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Publisher:
Developer:
ESRB Rating:
Console:
Genre: |
Namco
Namco
Teen
Playstation
RPG |
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Overall: |
8 |
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Graphics: |
6.5 |
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Sound: |
7.5 |
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Gameplay: |
9 |
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Durability: |
Unspecified |
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Tales of Destiny represents what classic role-playing is all about.
With a traditional story and a great cast of characters, Tales of Destiny
will keep you entertained for a long time. While Chrono Trigger may be
superior to this adventure, Tales of Destiny still manages to come pretty
close to beating the Squaresoft juggernaut. It certainly will show younger
gamers what used to be what role playing games were.
The graphics are not Tales of Destiny’s strong point. The characters are
two-dimensional and super deformed. It’s kind of odd to find a
well-developed and emotional story told by super-deformed sprites. You can
definitely tell that this game draws inspiration from many Super Nintendo
RPG’s. While the characters may look pretty bad, you still grow to like
them anyway. The towns and dungeons look like this too and compared to
Chrono Cross and other 3D RPG’s, it seems like the environments have been
shrunk quite a bit. While it’s not bad, it may turn off people from
playing it.
The Japanese voiceovers are interesting, but a bit odd. Sometimes it
sounds like they’re yodeling and makes the game feel very goofy, despite a
very serious story line. The town and dungeon music is well done, but some
dungeons tend to have the same music as others. It is annoying to find
repetitive music, because it makes you seem like you’ve already been in
that area when you haven’t. It also is hard to get over that the music is
still Super Nintendo quality, despite the fact that the Playstation could
make a much better soundtrack. This can get the player annoyed, but
overall it’s not that big of a deal. While hardcore RPG fans can get over
the lackluster music, new people to the genre may be unimpressed when it
is compared to other games such as Chrono Cross.
The battle system is truly innovative. You control your main character
only, and the computer controls the other characters. If you don’t like
what the computer has assigned the character to do, you can bring down a
menu and assign them a command. Meanwhile, pressing any of the buttons on
the controller controls your main character. Triangle brings down the menu
and Square makes you block with your shield. Circle is a normal attack,
and you can use directional buttons to make the swipe more precise.
Finally, the X button makes you do a special move based on which direction
you pushed on the D-Pad. However, if your character is hit by an attack
while charging a spell, their spell will be cancelled and they will do
something else. To get over this difficulty, you will have to use a little
bit of strategy. It works very well, and is almost like a fighting game.
The enemies will also use these tactics and they are quite good at these
skills, so get ready
for some tough boss battles.
The story and characters are good. While the basic plot is rather
generic (an unlikely hero ends up helping to save the world from evil),
the story gets rather interesting later on. Later on you will have to deal
with difficult monsters, and the threat of a layer of land called the
Aethersphere, which threatens to swallow up the world. Also, the
characters are great and are very well developed, with their backgrounds
fully explained. Plus, there are optional characters that will join you if
you choose to let them. The game is also very difficult, so expect to
spend awhile on it, and expect some interesting puzzles as well. There is
also a large amount of sub quests, the most of any RPG so far. These sub
quests range from competing in a battle arena to get new items, to
completing a 50 floor dungeon that is opened by getting three special
magic rods.
Tales of Destiny is an example of an RPG done right. If you can look
past the graphics and the sound, you’ll find an engaging adventure. Namco
has done a successful translation of a game that was already great in
Japan. Be sure to check it out if you are a fan of role-playing games.
Review by dragonryu
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