Tales Of Eternia - The Games I Play

I've been working on this thing on and off, but I've gotten to the point that I want to actually write up a review of it. I'm not all the way finished with it, but I'm a bit afraid that the second disk is a bit scratched or isn't reading correctly because the loading times in the area that I'm at are a bit long, and I'm worried that I won't be able to progress any more.

This is the Tales game that started it off for me. This is the one that I ran into forever ago while playing with Ryan, and I thought it was amazing, and the best part is, is that between then and now the game has kept up really well.

The best part about it, is that it's not stupid impossible difficult like Dark Souls, but it's unforgiving enough that if you make a mistake that it hurts. It doesn't hold your hand, but gives you enough freedom to let you do what you need to do.

For example the game gives you subs. You can go and explore the ocean floor, and you're told to just do it. You don't get directions, you don't get told exactly where or what you have to do, you just have the freedom to do whatever you want and explore whatever you want. Do what you want, and it's okay. The same goes for dungeons and mobs. You can grind out for a long time and be levels ahead of where you should be, but if you get lazy, allow yourself to get attacked in a weird way and don't react fast enough, your over leveled party that used to be cleaning up the dungeon without a second thought, suddenly is going through a tough fight and you're having to struggle for everything.

All of the tools and 'gimmicks' that are part of the game are oddly really well balanced and interesting. For example the summons you can split between two of your characters. Depending on which summon you give to which character they get a different skill set and the summons themselves interact with each other in different ways to unlock specific skills if you level them up. It has the potential to be nice and complicated, but they do it in such a way that it works, even if you hate it.

The only part about the game that makes it cringe worthy, but also lovable, is the writing. I don't know if it can be counted as bad writing, or just amazing ideas to keep things light, but each character has their cliche phrase that they love to spout out. Max's "Yeah!" or Meredy's "Biba!" is either borderline genus (because neither of them are all too smart) or just such bad writing that it's wrapped around from the negatives and somehow looped around to be considered good again.

To me, this is the classic Tales game that I judge all of the other Tales games against. It has smooth game play, interesting characters, a solid plot line, good alternate quests and story lines, detailed fighting system and skills, and just what I want for a game.