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Tales of Symphonia
- June 11, 2004 15:30 PM PST
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A strange combat system and a sad, cel-shaded story await in Namco?s 80-hour role-playing epic.
GameCube role-playing games are hard to come by, especially the big, epic, old-school kind imported from Japan. But Namco is making a valiant effort to change that with the release of Tales of Symphonia, a cel-shaded and ostensibly ?cute? role-playing number about a boy, a Chosen, and why half-elves are more evil than whole elves.
The Chosen Many
But don?t be fooled into thinking Tales is just a cutesy romp?inside the cel-shading, there?s a remarkable amount of depth and sadness to the story line. The plot involves a young swordmaster named Lloyd who accompanies the Chosen (a half-angel girl named Colette) in her quest for the tower of regeneration, where she will balance the world and put an end to the tyranny of a bizarre, oppressive race of half-elves called the Desians. The writing in the preview build was especially good, playing off the game?s own reliance on RPG clich?s with some refreshingly self-effacing wit, and every important scene is voice acted.
Alone in a Crowd
While most of the game?s RPG elements are standard stuff, the battle system is notably odd: Although you can have a rather large party, you directly control only one character in real time, executing combos and special attacks not unlike in a more traditional action/fighting game. Your main attack is attached to the A button, and as you earn special attacks, you can assign them to different B-button and control-stick combinations. Everyone else in the party acts on autopilot unless you interrupt to give them a specific order (mostly when you want to heal). The game does give you the option to manually control everyone by constantly giving them battle orders if you like, but trust us?the battles are chaotic enough without having to worry about that. The game also includes two more weird quirks: cooking, which lets you make sandwiches and such between battles; and ?titles,? which can be assigned to characters to influence their growth path.
Tales of Symphonia is shaping up to be a GameCube role-player?s dream, the massive saga you?ve been waiting for since the system launched. If Symphonia is a success, Namco plans on bringing out more of the long-running Tales series in the U.S.
