Tales of Symphonia Chronicles (2013)

And this is where it sort of all took off. The first installment in the Tales of series. So, how does it play in 2021? Well, in a matter of fact the only Tales of entry I played prior to this experience was the sequel, Dawn of the new world released way back for the Nintendo Wii. And I remember that game being all kinds of awkward. And I feel like it's safe to say that this one also feels kindy ... "clunky" in certain ways too. But this one sort of manages to pull it off in such a charming way. The whole game feels so crafted with love, the creators' passion shining through in many places. Sure, the animations are awkward, the English dialogue cringeworthy beyond JRPG standards, and the enemy designs made by unpaid interns. But even though with these standards it's easy to sort of laugh it off. It comes off to be very charming to me. Also, we must consider that the game has a couple of years on the backburner.

I did truly enjoy the gameplay most of all I believe. I found it comfortable to grind in a flowy manner and truly enjoyed the battle system and mechanics. However, I feel like the enemy design is looping an awful lot and the designs are just so incredibly incoherent it's at times laughable. Now for everything else, it's alright. But that's kind of it. The plot just keeps expanding and the under title for the game might just as well have been Tales Of Symphonia: Plottwist Simulator. I literally thought the game would end at 5 vastly different points in the game. For me personally, that is a bit frustrating as I kinda after 30 hours or so, reaching a clear sunken ship cost fallacy, kind of just wanted to finish it. From what I've heard it's the little intermediary special dialogue "cutscenes" that frequently happens in the game that really gives the characters their depth. Now, to be honest, I actually didn't watch too many of them. A big issue being my lack of interest in the plot of the game and even the characters most of the time, but also that you couldn't fast forward these events, and they are not even voiced! Meaning that animation will play with the mouth of a character moving, but no sound comes. In the time I've read the sentence I gotta wait like 3 seconds for each line of dialogue. Let's just say I lost my patience early on leading me to actually ignore the option to watch these dialogues. A loss? Maybe.

Well after 60 hours or so I'm here watching the cutscenes, and some tears do escape my eyes. After all, I did grew quite attached to all the characters and the world I spent so much time in. And in retrospect, I actually enjoyed my time with this game in a wholesome way, and these minor setbacks, something to laugh at the worst.

If you are a fan of the Tales of series, I highly recommend going back and seeing the origins of the series, you won't regret it!

I finally arrived to the "first" end of the game. Checking other comments/reviews of this game, I saw that may be necessary to play it 3-4 times for a 100% completion. Are you mad? This is the main reason why I give it 4 and not 5 stars.

Plot: A quest to regenerate the world. It can seem simple but it is not like this at all. The story is continuously changing in an amazingly entertaining way. It is full of turns and surprises. Characters: You can choose which one you want to appear on the screen (it is cool) and every character has a 'personal' skill that allows you to obtain different things from people and/or places. During the fights you always control Lloyd (although I think that if you reach the end several times, you can control the one you want) You can see the character's development thanks to the conversations they have in between "missions'. The fact that you can choose to have japanese voices is always a big plus.

Graphics: Not bad; very colourful. The cities were well done. Maybe in the map they could have done a better job.

Good points: I have liked a lot the way of fighting. You can move freely and it is not a battle in turns. When in the open world, you always see the enemies and you can decide if fight them or not. I liked the customization of weapons and other items. The story is great, playing this was like reading a super nice book participating in the plot.

Bad points: Again the fact of arriving to the end and discover that you need to go through the game multiple times :( . Sometimes when flying it was very difficult to enter the cities. I get blocked several times by stupid random citizens that walk in your direction and don't get out of your way easily!

So, in general this is a very nice game. I had lots of fun with it but... will not continue (at least for the moment). I have many other games to be played.