Tales of Eternia game Review
Story & Playability
Please note that this is a review of the PSP-EU version of the game. The main character Reid comes off as being rather arrogant and Farah often gets angry. The story involves their struggle to stop the grand fall. Meredy ends up being one of the more interesting characters starting with the fact that she falls from the sky and of course doesn't speak the native language. Keele is a scientist and isn't too social there are a few other playable characters such as the pirate girl Chat who has the wierdest sense of humor and goes crazy when small animals jump on the stuff in the engine room, The block head Max that will unintentionaly self-mutilate himself at any opertunity and he leads a rebel army too. There was one other guy but everything about him gives away spoilers and I don't remember his name. Lousy European instruction manuels don't have any character info. The game never takes its seriously though so it never gets too depressing. Only these guys or Tri-Ace can execute a mid-game plot twist like this and then pull off an unexpected ending too. It did seem a bit rushed near the end so I do have to dock 1 point although most RPGs don't do good enough to warrent an import this is one that does. This game appears to be a simple port and not a remake and in this case that is a good thing.
Rating:
Graphics
It seems that the art is a bit awkward to say the least. Reid and Meredy look great but with Farah it just looks like they screwed her up and badly. It looked like the had one artist draw the characters and have another adapt the art before using it. I don't know if it is standard to do that but it was a rather sloppy job at best. The backgrounds are incredibly well done and here's the kicker, day and night effects in both worlds! The underwater world is amazing and then the there's more than 15 anime style animation FMV sequences. I would give the character art a 6 of 10 and background art 10 of 10.
Rating:
Sound
Motoi Sakuraba at his best, if you have heard the music in the Star Ocean, Valkyrie Profile and most of the Tales of series games this game is also one of the games where his talent fits the best for some reason. Too bad the Opening theme was tossed, minus 2 points later. the voice acting is bad in many areas and once again Farah gets shafted. Meredy is so annoying! Her voice is far to high pitched There is also quite a cut job but more on that later. The audio quality is better than earlier titles as the early ones often had pops and cracks in the audio Music 10 of 10 voice acting 6 of 10.
Rating:
Fun
Now it gets ugly, the game controls don't allow you to you to use the analog in battle in the same way as the D pad and thats after you get an item that enables more options in battle. unforutunately the analog sometimes would have the better D pad and vice versa The shape buttons don't work well either and that WILL hurt at the time when you are least expecting it (can't say why as it is a major plot spoiler). One redeeming point here is that this is one of the better versions of the Linear Motion Battle System that this series is famous for, earlier versions were often very slow. When a summon spirit's name is printed in Japanese text during his dialog right after you defeat him. That same untranslted text was in the original playstation version, THE US version, the same error and on a summon spirit no less! Now its time to ask "Who killed the editor" or was it the translator, and same with those little mini-skits, yeah, there goes some character development right out the window. Remember the opening theme, they're out. When will they get Tales of right the presentation is the worst I have seen in the series so far although the notorious Legend of Heroes: A Tear Vermillion has shown disasters like what we have here are hardly the worst they get. I'll start praying to the gods of Namco now for a good Tales of the Abyss.
Rating:
Final Verdict
6.67 (above average)
Reviewed by Tokimemofan, Oct 06, 2006
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