Tales of Legendia offers an interesting story, but the experience is hindered by bad design choices and cliches.
I love the Tales series, and Tales of Legendia is easily my least favorite. This game came after Tales of Symphonia, and this was a HUGE step back for the franchise. Luckily, Tales of the Abyss later got the series back on track, but that doesn't change just how painful Tales of Legendia is to play. Between the annoying, cliche characters and the monotonous gameplay, this game falls short of its potential.
Tales of Legendia is sort of a throwback to the earlier Tales games in that the camera kind of has a "bird's eye" view of the locales, and random encounters are present. The problem is, the game doesn't completely go with this idea. We still get a slight view of what's in front of us, and the characters move really, really slowly, so it makes travelling from place to place painfully monotonous. The random encounter effect worsens this problem, thus worsening the monotony. As the hours wore on, playing this game just felt like a chore.
Gameplay issues aside, this game has pretty decent visuals. The backgrounds are breathtaking, and the locales are designed really well. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the character models. All of the character models look very childish and don't express emotion well. We do occasionally see character stills that help a little bit with this problem, but they're not present as much as they should be.
One thing that this game actually does really well is the music. There's a nice variety of it, and all of it is beautifully composed. This is easily one of the best soundtracks you'll find in the Tales series. Unlike a lot of video game soundtracks, this one is actually memorable, and it's incredibly atmospheric. I'm still shocked that this game's music doesn't get more recognition.
The characters in this game all start out very very cliche and obnoxious. They do eventually grow on you a little bit, but their obnoxious interactions made me want to skip just about all the cut scenes. We do get to see them grow and become a bit less obnoxious, but these are easily my least favorite characters of the Tales series.
The plot of this game isn't bad--in fact, it's quite interesting. However, it's hampered obnoxious exposition and cliche moments. Of course, JRPGs are notorious for having a lot of sappy, cliche moments, but this game seems to use every single one cliche it can find. It almost feels like this this game goes out of its ways to avoid originality of any kind, and that really hurts of the overall experience.
The game has a battle system that plays out like a 2D fighting game. You can get through most of the game by mashing buttons. Challenge doesn't really come until near the end of the main quest. This further worsens the monotony. This style of combat is closer to the earlier Tales games, but Tales of Symphonia had a much better combat system, so I'm not sure why the 2D fighting style was used.
Dungeon crawling also gets really repetitive after a while due to the random encounters and slow character movement. There is some puzzle solving that helps break up the monotony of the dungeons, but it really only helps a little.
Overall, I have a hard time recommending this game--even to Tales fans. There are many superior Tales games out right now, and I'd definitely recommend going with those instead. If you're new to the Tales series, try playing Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Xillia, or Tales of Graces f instead. This game just doesn't hold a candle to the rest of the franchise. Even on its own merits, this game is hard to recommend. It's no wonder why this game has gone unnoticed for so many years. Honestly, I couldn't even bring myself to finish the game. If you still want to play this game, lower your expectations and proceed with caution.
