Plus the PC version's based on the the PS3 version, which is based on the PS2 version, so it's collected two sets of tweaks and upgrades along the way in exchange for losing half its frame rate.īut is the game itself a bearable annoyance? No, not really. This was apparently a real disaster of a porting job before all the patches, but honestly the only problem I had with it during my 9 hours of playtime was the 30 FPS lock, and that was a very bearable annoyance for me in this case. I mean after everything I've heard about the PC port I was worried my rig would tip over and catch fire the moment I turned it on. I have to admit, I was surprised by Tales of Symphonia. In fact I think I'll end this here, with first seal sorted out and the team about to sail to the city of Palmacosta. Okay screw the north side of the continent, the monsters there are too tough! That's fine though as this port town is prettier. I've got my health back from Frank, I'm ready for this. Okay, I'm leaving town for real this time.
I don't generally have the ability to tell if a game's running at 30 or 60 just by looking at it, but I can tell you right now that this GameCube game is twice as fluid as the PC version. But there is one major difference and that's that it runs so slick. Oh wait, this was originally a GameCube game! I knew that, I wrote about it earlier, but I guess the game must look great for its age because I really did forget for a moment.Īnyway, to me the GameCube version looks really similar, if a little less wide and way lower res. I wonder how it looked like on the original PS3 version. The cel-shading sometimes looks like they turned Jedi Outcast's terrible glitchy shadows on and then gave everyone a black outline. Plus he's got a beautiful house, though these graphics aren't quite on the level of something like Valkyria Chronicles.
after I've raided all the houses for loot.Īctually all I've been finding is furniture, though I did run into Frank again who offered me free healing. You get the second song if you wait on the title screen for the intro to play again. And finally the remastered PS3 and Steam ports have remixed versions of both Starry Heavens and Soshite Boku ni Dekiru Koto.Then every region of the PlayStation 2 port featured Soshite Boku ni Dekiru Koto.Then there was the Western GameCube version, which has this awesome orchestral track instead.That's probably my favourite of the songs.
First there was the Japanese GameCube version, which has a track called Starry Heavens.I'll see if I can get this right (click links for YouTube videos): Speaking of things that there are many of, the game has had at least five different opening themes so far, and what you get depends on what version you're playing. In fact Tales of Symphonia has three anime OVA series, seven manga collections, seven drama CDs, and two novel series, and I'll be reviewing all of them just as soon as I become rich, learn Japanese and go absolutely mad. I'd say it was like the opening to an anime that never existed, except it does exist.
The game begins with a pretty animated intro showing various scenes of JRPG heroes with various hair colours out and about in a picturesque fantasy world, posing on cliffs and slicing skeletons while a catchy J-pop tune plays. If you're curious, Tales of Destiny II is the 3rd game. It's kind of hard to keep track of where they're up to as they don't usually put numbers on the games, and when they do you can't trust 'em. Here's a fact that'll shock absolutely no one: Tales of Symphonia here is the 5th game in the long running Tales series, and yet it's the first to have been released in Europe! I'm surprised to learn that they've already reached game number 16 since then though. All I remember is that the trees looked very nice and by the look of this title screen that definitely is a Tales tradition. It also turns out that I played that six years ago now, so that explains why I've forgotten everything about how Tales games play. I've only really played one of these games before, Tales of Destiny II on the PlayStation, so I went back and checked and it turns out that it has 'Customize' in place of 'options', so I see what they've done here.
Is that the 'Options' option maybe? Now I'm wondering if that other Tales game I played a while back did this as well is it a Tales tradition, or are they rebelling against standard video game terminology for the sake of being weird? This week on Super Adventures I'm looking at this title screen wondering what 'Custom' does.