REVIEW | Tales of Symphonia: Remastered

Tales of Symphonia: Remastered review | Tales of Symphonia actually holds a soft spot in my heart since it was the first game that I ever had gotten when I bought the Gamecube when I was a young man. Countless hours spent, and many moments of frustration but also happiness were given to this title. But alas, time moves on and consoles eventually break. Though, the game still persisted. So much so, that this title didn’t get one, but 4 re-releases! Brought to us by Bandai Namco, we’ll check if this Remastered version is a worthy tale to be told, or if it’s a shame being sold… So strap in people, we’re diving straight into the nitty gritty in this review of… Tales of Symphonia: Remastered (for the 5^th time). Enjoy!

What we Liked!

• Nothing| There’s actually nothing good to say about this remaster. Nothing worthwhile or anything about it that really stands out. The story is the same, nothing is added or remade. Bandai Namco actually delivered a worse version of the game than previous versions. A real shame.

Mixed Feelings

• Narration has bad quality| I honestly don’t know how this could have happened. I’m not sure if was my copy or not, but the voiced parts just sounded… Off. And that felt weird since there isn’t anything new that was done for this game. Some touch-ups here and there, higher fidelity, and whatnot. Yet the voices felt devoid of any emphasis. It felt flat. I don’t know how other to explain it other than it feels as if they took every ounce of magic that the previous games had, and drained it all.

What we Disliked

• Bad FPS | If you’re one that hates choppy FPS? Then absolutely steer clear from this one! With FPS more often than not dropping below 15, this really isn’t a fun experience at all. And knowing that the game relies on real-time combat, having your FPS drop beneath an acceptable level is just a big no-no! But it’s not just during the combat phases that this will happen to you. Also during the main exploration phase, you’ll be experiencing drops. This is only during parts where there are a lot of moving particles, but still… It happens. And this is for a game that has seen numerous releases. I guess that this game is the equivalent of saving a .jpeg over and over again. Quality gets lost over time.
  
  
• Slow input | And while I mentioned combat in the FPS topic, I’m also going to quickly mention the combat in itself. So the combat is pretty simple, you move around freely, smashing buttons and racking up combos. But it’s performing these combos that actually is a huge problem at times. Since the game suffers from button input buffering, comboing doesn’t really feel smooth at all. There were times that I was popping off and my guy just dead-on stopped whaling his sword because it didn’t register a quick double tap. Nor is the reaction time all that great either. If there are multiple enemies around you, a quick press of the button results in a 1-second delay before it actually went through.
  
  
• Looks horrible | If I hear, remaster I would honestly think they spruce up the graphics. This game went in the opposite direction and went backward in line with the visual quality. With textures looking more stretched out and character models having a cardboard cutout type of feel, this really doesn’t feel like much of an improvement at all. Also, some functions just don’t work (currently). Like making the text boxes see-through with the slider that originally worked in previous releases, it makes you wonder if they even bothered to quality-check the game before shipping.
  
  
• Loading… | And then we have by far one of the most oppressive features of this version. The loading screens. Every. God. Damn. Time. You’d expect, that a next-gen console, running a game using source code from way back when would be able to run this one like a dream. If that was what you hoped (as much as I had hoped) then you are in for a cold shower my friends. Because this version has the longest loading times I’ve seen in a while. Going into combat? Loading screen. Going out of combat? Loading screen. Traversing out of a town and into the open world? Loading screen. And if these would be like a second or 2, then sure. Why not. But loading screens that take 15 to 20 ish seconds each and every time? No. Hell no. Don’t even want to hear about it!

How long to beat the story | 50+ hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 80+hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Anything J-RPG like.

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