Tales of Legendia offers a fun RPG experience, especially for those who liked Tales of Symphonia.
Although, we all can't be perfect.
The Review
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Tales of Legendia, from the crazy game designers at Namco sets you in the point of view of Senel Coolidge. An alliance marine who's leaving the mainland with his sister to uncover a new destiny. (theres more to it than that but I don't want to spoil anything) Soon, your ship is attacked by an unknown force and you land upon a place, knowned as The Legacy. Will, your first ally in the game, informs you that the island you are standing on...is a giant ship. Senel's reaction makes him look...not so bright. "A ship.....wait, a ship!?"
Soon, your sister Shirley gets kidnapped by all sorts of different people like bandits to evil knights and you are on a quest to save her and stop the evil force at work. Battle system has gotten a complete redux since the last Tales game. You are no longer in a 3-D battle ground, you're set in a restricted 2-D battleground which sticks to its root but doesn't provide so much strategy. Yeah, it's nice that you're allies will actually give you advice during the battles like, "It's magic" or, "stay away from it's (insert body part here)" but what drags this down is that there is so much noise, so much sound effects, and so much talking that you can't hear it. One at a time please.
Instead of the usual Unison Guage, you are given a Climax Guage. Once activated you will stop the time-space continuem and beat down the enemy with a combo of your own, or chain special attacks with your allies.
Fortunately the game is driven on a quirky style of graphics so when you see the character models, think Final Fantasy 9. It's also nice of the developers to implament some great voice acting in the game. Some can often feel quite humorous. Like the talking otters, "Ors ors ors!"
Unfortunately, the game is given the static camera and you are forced to see a top down perspective of everything on the map and area. Hope you like the battles, because unlik Symphonia, Namco brought out that good ol' RPG cliche, the random battle! Which is ok but not if the dungeons feel like you've already been through them before.
The last flaw of the game is that it has a cliche'd storyline leaving you to know what might happen next. but you gotta give props to Namco for giving you a ton of bonus content after you beat the main story mode.
Despite a few cheesy add-ons, Tales of Legendia proves to stack up against Tales of Symphonia. With my role playing staff in my hands, I bestow an 8.0!