Caltrops - Reviews - Re: Tales of Symphonia

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by Pearson 11/15/2004, 3:02pm PST

Quite frankly, you have little idea of what your talking about. When it comes to ripping off an idea, everything has already been ripped off, what varies is how it is presented and the twists involved. You accuse Namco of simply ripping off FFX, but why don't you first accuse Square-enix of ripping off Christianity and Judaism. If you would have spent the time to at least get to the second disk you would have realized that the plot is much more complex than being a rip-off of FFX. Or perhaps you should complain about Star Wars ripping off the idea of the EVIL EMPIRE from the Jews and their relationship with the Assyrians and Persians? Or the Aeneid for ripping off the Illiad? Or how about Paradise Lost ripping off the Bible? Its in the combination, presentation and innovation of old ideas that a work becomes original, and if you had spent more than an hour playing before writing that dastardly review you would have realized that.

I would expect far better taste from anyone who claims to respect plot. Its a pattern to most good RPGs to begin simple with a great deal concealed and eventually reveal a much more complicated plot. Take Chrono Trigger for instance, an hour into the game you have very little idea of what your doing. Then it seems all you have to do is defeat the evil Magus in 600 a.d. to make everything right. You do that and you find out that was not the actual solution. You then proceed to Zeal and the story all congeals into a masterpiece.

Now back to Tales of Symphonia which you so gravely misjudged after a mere hour of playing. If you had played the game for more than an hour you would have realized that the presentation of the path they take with the idea is much different than in Final Fantasy X. The world regeneration ceremony is only the tip of the iceburg. And if you are complaining about the Tree of Mana (actually called the Giant Kharlan Tree) you have neglected to actually look into the history of the Tales series. The Tree of Mana was originally in Tales of Phantasia, one of the best games for the SNES next to Chrono Trigger and A Link to the Past. Are you going to complain that maintaining a historical element of the world is unoriginal? God forbid, we'd have to condemn Warcraft III for stealing the idea of the Eye of Sargarros from Warcraft II, and Final Fantasy X-2 for continuing several characters from one game to the next.

Heres my advice since you obviously have little idea of what your doing when it comes to reviewing RPGs: play a game all the way through before reviewing it. There are over forty hours of gameplay in Tales of Symphonia if you bother to play it through with all the side-quests. You reviewed the game after playing only a single hour. Therefore you had completed 2.5% of the game. To put things in perspective, that would be judging The Fellowship of the Ring or Braveheart based on the first 4.5 minutes.