Bandai Namco’s Tales collection hasn’t precisely been a powerhouse right here within the west in comparison with sure different well-known Japanese role-playing video games, however one entry specifically that has acquired numerous love from followers over time is the charming journey Tales of Symphonia. This action-style RPG initially began out life as a GameCube unique in 2003 and obtained a PlayStation 2 port a 12 months later.
It was simply one of many standout role-playing video games on Nintendo’s purple dice on the time and for a lot of followers stays the finest entry within the Tales collection up to now. It’s been re-released various different instances since its Nintendo debut – with the PS3 HD remaster additionally worthy of point out for bundling within the second recreation – nonetheless one platform it’s by no means graced till now’s Microsoft’s Xbox. Fortunately, after 20 lengthy years, this has lastly modified with the title becoming a member of staff inexperienced’s ever-growing library of Japanese-developed RPGs. So how does Tales Of Symphonia Remastered maintain up?
We’ll say this now – returning gamers are positively going to have some blended emotions about this “remaster”. To put it flippantly, it’s a really refined replace that may in all probability have you ever doing a double-take in case you performed the unique and have nonetheless acquired your unique copy of the sport mendacity round, as there aren’t precisely drastic enhancements on this newest model.
For anybody who hasn’t performed Tales of Symphonia earlier than, it’s very a lot a standard RPG constructed on the again of the next-generation console {hardware} of the early 2000s. You’ve acquired an epic journey about good and evil in addition to the destiny of two interlocked worlds. As the participant, you begin out by taking management of an aspiring swordsman named Lloyd Irving, who places his hand as much as information his buddy on her journey to rejuvenate Sylverant – a world operating low on mana, which is used to energy magic and shield humanity from the Desians (a half-elf race who’ve returned from historical instances to enslave humanity and usually simply trigger chaos).
This journey to avoid wasting the day is blended in with real-time 3D battles (the place your get together of fighters can actively hack, slash and unleash highly effective assaults on enemies), levelling up, some lovely cel-shaded characters, anime minimize scenes, a 3D world map full of enemy encounters & channelling old skool RPGs, and all kinds of fascinating and harmful places to go to. RPG veterans will discover all the standard themes – with story, conversations, exploration, battles and levelling all taking part in a major function in development. Again, in case you haven’t already performed Tales of Symphonia, it’s one of the vital endearing RPGs.
Where issues fall brief for the remaster of Tales of Symphonia are graphics and efficiency. While the decision has been improved, bumping this contemporary model from 480p to 1080p and now offering considerably sharper UI, menus and textual content, sadly, there are seemingly no visible enhancements as you may anticipate from a remaster. It appears to have largely simply been upscaled with minimal adjustments. The recreation can be capped at 30 frames per-second (and sure, we’re nicely conscious of claims concerning the GameCube supply code being misplaced).
Bandai Namco seems to have opted for what is basically the PS3 and even Steam model (that includes new content material, some QoL adjustments & oddly minimize some dialogue) that are each primarily based on the PlayStation 2 launch (unique to Japan & capped at 30FPS). In distinction, the GameCube unique managed to largely obtain 60FPS again in 2003. It’s disappointing when there’s a lot to love by way of the sport’s story, characters and battles. Load instances additionally appear to take for much longer than they need to on trendy {hardware}.
Conclusion
Tales of Symphonia is a superb expertise in case you’re a fan of basic Japanese-made RPGs and has aged surprisingly nicely for a recreation that is now 20 years outdated. Its real-time 3D fight remains to be simply as pleasant and the way in which the story and characters evolve all through the journey stays simply as compelling. Returning gamers are prone to really feel probably the most let down right here, as this actually doesn’t really feel like the right remastered expertise it may have been. In saying this, the enjoyable battles & RPG parts shine via, which could be sufficient for some gamers to miss the shortcomings of this remaster.
