So, after going and playing through more than a handful of hours of Chrono Cross (which you can check out over on my blog page!) I decided to take a look at other old PS1 RPGs that I own that I have either never beaten or for the life of me barely remember anything about the game.

After some eliminations this lead to me to one of four options - Beyond the Beyond, Thousand Arms, Tales of Destiny, and Final Fantasy 9. Of those, I sort of cut things down to Tales vs FF9. Beyond the Beyond I know is a game that's very rooted in an older style of RPG. I may give it a go some time, but, after being so frustrated with Chrono Cross I decided not to push my luck with something that may frustrate me for really dumb reasons. Thousand Arms also got knocked off of the list for a similar reason. I've never beaten Thousand Arms, but I remember parts of it. The one thing I remember most of all though is that it is a very Japanese ass Japanese RPG. I won't get into it a lot, but, the dialogue and what not in the game does not hold up well (though the unique battle system and some of the interesting systems they have in there still make me want to go back to it some day, just not today.)

So, I was staring down Tales of Destiny and FF9. I've never beaten Tales of Destiny before. I've owned it for a real long time, but never played more than a few hours in. FF9, on the other hand, I've beaten all the way through. I could not tell you anything about the story in FF9 though beyond a point and the very, very end. However, I wanted a small break from the Square Enix style of RPG so I went with Tales of Destiny. (As a side note, Suikoden was also on the list, but, my friend is currently borrowing it, so, I took it off the list for the time being.)

Oh, also, I'm playing the PS1 version, not the better, enhanced, PS2 version.. Because holy crap does Namco-Bandai love having two versions of every single Tales game.

Oh Tales of Destiny, where do I start with you.

How about with an image.

The effort that I went to to get that image sums up how I feel about the game, unenthusiastic with very little desire to put much effort into it.

Ok, ok, you may be worried that I'm just going to start going off about how bad the game is. Don't worry, I don't think that is going to be my intention here. For the record, I have yet to beat it. I've played it for maybe 11 hours and I think I'm maybe about halfway or so through the game (if I'm not and I have another 20+ hours ahead of me, then I really don't think I'll finish it.) That being said, the main things to focus on really are the negative things, but that doesn't mean that I think this game is bad. I kind of just think that the game feels half-hearted and like it fell short of some real potential. I'll cover each of the different things that has bugged me the most, starting with the thing that has bugged me the most.

The Combat

Ugh.

Ugh.

UGH.

The combat of this game. The battle system is fine. The line battlefield with four characters and real time action is fine. The concept behind the combat is fine. I actually really enjoyed the later iterations that they took this system in with Tales of Symphonia and the like. My problem with Tales of Destiny though is that the combat is so freakin' easy.

I was something like six or seven hours in before I fought what I even thought was my first boss fight (against a man named Batista. No, not that Batista.) I then looked up an FAQ/Walkthrough for ToD and found out that, surprisingly, this was actually something like the 11th boss fight in the game. It turns out that I had done just under half of the boss fights in the game. They were so easy that as far as I was concerned they were just normal fights. Even the boss fights though (of which I've had several of now) are so bloody easy. I've killed a couple of bosses in 30 seconds to a minute. And I think I'm even somewhat under leveled. It's just so easy. The problem here though is that when you have an active battle system that's supposed to be really engaging, but then your fights are real, real easy, it's still real, real boring.

The best thing I can compare this to is something like Persona 4. Ok, ok, yes, comparing something from very different time periods, but it's two different styles of combat. P4 is a turn based combat system. But when you're fighting things at level, it feels like every battle matters. Every battle feels random and as long as you didn't waste a bunch of time grinding levels, things can really still feel dangerous. Boss fights feel like boss fights, they feel threatening. ToD, on the other hand, even with an active battle system, is just boring. The fights are so boring that I began to realize that every 'zone' of enemies will have something like only 4-6 different possible monster encounter builds (and even then, it's mostly just how many of what monsters show up) except that the monsters per zone is only about 4 monsters big. So every fight feels the same. There's no reason to not just blow through your TP (the points you use for mana and special abilities) and just annihilate everything because you recover some after every fight and eventually you get so many TP that you will almost never run out. Even if you do run out though it doesn't matter because you can just stop using them, still do every fight in about 30 seconds, and get back to full in just a handful of encounters. And boy oh boy will there be enough encounters for you, but I'll get to that next. In this same vein though, you get 3 other party members and you only control one directly.

