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Maybe someone should give Namco Bandai a great big hug, because they seem to have a way of spoiling fans of their popular Tales series. On June 20th 2006, a press conference was held to announce the coming of four new Tales games. With Tales of Destiny 1 & 2 being nothing more than remakes and ports and Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology a continuation of the crossover World universe, Tales of the Tempest for the Nintendo DS remained their only true "new" title. And with developer Dimps being behind production and the very bizarre Misono taking helm of the theme song with Versus, it became even more confusing trying to figure out whether this tempest would really sink or sail.
If you’ve played a Tales game before, it’s likely that Tempest’s story is going to feel somewhat familiar. Tempest, like other Tales games, typically plays the race card, where a society of Ricanths (or half men, half beasts) used to grow in prosperity before humans started sipping the Hatorade and waged war against the Ricanth in hopes of wiping their "tainted" blood off the face of the Earth. 100 years after such war, the remaining few are still being hunted down by the Church and its subordinates. The story begins with 15-year old Caius Quall and his foster father in their small village when a wounded knight expectedly collapses at the entrance, handing Caius a mysterious jewel and a mission to deliver it across the continent. Once Caius’ foster father turns into a werewolf and the shock value finally kicks in, therein on begins the real adventure.
As expected, the character designs were illustrated by Mutsumi Inomata, which is a comforting fact for fans who expected Tempest to diverge too far from the rest of the series. And for a 3D cel-shaded game on the DS, it looks up to snuff, too. Villages and cities are, for the most part, pretty impressive, with nicely detailed houses and picket fences, monuments and more coming from the underpowered handheld. The graphics also stack up well beside another DS RPG, Final Fantasy III. Character models look good, although they tend to take me back to the Nintendo 64 days, with models that have chunky polygons and pointy joints. It’s good for the hardware it was designed for, but at the same time, you can’t help but feel a bit ambivalent in light of all the more powerful hardware out there.
Battles remain fast and fun, with lots of impressively detailed spells and attacks as well as the return of staple Tales items.
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Tales of the Tempest manages to bring back some rather fond memories of past Tales games with the Tri-Linear Motion Battle System, an extension of the series’ famed battle system ripped out of Tales of Rebirth, minus the Force strategies. Battles remain fast and fun, with lots of impressively detailed spells and attacks as well as the return of staple Tales items such as apple and orange gels. Enemies and foes alike fight on a tri-linear field with the ability to hop from plane to plane. Though Tempest goes a step further by allowing players above and below an enemy to directly attack. It puts in focus the fact that the game is 3D, without halting the battle system to 2D restrictions. It’s a nice addition, considering how many times you can trap an enemy by Sword Raining him from both sides.
But even a fast-paced battle system and some pretty impressive cel-shading can't coat Tempest’s visibly weak underpinnings. Tempest’s character development as well as plotline is pretty humdrum for most of the game. You rarely care for what little your party has to say and the moments where you should are usually skipped with the A button. The game just feels like it’s a little too lifeless for its own good. As for progression, the game escalates matters rather quickly, yet evenly, leading the game to take anywhere between 10 to 20 hours to complete, depending on the difficulty played. So if you’re a regular RPG fan, whether or not you enjoy your quests being 20 hour epics is completely subjective, though many players may find this game to pull the curtains a little too soon. Thankfully, it doesn’t suffer from one of Destiny’s greatest flaws of stretching the game to no end.
It’s very hard to recommend Tales of the Tempest since there is so very little about it that really stands out. Granted, it’s another one of Namco's 78 thousand Tales games, which should land in the must-have margin for die hard fans. It’s an average game overall, but a pretty poor Tales game when compared to the rest of the series. Also, whether or not short RPGs take your fancy, you’ll still feel as if the quest ended a little too abruptly for the given asking price. Like most tempests, be glad it’s not one you’ll be caught in the middle of anytime soon.
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