Tales of Phantasia
A decade late is better than never.
Preview by Travis Fahs (Email)
March 8th 2006
The Basics: More than 11 years after its initial release on the Super Famicom, Namco sees fit to grace our shores with a proper US release of Tales of Phantasia on the Gameboy Advance.
Hailed by many as one of the greatest RPGs of its generation, and spawning more than a dozen sequels and spin-offs, Tales of Phantasia was a ground-breaking release. Featuring a real-time combat engine with action and strategy elements, an unprecedented amount of voice and music samples, and a lovable cast of characters designed by manga legend Kohsuke Fujishima, Tales of Phantasia certainly holds up better than most games from its day. Its Gameboy Advance iteration combines elements of the original 16-bit release as well as its 1998 PlayStation remake to help bring the experience up GBA standards.
What do we think? Tales of Phantasia has long been one of my favorite RPGs, especially its superb remake on the PlayStation. While its narrative builds on many familiar themes, the characters really endear themselves, and the story it tells is a very effective one. The once breakthrough combat system that was a major selling point may pale compared to later games in the series but it still provides a nice change of pace from the usual turn-based fare.
My only concerns lie in the porting itself. For whatever reason, the GBA was deemed incapable of handling the backgrounds from the PlayStation update, so the result is a mish-mash of 16-bit and 32-bit art assets. On top of this, my time with the import had me frustrated by some overly slow movement in battle, as well as garishly oversaturated colors. Hopefully in the years since its Japanese release Namco will have smoothed out some of these details. We'll let you know in our full review very soon.
