Further Info: "Tales of Phantasia" for the PSP (Playstation Portable) was released in Japan on August 24th, 2006. Six party members are allowed to be in the same party. Curing items, spells, and skills can be used outside or inside of battle. In the menu, you can set the battle strategy and formation for your party, check the status for a character, and customize menu colors, sounds, buttons, battle targeting and voices. Saving is allowed on "Save Points" throughout dungeons, cities, and houses; and on the World Map.
Story Info:
On one hand, Tales of Phantasia's story somewhat exhibits the non-original, cliched, "hero-saves-the-world" type of storyline. However, the game's various plot twists, time travel, and its back stories/side stories (see bottom of the page) make up for the tired-old RPG cliche of the hero savin' the world. The game begins with Cless Alvein and Chester Barklight's town of "Totus" being destroyed by a group of men looking for a pendant the Cless father Miguel gave Cless when Cless turned 15. As storyline progresses, the pendant's function becomes quite clear. Like many of the "Tales of..." games, this game deals with prejudice against groups of people (elves/magic users and half-elves), equality, existentialism, genocide, utopianism, and other philosophical/psychological/societal issues.
Characters:
Skill/Spell System:
Every character has skills/spells. Curing spells can be used outside of battle, as well as in battle. With Cless, one configures four skills to be used in conjunction with a combination of a D-Pad direction button and the skill button. i.e., one skill is performed by pressing the skill button by itself, another skill can be done by pressing the up button+skill button, another with down button+skill button, and another with left or right+skill button. Throughout the game, you can learn combination skills in which two of Cless' regular skills are combined into one move. However, to use these combination skills, the two skills that make up the combination skill must be "Mastered". This means a skill must be used 100 times--and you can check skill usage percentage in Cless' skills menu. Mint learns her skills/spells by leveling up. Arche's skills/spells are found inside of books placed in different places, throughout the world. One must simply search around and examine different locations in order to find them. Sometimes they are located around bosses. Klarth learns his skills/spells (which are Summons), as you progress throughout the story, and then later in the game, some are optional. Chester does not have any skills in this version of the game.
Batle System Info:
This game features a battle system called "LMB", meaning "Linear Motion Battle". Four characters make up your battle party--the party you use to fight battles. The players fight on a one-line plane with enemies. In battle, the player may control any playable character. One can toggle the battle mode for one's character by pressing select button. Initially, the two battle modes are S. Auto (Semi-auto), Manual, and Auto. S. Auto means the human player controls the character (but with limited control over character's movement), Manual means the human player completely controls the character, and Auto means the character is AI-controlled. By default, the player controls Cless Alvein. Cless can attack normally, attack with skills, or block. The "Attack" button itself, as well as different combination of Direction Pad+Attack button are various combinations for attack. However, one can switch Cless from the first position to any other position, and control any character in the 1st player slot.
- With skills/spells for human-controlled players, one configures four skills to be used in conjunction with the "Skill/Spell" button and a combination of a D-Pad direction and the skill/spell button. i.e., one skill/spell is performed by pressing the skill/spell button by itself, another skill/spell can be done with the up button+skill/spell button, another with down button+skill/spell button, and another with left or right+skill/spell button. Blocking is done by pressing and holding the block button, and can be performed with or without a shield (Cless is the only character that can wear shields). Obviously, blocking with a shield is more effective.
Audio/Music:
The composer of the music, again, is "Motoi Sakuraba". The voices (battle voices, dialogue voices, and screen chat voices) are much nicer quality than the battle voices of the SFC Version of the game. The theme song is "Yume wa Owaranai" ("The Dream Will Not Die"), and it is sung by Yukari Yoshida.
Graphics:
The game's character design and art were done by Kosuke Fujishima. Finally, the game's wonderfully-done anime intro FMV is a wonderful introduction of the characters, and to the game.
Difficulty:
Replay:
