and what we have is a very mixed bag. It doesn't really stick the landing for its own story, but it's not hard to see how Tales games after this had far better stories with how close to being great this game so often comes.
The gameplay will be very familiar to anyone who's played an older pre-3D Tales game. It's the old Linear Battle System the series is famous for, with an ARPG that sees you fighting against random encounters on a 2D plane as you go along your RPG adventure. The fundamentals are fairly strong, but like with the story, the devil is in the details. Dungeons have some neat puzzles, but some puzzles are incredibly tough and dungeons are also quite long with only one save point at the very end. While combat often feels very fun and quick, the game's balance is sadly quite rough. Enemies and even bosses struggle to ever be much of a challenge, and the only time combat really gets tough is when you're fighting annoying packs of enemies with lots of powerful AOE spells. Adding to that is that, while your ability as Stahn to really be aggressive and dictate the flow of battle is strong, that is your best and only real way to fight, as your AI partners are far too unintelligent to be much use a lot of the time. Even adjusting their AI behavior, I struggled at all points to actually get them to be as aggressive as I wanted them to be, particularly towards the enemies I actually wanted them to fight against.
This is all not that much of a problem though due to the more favorable parts of the game's balancing. The game's EXP rewards are quite generous and the encounter rate is quite high, so I honestly felt over-leveled nearly the whole game as a result without even grinding deliberately. Your natural MP healing after battle is also VERY generous, so just using your healer's heal spells to heal will make it so you really never need to worry about healing with items and running out as a result. They're systems that, while frustrating, are still thankfully fun, but their design blind spots are not difficult to spot, and it struggles to be truly satisfying with just how easy things basically always are.
The aesthetics of the game are very nice. The music is very good, and the character designs are delightful as well. Especially in battle, the characters' and enemies' animations are really well done and pretty, and the special moves and spells have beautifully done pixel art. The voice acting is also good, but it's weirdly sparsely used. Most of the game's voice acting isn't in battle when characters do battle cries to announce moves, but in skits that happen on the world map. However, these aren't like later Tales games where there's a button prompt telling you to hit Select or something to see the skit. Instead, you need to just stand still on the world map for like 8 or 9 seconds before the scene triggers. There are over 200 of these things, but the game doesn't tell you they're there at all, and even realizing they're there is very hard to do by accident. Unless you come across that page in the manual that mentions them (which I did confirm is indeed there), you'd likely never notice they're there at all, which is a real shame for something they clearly put so much time into.
Verdict: Recommended. This game is far from excellent, but it's still a pretty good game. The pace of the adventure usually makes up for the less than perfect writing, and the action generally remains fun even if it is largely satisfaction from being powerful rather than overcoming genuine, well-designed challenges. While the following game in the series improves on these mechanics a lot, it's still well worth playing the original Tales of Destiny if you're a fan of the series and want to see its roots. It certainly doesn't meet the high bars set by its successors, but it was very fun seeing the seeds of where all that later excellence came from~.
Great second installment. Not so great soundtrack compared to the first one, but fits the game well. Some things were improved some were the opposite, without going too much detail, cause of spoilers.
UN PEQUEÑO PERO IMPORTANTE PASO
En 1995 Namco dio para la Super Famicom en sus últimos momentos de vida uno de los JRPG más avanzados técnicamente de toda su historia, Tales of Phantasia. Pese a solo quedarse en Japón, la enorme recepción que el público nipón tuvo al primer cuento de Namco fue tan notoria que decidieron contar su siguiente cuento en 1997 para la PS1 y dar el primer salto a occidente.
Con Tales of Destiny se respetaron las raíces del juego previo con un estilo gráfico 2D reminiscente de su predecesor, con unos pocos efectos 3D, una mejor banda sonora, escenas cinemáticas anime y un mayor número de clips de voz para los personajes.
Su historia es menos seria que su predecesor, donde en Phantasia se nos contaba las consecuencias de la guerra y en cómo en estas no hay ni buenos ni malos, en Destiny se va a un estilo desenfadado más propio de los animes de aventuras como Slayers donde encarnamos a Stahn, un chico que salió de su pueblo en busca de aventuras y que se topa de bruces con un conflicto entre reinos y unas leyendas sobre una civilización antigua relacionadas a las espadas que los protagonistas poseen. Si bien no es tan profundo a nivel argumental, su mundo y lore es de los más interesantes y originales de la saga Tales of.
Jugablemente dio el siguiente paso, siendo el primer Tales of con la mecánica de que las artes estuviesen asignadas a los botones de dirección, la capacidad de cambiar la formación de nuestro grupo y un mayor número de personajes con aún más habilidades y aspectos propios.
Únicamente lastrado por su tedioso acto final y por algunos aspectos que se quedaron del juego previo, como los combates aleatorios.
De resto, un más que notable JRPG dentro del buen catálogo que tuvo PS1.
En 1995 Namco dio para la Super Famicom en sus últimos momentos de vida uno de los JRPG más avanzados técnicamente de toda su historia, Tales of Phantasia. Pese a solo quedarse en Japón, la enorme recepción que el público nipón tuvo al primer cuento de Namco fue tan notoria que decidieron contar su siguiente cuento en 1997 para la PS1 y dar el primer salto a occidente.
