Tales of Symphonia

[ravnaz]

WII exclusive!!

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/855/855146p1.html

[Tangent]

Excellent. Loved the original. Great fighting mechanic for an RPG. Suits the Wii perfectly with its art style.

[Tom_B]

Hmm... I hope this isn't an excuse to make yet another Tales game, but reuse a lot of the assets from Symphonia.

[Leneux]

Ooh, hopefully with multiplayer.

[Rygal - Reader of Threads]

Oh man, I hated the GC game.

I just thought I'd let you know that.

Thanks for listening.

[Raff]

It'll take a lot to beat the original. In terms of the sheer quantity of laughable plot twists I mean.

Tales of Symphonia is the worst Japanese RPG I've ever played, even despite having one of the best battle systems.

[Teeohbee.]

I found the GC version to be a dull, charmless little game.

[Dandy_Sephy]

Oh man, I hated the GC game.

I just thought I'd let you know that.

Thanks for listening.

It'll take a lot to beat the original. In terms of the sheer quantity of laughable plot twists I mean.

Tales of Symphonia is the worst Japanese RPG I've ever played, even despite having one of the best battle systems.

I found the GC version to be a dull, charmless little game.

Madness, utter madness.

Also, this "news" is about 6 months old

[Raff]

Oh my god. Not only is it not cel-shaded, but the battle system is no longer side scrolling.

[Google]

Oh man, I hated the GC game.

As did I.

The dialogue was fucking horrendous. I quite liked some of the town locations (that one on the water - what was that called?) but the game was a lifeless, dull, erroneous piece of shit.

Are all the Tales games in the same mould?

[Colonel Panic]

Oh man, I hated the GC game.

I just thought I'd let you know that.

Thanks for listening.

I found the GC version to be a dull, charmless little game.

Yep, it was preachy garbage.

[mdn2]

Well, I was mildly disappointed this didn't beat MW2 in terms of pre release interest, but this got released today over here. £24.99 on play.com.

Initial impressions is that the boxart is nice and the manual is pretty thick. Not played it yet, but I bet you're all rushing to trade in MW2 and Dragon Age to get your mitts on a copy.

I prefict this will outsell NSMB Wii.

[Professor Puzzles]

Well, I was mildly disappointed this didn't beat MW2 in terms of pre release interest, but this got released today over here. £24.99 on play.com.

Initial impressions is that the boxart is nice and the manual is pretty thick. Not played it yet, but I bet you're all rushing to trade in MW2 and Dragon Age to get your mitts on a copy.

I prefict this will outsell NSMB Wii.

OH BOY! DAY ONE!

[mdn2]

Well given the heady amount of interest you all show towards this game, it would be unfair of me not to post some impressions.

The story is set two years after the last game.

The two worlds of Sylverant and Te'thealla were merged into one at the end of the first game. However, they don't get on. You play a young boy called Emil whose parents and village are destroyed by the Te'theallans - led by Lloyd (the hero from the first game).

The combat (from what I remember) seems pretty much identical to the first game. The graphics, however are not. Gone is the colourful cel-shaded world from the original to be replaced by a more muted pallette. It's 'ok,' but seems to reflect the darker edge the story has. I definitely preferred the original.

The storyline has me intruiged enough to keep playing.

The fact that Lloyd is portrayed as the bad guy in this is enough to warrant a playthrough.

It's certainly grabbed me more than the recent 'Tales of Vesperia' or 'Star Ocean: The Last Hope' and apparently it's only about 25 hours long.

In conclusion (from about 3 hours play), if you liked Symphonia, you should like this. I'll post more impressions later (Bet you can't wait!).

Also, apparently there's a special bonus if you have a memory card with a completed save game of the GC 'Tales of Symphonia.' Unfortunately, I can't find mine.

[jonathanhoey]

Thanks mdn2, you've told me enough there to buy it for the good lady. I believe she finished the original, and her savegame is still around.

[Hexx]

Rerelease out today!

[Quest]

Pretty dreadful port according to this review: https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/reviewmini/62899/tales-of-symphonia-remastered

 

Quote

Loading times between maps, which used to be miniscule, are now several seconds long. Colors are less vibrant across the board with the game’s brightness being turned down in all scenes. Textures have been AI upscaled, with visual details devolving into a smeary soup as a result. The battle UI now features texture seams not present in any other version, and small icons and text fonts now have visible compression artifacts. One especially egregious example I noticed was a small black line that consistently appeared above any lowercase w in dialogue.

Some of Symphonia’s graphical effects are now simply broken. The pause screen which previously appeared on top of whatever was happening in the game now features a plain black background. The stylish animation that transitions between exploration and combat is completely missing, replaced with a hard cut to black followed by a hard cut to white that fades in after a couple seconds. Cutscenes also appear to have lost the ability to crossfade, now abruptly jump-cutting between shots that used to be slow transitions. The only genuine improvement in this version is that the game runs at 1080p, a record high for console versions of Symphonia—but a lot has been sacrificed to get there.

So much is compromised in this remaster that if it had just been an emulator running the GameCube version in HD, then it actually would’ve been an improvement. That’s not just hyperbole; I actually checked how the GameCube version looks on a fan-made emulator rendering the game in 4K, and the result speaks for itself. There are no compression artifacts in the UI, there are no visible texture seams, the character outlines are fully intact, and the game runs at a smooth 60fps; all aspects that the official remaster fails at. The only thing the GameCube version is missing is the content that was added in the later PS2 port, but at this point I’m starting to wonder if that content is even worth the trouble.

 

[Sane]

Yeah absolutely terrible. Also runs at 30fps rather 60fps, which is how it ran originally on GC .

[ryodi]

1 hour ago, Sane said:

Yeah absolutely terrible. Also runs at 30fps rather 60fps, which is how it ran originally on GC .

That’s because it’s based on the PS2 version. This is the version from the Symphonia Collection on PS3 that they’ve somehow made worse and are charging full price for. From the Resetera thread a lot of the problems seem to be Switch specific.

[Sane]

Such a shame, this is the Tales game I have the best memories of. It deserves much better.

[AK Bell]

It was never looking particularly remastered in the previews. Emulator it is then. 

[dug]

Oof. I was going to get this because Tales of Symphonia was my first Tales game, and I adored it on the GC. If they've shat it this badly, I'll give it a miss.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Every dev working on a remaster should follow this one basic rule of thumb: the remaster should at the very least look as good as the original game running in an emulator.

 

That's the bare minimum if you want to charge money for your shit. If you can't even achieve this minimal requirement, what the fuck are you even doing?

[Hexx]

I really wanted this to be good

 

[Siri]

27 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

Every dev working on a remaster should follow this one basic rule of thumb: the remaster should at the very least look as good as the original game running in an emulator.

 

That's the bare minimum if you want to charge money for your shit. If you can't even achieve this minimal requirement, what the fuck are you even doing?

 

Precisely it. You can have a better time right now using Dolphin, your own copy of the game and maybe some HD UI mods.

 

Trying to sell a worse product than the original is fucking lunacy. At least Square learnt that with Chrono Trigger on Steam.

[Timmo]

33 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

Every dev working on a remaster should follow this one basic rule of thumb: the remaster should at the very least look as good as the original game running in an emulator.

 

That's the bare minimum if you want to charge money for your shit. If you can't even achieve this minimal requirement, what the fuck are you even doing?

It’s extra dumb because the type of person who is in the market for this game is exactly the type who would know about this. If it was some huge movie franchise then they could get away with it commercially but surely this is selling shockingly low numbers. 

[AK Bell]

You have to wonder if someone high up is trying to kill of this kind of project and is intending to show the numbers of this failure as evidence.