Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Re: Tales of Symphonia

[quote name="Rafiki"]Yeah, the plot's pretty clichéd out, but it's nice that they go ahead and dump it a ton of it on you right in the beginning. I haven't played FF10, so I wasn't aware of the extreme rip-off in plot, but there's way obviously a ton of stuff borrowed from all over. Then again, that was the case in Tales of Phantasia (didn't play Destiny), which also had the bigass Mana Tree (and time travel!). It's hard to really fault them on plot, though, since 95% of RPGs that come out of Japan are the same goddamn story over and over again. Actually, it's not hard to fault them. It's fucking stupid, but as long as you're not looking for a mind blowing plot it's decent enough for an RPG. I'm about 20 hours in and haven't gotten to disk 2 yet, so with all the clichés they've tossed at me I have to wonder when they'll run out and start coming up with new stuff or if the game will abruptly end on a bad cliché. Either way, I'm not getting my hopes up. It'll probably just end up as, "slightly decent RPG plot." I want to murder Colette, though. Stupid bitch doesn't do anything but whine and say, "I'M SO SORRY, YOU GUYS!" I actually really like the combat system, but I haven't played SO2 so I can't make that comparison. There is actually a slight 2D element to it in that you can jump (not attack + up, but just pressing up) so you can run and jump over and enemy and hit them from behind, but it's obviously not exactly deep. The thing I really REALLY <font size="+5">REALLY</font> like is it's not the fucking Final Fantasy piece of shit stand-opposite-each-other-and-trade-blows system. You can actually run around (sort of) and have real control of the character. And with the techs + attacks + chaining of attacks and techs into combos + chaining techs into longer combos + unison attacks + special tech combos in unison attacks + ordering NPCs to perform attacks which can make bigger combos and other things, the game keeps making me think I can have big fancy battles where I leap around and counter and do a bunch of cool shit if I figure out how to do everything in just the right way. Also, the artwork is great*. They use more than 8 colors and aren't afraid to have sunlight. The overworld map is nothing special, but I didn't think it was as terrible as the reviews were making it out to be. For $50 I'm so far not disappointed. *by "great" I mean things like "good use of colors" and "very detailed." I'm ignoring things like the fact the main character is wearing wading pants with a marching band shirt.[/quote]