Tales of Legendia is a well crafted game, but is it for everyone?
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The Tales series has become very renowned and well respected since its debut in the late 90’s. Legendia is the first installment on the PS2, following up from the Gamecube exclusive, Tales of Symphonia. Sporting a huge cast of characters, dozens upon dozens of gameplay hours, a well composed musical score, an interactive battle system, and some full anime cut scenes, Legendia a well suited sequel to the series.
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Senel, the game’s main character, wants nothing more than to protect her sister, Shirley. After traveling on a rough sea, both these characters crash land on a ship that mimics an island. On this ship, dubbed the Legacy, Shirley is assumed to be a character from a well known legend. This causes kidnappings, thievery, and deception around every bend in the story line; well suited for an RPG.
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Breaking away from the typical menu driven turned based combat, Tales is known for using a real time 2D fighting system. Borrowing elements from Namco’s popular fighting game Soul Caliber, Legendia uses a real time fighting engine for its random battles. Real time combat allows for a more interactive experience and keeps the action faster paced. While it is possible to simply button mash your way through the game, it is in the player’s best interest to use combos and special powers. Normal attacks are mapped to the “X” button while all special moves use the “O” button. These circle button moves are triggered by pressing both the button and its d-pad counterpart. This allows for four special moves to be mapped to a single button. All this customization is easily available through the menu screen.
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For those people who do not necessarily want to take part in battles, the game features an Automatic setting in which the computer A.I. takes control of all aspects of battle. While this feature is a nice option to have, opting to use the Automatic control will most likely result in viewing the Game Over screen, especially during boss battles. However, there is a hybrid option that combines both manual player input with the help from the computer A.I. This option will probably suit most players as it will do certain things automatically, such as block incoming attacks or use the best special attack move according to distance from the enemy.
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Besides the usual random battles, the game also has a few other entertaining mini games and side quests like cooking and upgrading weapons. Like previous Tales games, cooking is quite a detailed experience. After a recipe is found, the proper ingredients must be collected. Once cooked, bread and other goodies are created usually with health regenerating characteristics.
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Graphically, the game looks great in its simplistic kind of way. Using an anime type style, all characters and environments are well modeled and designed. Because of the simple fantasy setting, do not be expecting high-res realistic themes or complicated animations. The game retains a basic graphical value, which completely fits its atmosphere.
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The game’s soundtrack is well above average and fits very nicely into this RPG world. While the quality may not be as high as Final Fantasy, it is still pretty damn good. Voice actors also narrate most of the game’s dialog. All voice narration is well acted and a great addition to the overall presentation. However, this spoken dialog has been heavily compressed, generating muffled and stunted sound. The popping “p’s” and squeaking “s’s” are especially annoying. The game does feature tons and tons of spoken dialog, so it is not surprising that some sound loss is present.
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Tales of Legendia is a long game. Not only in time wise to beginning to end, but through all character conversation. Most dialog in the game is long winded and requires patience. For this reason alone, Legendia is not for everyone. The slower pace of the dialog, the amount of random battles, and extra time spent in the menu screen all test the level of patience required to play this game. But, there are other minor nuisances that add unnecessary time to the game’s clock. After each battle, the game will calculate how well you performed. But in order to see the items found or abilities gained, the player must press the Start button. Why make the player press Start to see information that should already by on screen? Also, before each random battle, the screen does this water ripple transition. While this transition is cool, the game would have benefited from faster loading. And why do I have to wait for the camera to slightly pan up after each random battle on the overworld map before I can start moving again?
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Legendia is a good game. But everyone will not be able to maintain the patience to play it. The slower pacing of the game is more reminiscent of a traditional RPG. Therefore, if you like your RPGs with the traditional save the girl story while gaining levels and fighting random battles, Legendia will surely please.