It feels like all of the fights were designed for you to be able to win them completely by yourself to make up for somewhat unreliable AI party members. The problem then, however, is that when you then have your 3 party members actively helping you (or even worse, when you issue commands to your party members) fights are just fields of slaughter for the enemies.

So something else weird, this kind of connects in with combat, is how it deals with encounters. That's maybe a bit of a weird thing to say, but, some games give you random encounters, some games let you see the monsters on the field and you fight them and then they're gone (i.e. Chrono Trigger, Persona 4, Earthbound, etc.) Tales of Destiny? It has both. I couldn't tell you why it includes both on-screen enemies for some locations and then random encounters for everything else. I can tell you though that I hate it. This game is so easy it doesn't need random encounters. The random encounters also happen way too often when you're in a random zone. When the enemies are on screen it feels like there's actually just enough. It feels right in those zones, like that's how it should be for the whole game.

Now I'm something like "14" or "15" bosses in out of about "26". I'm 11 hours in. I just don't want to keep playing the combat. I appreciate what it is and what it does, but because it's so easy, I'm just so bored by it. It's so easy it's just not fun to play it. I can enjoy a combat system that I don't particularly love but that is actually challenging and engaging at the same time. I don't even have boss fights to look forward to because even those are absurdly easy, and thereby, uninteresting.

The Story

The story in the game isn't great. I won't complain about it very much, but it's just a very, very standard fair. The characters aren't bad though, they're kind of average, sort of stereotypical (but not painfully so.. partially because they almost never talk about anything at all.) I'd probably be more willing to keep playing if I felt like there was much hope for some serious character development. The most development to happen so far was with a character named Mary. The short of it is that I just got her to recover from her amnesia she's been suffering from the whole game. Even that though was just like 5 minutes or something of dialogue of her and her husband and then me kicking some ass and now she's out of my party for almost the entirety of the rest of the game as a result.

Then again, the Tales games have never had particularly strong story I feel like. Symphonia feels like it's had the strongest story so far, but even that wasn't fantastic, it was just pretty good, slightly above just average. So I can't hold it so much against the game other than to say that I wish they had more of a focus on a better story, or, at least a better character story. I think the character stuff has gotten a lot better, but the overall story seems to pretty much still come down to "bad guys want to destroy/rule world because that's what all bad guys want and for no reason other than just because they're bad guys" and that only carries something so far.

That's About It

Sadly that's really all I can think of to say about the game. I find myself bored and uninterested with it.

Has anyone else out there played through this game before? If so, can you tell me if this game picks up at all? I'd love to know if I'm like just on the other side of this game seriously picking up, or if maybe there's actually some challenge somewhere to be had in this game, or, hell, even just how LONG the game is. If it's taken me 11 hours to get Mary her memory back, how much longer do I have to go in the game? Am I about halfway through? Less than halfway through? Do I have another 20+ hours to go? I kind of want to finish the game to mark it off my list, but, if I have another 20 or so hours to go, I just... no, I won't do it, I have other shit to play.

It's really not that I dislike the game, I just feel very apathetic towards it. It at least ranks somewhat higher than Chrono Cross does so far though, so, that's a good thing for it!

I may try and finish it up sometime. Right now I'm playing some Bully but I'm looking at some of my older RPG collection debating what I may want to go to next or if I just want to finish up Tales of Destiny before touching another RPG in my collection. We'll see though!

Dont remember where but there's a translation error on one of the puzzles near the end that all but unsolveable since its a word cypher to open a door near the end might want to google it to see where it's at and how to solve it.

I can't say that I've played it, but I've had the same problem with the Tales series. Perhaps more so. I can't go back or forward from Symphonia. That game is the pinnacle of the series to me. Going back to Tales of the Abyss, I felt like the characters were much more bland (maybe I just didn't give them a chance), and forward to Vesperia, the combat felt... weird. I guess I don't know how to fully describe it. Something about the animations, the way you can just mash a button and your character will automatically run at guys (yeah, you can totally turn that off, I know), and the frustrating difficulty of every single boss even on normal.

