The best RPG on the Gamecube!
Gameplay- Gameplay is amazing. Instead of regular turn based battles (which seem to be overused in RPGs nowadays), all of the battles are real time. You do get a transition to a battleground and can only walk forwards or backwards, but you get to choose all of your attacks, spells, combos, and defense actions in the heat of battle. This can be very hard sometimes as you are trying to keep yourself and your party alive while defeating the enemy. I have played turn-based battle RPG games for so long that it is good to have a RPG do real time combat as well as Tales of Symphonia. The game is also a GOOD 40 hours long, and on the back of the box it says over 80 hours, so you’re definitely getting a lot of bang for your buck.
Graphics- Graphics are also amazing… if you like anime graphics. These aren’t the best graphics the GC has seen, but they are still pretty amazing. I am one of those people who do like Anime and the “hand drawn” look of these graphics, but some may not. That will probably be the only turn off for some people, as they don’t like the anime graphics. Besides that, the backgrounds and characters look amazing, and you can clearly tell that the artists spent a lot of time in ensuring that the characters looked unique from one another.
Sound- Sound is… you guessed it, Amazing. During battle you can hear the characters talking back and forth, issuing taunts, commands, and encouragement to their party members and enemies. The voice acting done in the game is extremely well done. I have not experienced a time when the sound was off with what the character was supposed to say, and that is very good considering how much voice acting there is in this game. I figured the game would be mostly text reading, but there is a lot of voice acting which helps change the stage a bit from reading text to hearing the voices. This adds to the gameplay a lot and adds to its sense of realism, even if it is in anime.
Value- Like I said, this game seems to be anywhere from 40-80+ hours long, depending on how much time you spend leveling and collecting items, so you are definitely getting a lot of game for your money. Because this game has been out for a while it is also cheaper, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t go out and pick this up.
Tilt/Overall- Overall, this is an extremely well done game. I would recommend this to anyone. Due to the fact that the game’s battles are in real time, it could appeal to those who like action games, as there’s a lot of fighting in this game. However, you can skip most of the fighting if you wish to, it will just hurt you later on in the game as you wont be powerful enough to defeat some of the (surprisingly) challenging bosses. If you own a Gamecube, do yourself a favor: Buy this game.