It all feels the same, but why is the game still fun?
What IF the characters joined together in one world, how would they interact? Each character from the Tales series comes from a certain timeline in their stories. Luke and Tear come from the Tales of the Abyss series and start off from their starting timeline with their teleporting situation to a different area. This time, they bump into Terresia. Other characters like Chester, start off with him losing his sister after the chaos that occured in the beginning of Tales of Phantasia.
With each character coming from their original backgrounds with a twist, where does that leave the main character? Who is the main character? Well, the answer is you! To add towards the twist of the game, TotW also throws you with no background except that you are a Descender sent to protect the world of Terresia. You eventually meet a little "creature" named Mormo and you get to listen to his annoying banter about his world being devoured by a destructive force. As you guys finish talking, the both of you venture inside the dungeon and must save a girl named Kanonno. That is when your adventure with Ad Libitum begins and you must solve the mysteries of Terresia while saving the world. Eventually, you will join a rebellion group called Ad Libitum where you can join up with your favorite Tales characters and fight for the future of the world. On the side, you can also do chores for the townspeople and earn some rewards for your troubles.
Quests are rather generic as well. It is normally a fetching quest, or targeting a certain monster and eliminate a certain number of that monster. Even worse is when you have to craft an item based on the wonderful crafting system built inside of the game. The crafting system allows you to create items that can definitely benefit you in battle and to complete quests. However, creating the item for the quest may not be fun after a while.
If there is one nice quest in the game, it is definitely the character battles. Being able to pit yourself against the characters from the Tales series. Now, these battles can range up to several characters from the series fighting your ONE character. Depending on who you fight, the battles can be either mindlessly difficult or a walk in the park depending on your character class. Ever wanted to fight Leon Stahn and Rutee in one go? Now's your chance almighty Descender! Although, when you win, the trouble of defeating the characters normally results in a very plain item. However, at least you got bragging rights! Your character will officially be better than a Tales one. Nothing can be said about the fighting system however. If one has played a Tales game, then one has already played this one. The fighting is very similar, but continues to work for many fans. Despite the freedom in a 3-D world, one may feel a bit nostalgic as they trample over the enemies. "I've already done this in the other games" occurs. Luckily, because it is on a handheld, one may not feel the need to play this game vigorously, which is a good thing, especially when a gamer may want this game to remain fun.
Graphically, this game is impressive. The characters and the environment look rich on the PSP. It is great to know that the PSP has also improved on its loading times. TotW does not have a loading problem at all! However, when traveling inside the dungeons, another feel of nostalgia occurs. The environments constantly look the same as you traverse through each dungeon. Yeah, it's a dungeon crawler game, but it should not limit these games to keep such similar landscaped for each floor! The monsters also look rehashed for each dungeon. Going inside a forest? Well, the forest monsters will be identical for each and every floor.
The sound quality is amazing. Everything sounds crisp and clear like it should in a Tales game. Although, what baffles myself is the fact that the title song is always changed in a localized Tales game. When listening to the opening soundtrack, I first thought that they finally kept the original soundtrack in tact, only to witness the same treatment I did in Tales of the Abyss. Sure, it sounds like the title track with no lyrics. It disappointed me a bit, but not to any extent. Some of the custom voice acting for the original characters are horrible as well. It's as if the female voices are trying to sound like the high pitched Japanese voice acting, but it sounds less pleasant than the Japanese ones. Women should not sound like mice. It's not pleasant after a while. Other than that, the voice acting is decent. It's nice to see previous Tales voice actors taking on the characters this time around.
Overall, this is a solid game, but fact that the game suffers from unoriginal dungeon game play throws it off a bit. However, creating a character and seeing how he/she develops and looks in certain armor and weaponry keeps this game going. Buy this game if you are a long time Tales fan or someone who wants a solid RPG on the go for a few hours at a time.