Symphonia struck a perfect blend of interesting story, characters, voice acting, and actual gameplay. Though the most memorable part of that game to me is the story branch you can take between Zelos and Kratos. Always take Kratos. Cam Clarke is the best.

@AndrewB: though personally I loved Vesperia and every game in the series I understand what you mean about the combat is didn't feel fluid each attack unless apart of a special attack animation felt separate and disjointed from other attacks making regular combos feel strange and off putting.

We're on the same page with this one.  I've never been able to get anywhere in a Tales game because something just bores me about the whole presentation.

@AndrewB said:

I can't say that I've played it, but I've had the same problem with the Tales series. Perhaps more so. I can't go back or forward from Symphonia. That game is the pinnacle of the series to me. Going back to Tales of the Abyss, I felt like the characters were much more bland (maybe I just didn't give them a chance), and forward to Vesperia, the combat felt... weird. I guess I don't know how to fully describe it. Something about the animations, the way you can just mash a button and your character will automatically run at guys (yeah, you can totally turn that off, I know), and the frustrating difficulty of every single boss even on normal.

Symphonia struck a perfect blend of interesting story, characters, voice acting, and actual gameplay. Though the most memorable part of that game to me is the story branch you can take between Zelos and Kratos. Always take Kratos. Cam Clarke is the best.

I've unfortunately only played Symphonia and Vesperia (there's a frustrating scarcity of Tales games available in the UK), but Symphonia is definitely something incredible. One of my all time favourite games; I practically completed everything that game had to offer. I think I probably missed a few of the cooking recipes, but everything that mattered I done.

Though while I really do enjoy the combat in Vesperia, and for me personally I find is better than Symphonia, what wins Symphonia over Vesperia for me is the characters. Kratos alone is such a standout that it's hard for Vesperia to contend, but the characters otherwise weren't very engaging in Vesperia. Raven was pretty cool and a fun character to play as, even though his ''creepy old man'' cliche was worn to the ground predictably quickly; Yuri's ok, and is one of Troy Baker's earlier voice roles when he was more often delegated to anime/JRPG stuff. But Karol was an annoying turd who of course ''acts all brave and cocky to hide his blatant cowardice'', Judith was boring and her sole character trait was her cleavage as far as I could tell. Rita was just your typical ''small girl who compensates for her size, and her being a girl, by being VERY VERY ANGRY ALL THE TIME'', and Estelle was definition of a complete stereotype. Sheltered princess; bumbling naivete who doesn't understand how regular folk function; healer; a living macguffin. The one character who I was always hoping would become a main party member was Flynn; he shared a lot of Kratos' attacks, plus the whole contrast of him being a by-the-books law-abiding soldier forced to constantly bend the rules and question the larger picture, while still relatively trope-infested, was much more interesting than a lot of the other cast.

...Kind of unrelated, since I don't think you've even completed Vesperia from what I can tell :P But I couldn't help but roll into a rant when the topic arose. It always sticks out for me because if Vesperia had a better cast, then it could of potentially resided next to Symphonia as one of my all time favourite games.

@Abyssfull: I haven't finished it. I've gotten super far into it (I think... up to the desert) *twice* now, and just sort of let it go both times.

I was okay with Estelle only because she plays off okay with Yuri, and I love Yuri (the character and his voice actor), and yes, also Flynn. Flynn felt like he could have been the main character. But since I have the 360 version... yeah. Everyone else, though, is SUPER ANNOYING! Terrible characters. I can't say that Symphonia doesn't have a number of fodder characters as well (Regal, who was so memorable I had to look up his name just now). I also have a personal distaste for Zelos, though I see how he could appeal to some people. But then it makes up for that with the other great ones. Or even just one: Kratos.

It's the less than cohesive narrative and the less precise, more difficult to master combat that completely ruin the experience for me in combination with my issues with the characters.

@amazinglover said:

@AndrewB: though personally I loved Vesperia and every game in the series I understand what you mean about the combat is didn't feel fluid each attack unless apart of a special attack animation felt separate and disjointed from other attacks making regular combos feel strange and off putting.

Good. Glad I'm not the only one that felt that way. I also feel like it's easier to get caught in a basic attack combo, leading to you getting ripped apart by agile enemies and especially bosses.