I genuinely had no idea how big the Tales series was, having only really looked into it while preparing to write this review. The first—and pretty much only—game in the series that I had played was Tales of the Abyss on the 3DS back in 2012, and while its story was a bit too anime for my liking, I was hooked by its interesting mix of action combat and RPG elements.
I had always been aware of Tales of Symphonia, seeing it as I did alongside so many other top-shelf RPGs that made up the Gamecube’s impressive library, but for some reason, I just never got around to playing it. Returning to it now on the Switch feels like both a positive and negative experience—it’s certainly a blast from the past, but it also definitely feels old.
For those, like myself, who missed Tales of Symphonia back in 2003, players take on the role of Lloyd Irving, a young swordsman who gets caught up in a whirlwind adventure when his friend Colette is chosen by a literal angel to regenerate the world’s mana before it slowly dies. However, they are pursued by the evil race known as the Desians who want to stop Llyod and his friends.
In typical JRPG fashion, things get way more complicated as the game goes on, but I won’t ruin it since, despite some narrative clunkiness, it’s actually a pretty interesting story that definitely kept me engaged. It’s got that early 2000s charm that games like Golden Sun and Skies of Arcadia had that have a certain earnestness to their campiness. And while the characters are a bit stock—Llyod is brash but morally upright, Colette is the pure-as-the-driven-snow girl type, Kratos is a bit arrogant but makes up for it with skill—they’re all likeable enough to make you stay invested with their story.
“Visually, Tales of Symphonia Remastered isn’t really a huge improvement over its predecessor, but that’s not meant as an insult.”
However, it’s the gameplay that made Tales of Symphonia stand out back in 2003, but playing it now—especially after Tales of the Abyss—it feels just a bit lacking. While it’s fundamentally the same, as combat takes the form of a more action-style affair with players engaging in the series’ patented Multi-Line Linear Motion Battle System, there are little things that are seemingly missing in the “remaster” that would’ve brought it up to more modern day standards—things that were present in subsequent entries.
Since battles in Tales of Symphonia are locked to a 2D plain, there isn’t a lot of room for strategy since you can only really approach enemies from one direction, and fights get a bit mindless. Sometimes it’s a bit hard to predict if an attack will interrupt an enemy’s attack, and it gets into a fairly repetitive rhythm. Furthermore, if you’re surrounded by multiple enemies, they’ll end up draining your health since there’s no effective way to hit them in a wide area. Later games would introduce a free-run mode, but it was a bummer to see this supposed remaster didn’t include any QoL updates.
There’s no convenient way to alternate between characters during a battle should you want to change roles and mix up the strategy, and even if you die, you don’t switch to the next available character, so if you run out of revives, you’re basically stuck. While you can change characters outside of combat, the way you do, this is a bit roundabout, as you can set a party display leader, which changes who runs around the map, but also a “party exchange,” where the character set in the first position is the one players control.
“Since battles in Tales of Symphonia are locked to a 2D plain, there isn’t a lot of room for strategy since you can only really approach enemies from one direction, and fights get a bit mindless.”
Visually, Tales of Symphonia Remastered isn’t really a huge improvement over its predecessor, but that’s not meant as an insult. A lot of games on the Gamecube had a unique aesthetic that never aged as poorly as the blocky, extra-pixely visuals of the systems that came before it. For the most part, the game has been given a coat of HD paint and has been properly reformatted for a 16:9 aspect ratio, but most animation effects and the game’s overall look remain the same.
Audio fares about the same, with the original audio and voiceovers intact—for better or worse. This gives a lot of the battle music a retro, almost GBA sound, reminding me a bit of the battle music from Golden Sun, and I’ll admit it was pretty funny hearing Scott Menville as Lloyd constantly waiting for him to shout, “TITANS GO!”. Although I did notice a bit of an audio imbalance with the voiceover, particularly with certain S-words that sound really blown out sometimes, but for the most part, it’s solid.
It seems the Gamecube is witnessing something of a renaissance right now, with not only this remaster of Tales of Symphonia but Metroid Prime Remastered and the upcoming Baten Kaidos I & II Remastered. I think your enjoyment of this game will vary depending on your attachment to the original since Tales of Vesperia is also on the Switch, and it both looks better and plays better. Nevertheless, I think it is worth experiencing this GC classic at least once.
