I mean, Arche is of course fantastic and I love everything about her, but the rest… are kinda just okay-ish. (For those that don’t know JP, the joke is that the phrase “defeating Dhaos”, that is, “daosu wo taosu” sounds funny when you say it in Japanese because the two words are phonetically similar)Īs for the main characters, they’re iconic enough for being the first Tales cast, but… they’re actually not that amazing. Hell, the phrase ダオスを倒す is repeated so many times by the characters that even the game itself pokes fun at it in a couple of skits. It really is just about you and your friends trying to save the world from Dhaos, and I’m not even trying to simplify it. The plot, other than a quick surprise revelation at the very end (and by quick, I mean it’s literally summed up in one sentence), isn’t particularly special, though. It has a certain rugged, retro charm, not to mention a whole abundance of references to Norse mythology you can definitely tell that this is the same team that went on to do Valkyrie Profile a few years later. The old 90s legacy certainly works in the game’s favor when it comes to the overall presentation: simply put, the world of Phantasia still feels very much like a traditional medieval fantasy RPG universe when compared to the colorful, somewhat cartoonish and almost sterile look adopted by a number of future titles in the franchise. But other than that, the dungeons are fairly neat, with some pretty cute puzzles here and there there was definitely more effort put into them compared to the dungeons I’ve seen in recent Tales installments. More specifically: having to grind enemies so that they drop a piece of accessory that needs to be equipped on ALL your characters so the intense heat in the dungeon doesn’t kill your party in seconds… was bullshit. The fire dungeon was bullshit, by the way. There’s even a classic onsen scene with peeping involved. You’ll go to the desert and look through oases. There will be a fire dungeon, an ice dungeon, a bunch of other dungeons, and you even visit the cliché of all clichés, that is, a maze-like forest where it’s easy to get lost. You journey across continents in search of powerful elemental summons to bolster your arsenal (you can’t just waltz into Dhaos’ castle with your little stick of a practice sword, after all), visit the ruins of an ancient civilization and later forge The Legendary Sword of Asskicking, basically going through all the usual fantasy JRPG motions in your quest to save the world. Now, when I called this a bog-standard JRPG, I meant it. His parents will stay dead regardless, but still. You could say ol’ Cless is up shit creek at this point and you’d be right, but there’s hope: by finding a way to defeat Dhaos in the past, he could alter history and save the land. The original game, by the way, came out for the SNES and was a huge part of my childhood, so it felt really nice coming back to a title that played a monumental part in shaping my tastes in video games.Īnyway, so Phantasia’s plot is basically about Cless, a budding swordsman whose peaceful life is interrupted when his hometown is destroyed, his friends and family are massacred, and he’s whisked away a hundred years into the past after the evil overlord Dhaos (previously sealed away by another group of heroes) is released from his prison. It’s an interesting take on the whole “we must defeat the evil overlord because… well, just because!” trope that so many JRPGs use without really thinking too hard about it. So, what do I even say about Tales of Phantasia that hasn’t been said a million times? It’s a bog-standard 90s fantasy JRPG, with a group of teenagers saving the world from doom, although, in its defense, there’s actually more to Phantasia’s main villain than meets the eye. At its core, it’s more or less the same game, though it does feature some enhancements and additional content, including a brand new character. Well, more specifically, this is the PSP remake of Phantasia that comes bundled with Narikiri Dungeon X. Here it is: the grand ancestor of all Tales games.
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