Con Tales of Destiny se respetaron las raíces del juego previo con un estilo gráfico 2D reminiscente de su predecesor, con unos pocos efectos 3D, una mejor banda sonora, escenas cinemáticas anime y un mayor número de clips de voz para los personajes.
Su historia es menos seria que su predecesor, donde en Phantasia se nos contaba las consecuencias de la guerra y en cómo en estas no hay ni buenos ni malos, en Destiny se va a un estilo desenfadado más propio de los animes de aventuras como Slayers donde encarnamos a Stahn, un chico que salió de su pueblo en busca de aventuras y que se topa de bruces con un conflicto entre reinos y unas leyendas sobre una civilización antigua relacionadas a las espadas que los protagonistas poseen. Si bien no es tan profundo a nivel argumental, su mundo y lore es de los más interesantes y originales de la saga Tales of.
Jugablemente dio el siguiente paso, siendo el primer Tales of con la mecánica de que las artes estuviesen asignadas a los botones de dirección, la capacidad de cambiar la formación de nuestro grupo y un mayor número de personajes con aún más habilidades y aspectos propios.
Únicamente lastrado por su tedioso acto final y por algunos aspectos que se quedaron del juego previo, como los combates aleatorios.
De resto, un más que notable JRPG dentro del buen catálogo que tuvo PS1.
If I wanna play this I go to the Director's Cut
Giant world, giant towns full of people to talk to, great music, great characters, unique combat system and an interesting story. Excellent JRPG.
easier final boss than phantasia
Biased review as I was obsessed with this game as a kid back in '97, but I do think this game has a lot of charm and a good OST. I still enjoy the core gameplay to this day and will forever think talking swords are cool
This version is so mid, why the hell did Namco never localize the PS2 remake? ALSO THE ENCOUNTER RATE IS WAY TOO HIGH AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
This review is for the PSX version, since that's the only one in English... At least for now. This game needs seperate pages, man.
It's okay I guess. I think it's better than Phantasia in that there's way less spells being casted and the spells themselves have much faster animations, which helps a great chunk for the absolute biggest flaw of the original game. The story this time was kind of mediocre, especially in the 2nd half where nothing really happens, and the AI is awful, but the improved gameplay really helped me pull through. I think there's a certain charm to the pre-Phantasia PSX combat, where you just get one attack with multiple types instead of a standard combo. The cast this time isn't amazing either, but it's decent and I think they can have some funny interactions sometimes. Having to recruit optional party members is a big annoyance and the villains in this game are hilariously underdeveloped, but I guess overall I enjoyed it.
It's okay I guess. I think it's better than Phantasia in that there's way less spells being casted and the spells themselves have much faster animations, which helps a great chunk for the absolute biggest flaw of the original game. The story this time was kind of mediocre, especially in the 2nd half where nothing really happens, and the AI is awful, but the improved gameplay really helped me pull through. I think there's a certain charm to the pre-Phantasia PSX combat, where you just get one attack with multiple types instead of a standard combo. The cast this time isn't amazing either, but it's decent and I think they can have some funny interactions sometimes. Having to recruit optional party members is a big annoyance and the villains in this game are hilariously underdeveloped, but I guess overall I enjoyed it.
The PSX and PS2 versions of this game are so substantially different that they really shouldn't be considered the same game. The PSX version is, while I appreciate it, perhaps the most dated of the mainline Tales games. I think I might actually find SFC Phantasia less stiff and archaic. The PS2 version, on the other hand, is a massive overhaul that looks and plays very differently, and is a lot of fun. The remake is easily one of the best Tales games.
Tales of Destiny was a huge setback, fixing the previous effort's combat pacing at the cost of all its charm. Characters are largely either bland or missed opportunities, and only Rutee - not so coincidentally a female comic relief similar to Arshe from ToP, is the only character worthy of mention. This really shouldn't have extended past the 12th hour.
I find it funny the ps2 version is listed as the same game given how I ended up playing this
I went into this game SPECIFICALLY because I saw gameplay of tales of destiny 2 and thought, "wow that's rad, and tales of destiny 2 is on psx too? golly, guess I better start with the first since it has the same name!"
I actually ended up enjoying this more than I thought I would despite how similar it is to phantasia, which I'd dropped because the bleak art style kinda made me uncomfortable while playing it. anyway after beating this I went into "tales of destiny 2" for the psx and boy was I ever in for a surprise. even so, I ended up enjoying tales of eternia as well. (seriously though it's fucked up they called eternia destiny 2)
I went into this game SPECIFICALLY because I saw gameplay of tales of destiny 2 and thought, "wow that's rad, and tales of destiny 2 is on psx too? golly, guess I better start with the first since it has the same name!"
I actually ended up enjoying this more than I thought I would despite how similar it is to phantasia, which I'd dropped because the bleak art style kinda made me uncomfortable while playing it. anyway after beating this I went into "tales of destiny 2" for the psx and boy was I ever in for a surprise. even so, I ended up enjoying tales of eternia as well. (seriously though it's fucked up they called eternia destiny 2)
not sure