Everything I've ever wanted in a game.
User Rating: 10 | Tales of Symphonia GC
I've been playing video games since I was about 4 years old. Ever since I first played my SNES, I knew that the world of gaming was something simply amazing and beautiful. Something about games that make them feel more real and more engrossing than books or movies. Lately, I have become jaded by the endless stream of boring casual games, proletariat FPS's, and Tetris remakes. I wanted something to show me that games are still what they used to mean to me. Months, years passed in fruitless search of meaning in video games. I almost gave up trying. Then came this game. When I picked it up, I assumed it was another RPG that I would never get around to finishing. The only reason I picked it up at all was that I remember reading about it in a magazine a while back. When I got home from the store, I put the game in, and started playing it. Some time passed before I noticed something. I couldn't stop playing. The game had actually got me engaged, and I just couldn't stop! I knew I was onto something special. So, I played some more... and more, and more, and kept playing for days, all the while being blown away by the epic scale of it, how it was actually fun to play. I had actually forgotten that games where supposed to be fun; how sad is that? Eventually, I neared the end of the game. I was torn between two choices at that point: Should I finish the game right away and get closure on the story, or complete everything there is to do in the game? I chose the latter, simply because i didn't want the game to end. I knew that once those credits rolled I would have to go back out into the wasteland of uninspired, awful games. I eventually completed and beat the game, and the ending was just as spectacular as the rest of the game. I was satisfied, but disheartened. Not since then have I found a game that was such a caliber as Tales of Symphonia.
Let me explain why this game rocked my world, and game me such a deep sense of gaming fulfillment. First, the graphics are some of the best on the console, being one of the games that pioneered cel-shading as a new graphics style. The worlds and backgrounds are lush, crisp, and beautiful. When you frequently stop playing just to take a look around, you know that a game's graphics are high above par.
Tales of Symphonia uses an epic musical score, where it's not intrusive enough to interfere with gameplay, but great enough that you will remember the songs for a very long time. You'll whistle them throughout the day, and listen to them again when you come back home to play the game. Nobuo Uematu had better watch his back, Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura are hot on his trail.
The story is where the game really shines. This is definitely the foremost component of the game that made me stay playing it. It has many twists and turns that make you keep playing to find out what will happen. To use a visual metaphor, it leaves you always hanging, but gives you a rope. I won't be telling you any specifics about the game, you should play it yourself.
The gameplay brings refreshing and interesting new concepts to action RPGs, being far more than a simple button-masher. In order to be successful in battle, you have to time and plan out your actions to have maximum effect. It really simulates a battle quite well, much more than a dull and slow turn-based RPG.
In conclusion, I highly recommend this game to all the gamers out there who are looking for something new and refreshing, and to all RPG fans. It easily makes its way into my top 5 game list, and is unanimously one of the best Gamecube games ever made. No other word can more accurately describe this game than "Masterpiece". This is why we play games. 
