Tales of Symphonia

[Finch]

(finch will refrain from commenting on Xenosaga)

Frogacuda, was it Wolfteam that worked on ToD2? I thought that they left Namco after ToP and that Namco was developing the Tales of games in house. (now where did i read that? i forget)

The NA release of ToD did have at least one instance of in-game speech. :3 But... It wasn't translated or subtitled, so us non-speakers just heard a bunch of human-produced sounds.

/_\ All this talk of ToD2 is just making me sad... X| I might as well add ToS to that list... I'm not very hopeful. (learn Japanese, fool!)

[ferricide]

hrm. why is this on gamecube? seriously. they're goign to have to port this to PS2. if they have any brains.

[Frogacuda]

Originally posted by ferricide
hrm. why is this on gamecube? seriously. they're goign to have to port this to PS2. if they have any brains.

It was part of a deal with Nintendo. That's why they made on for PS2 (which they made a killing on) and one on Nintendo. It'll never get ported though, PS2 won't be able to handle it.

Originally posted by Finch
Frogacuda, was it Wolfteam that worked on ToD2? I thought that they left Namco after ToP and that Namco was developing the Tales of games in house. (now where did i read that? i forget)

Wolfteam has done all the Tales games except Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeons 2 which was done by Alfa System. None of them have ever been done in house at Namco.

You're not completely crazy though, just have your names mixed up. The particular staff at Wolfteam that made Tales of Phantasia did leave to form tri-Ace immediately after finishing ToP. However, the rest of Wolfteam has continued the series and "borrowed" tri-Ace staff as neccessary. Wolfteam and tri-Ace are sister companies, and Star Ocean and Tales are sister series and regularly borrow elements from each ohter.

[Finch]

Wow, Frogacuda. Your knowledge is to be nodded at.

(nods at Frogacuda's knowledge)

[ferricide]

punching back in with some quick ToD2 impressions: i played maybe an hour.

graphics are good, but not mind-blowing. it *is* high res, unlike i was led to believe. nice backgrounds, the sprites are high res but the art/animation quality is not significantly better than eternia even so.

battle system has huge sprites but partially that's because they're scaled in.

there's a new weird thing about the battle system that i don't like -- seems like if you run out of energy you start losing health, so you have to stop doing attacks for a bit for it to recharge. or be more deliberately paced. i'm not entirely sure, yet.

voice acting is poor. technically it's fine, but it sounds very "acting" and not much real emotion. it's extremely competent but just totally uninspired. and there is tons of it. too much.i haven't investigated turning it off in the options like in TOE.

also starting the game and seeing rutee and stan makes me remember how boring the story of ToD was ^_^;;

so far it seems like a decent tales game but i don't see what the big deal is. ToE seemed to have more creativity and variety.

oh,also it grades you after battles, from a range of +2 to -2 but i am not sure what determines it or what it, in turn, determines.

seems solid, but i am too backed up on games i am more into to give this any more time right now. i'd like to investigate the systems further before i make a final judgment, but it's not blowing my mind as yet. =)

[Werewolf]

Originally posted by Frogacuda
Wolfteam

I like that name

Man every time I see this thread I think of all the good games where not gonna get here

Namco of America

[Frogacuda]

Originally posted by Werewolf
I like that name

Man every time I see this thread I think of all the good games where not gonna get here

Namco of America

"Tales of Destiny III" showed up on Namco's E3 list. Could be a US version of ToD2. And ToS is there too. So who knows. Namco may be wising up. I sure hope so. Of course ToS was at last years E3 and they said the "have no plans for a North American release", but I'm ignoring that fact for right now and just going to pretend there will be good news at E3.

[taloony]

Originally posted by Frogacuda
"Tales of Destiny III" ...

Ah well, at least we might get it in some way, shape and form...

[Frogacuda]

Originally posted by taloony


Ah well, at least we might get it in some way, shape and form...

Given the past games in the series, the name will be the least of the problems with the localization, but better than nothing.

And for once I may even be glad they're gonna change the them song. Key to my Heart sucks ass. (I threw a fit when they removed Flying from ToE. BEST THEME EVER).

[taloony]

Theme songs aren't the only thing though, right? I seem to remember something about overworld conversations that got ripped out. I haven't been able to find anything in the faqs on gamefaqs about it though...