Tales of Phantasia
Description official descriptions
In Tales of Phantasia the player controls a young boy named Cless, who lives together with his parents in a quiet village. It was a day like all the others when Cless decided to go hunting with his best friend Chester. Chasing a wild boar, Cless discovered a strange talking tree in the forest who was pleading him for help. But as soon as it stopped speaking, the two friends heard the sound of an alarm. They returned to the village and found it burnt down, and all its inhabitants murdered. Before Cless' mother died in his arms, she told him this terrible massacre had something to do with the pendant she and her husband gave Cless for his birthday... what connection could there be? Cless decides to visit his uncle who lives in another town, but he doesn't realize his journey will take him to much more remote places than that.
Tales of Phantasia is a Japanese-style role-playing game with an unusual combat system: the battles are action-based and are fought on separate side-scrolling screens. The player directly controls one character, while other party members are controlled by AI. It is possible to pause the game at any time and use magic, items, or choose an overall strategy for the allies.
Spellings
- テイルズ オブ ファンタジア - Japanese spelling
- 幻想传说 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
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Credits (SNES version)
74 People (69 developers, 5 thanks) · View all
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Based on "Tale Phantasia" written by | |
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[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 76% (based on 24 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 66 ratings with 6 reviews)
The Good
Along with Eternia (which I happened to play first), the worlds are full of possibilities for exploration - in Phantasia through time, Eternia through space. Another RPG classic that includes time travel central to its plot... but Chrono Trigger, on the other hand, has branching timelines and the possibility of indefinite travel, which ToP lacks (only the love side-quest has a noticeable difference when in the same place in the future, whereas CT had loads).
Phantasia also has quite a complementing anime made to be seen after the game itself is played... I liked the simple fact that they displayed nearly all the in-game spirits.
The Bad
Some characters weren't well-defined... Mint has a story, but she's not as bombastic as Farah or as crucial and solemn as Meredy, in comparison to Eternia's characters.
Also, with regards to the PSX version specifically, getting Pluto at the end is just frustrating...
The Bottom Line
Sweet and cute, mostly.
PlayStation · by Ymir (18) · 2014
Quite possibly better than CT.
The Good
I approached ToP thinking this wasn't going to be a good game. I was totally wrong. I love the graphics. The background images for the battles are amazing, the town art is wonderful, the sprite art is also beautiful, everything about it is amazing. The score for the game is breathtaking. If anyone has ever played Star Ocean: The Second Story will automatically feel the same about the score for this game. The battles are incredibly astounding for the SNES. They allow you to move freely around the battle area and you have the freedom to attack when you wish. Your characters also have the ability to gain battle abilities which are greater in power than the normal attacks. The story is gripping. When it comes to parts in the game where towns get destroied and a group of people die, you really start to feel bad for the heroes and anybody else who was involved.
The Bad
The only real thing that irritated me was the voice acting. I found it to be an annoying aspect to the game and it gets really annoying when a song with voice overs starts playing while you are playing the game. The opening quote really doesn't have anything to do with the game as far as I can see.
The Bottom Line
This is a definite must have for any hard core RPG player. You'll think twice about dissing another RPG of this calibur again.
SNES · by Roo (4) · 2004
Still a Great game, but 11 years later, its not the same
The Good
I really liked the addition of the cooking part of the game and the change to a different title, as opposed to that long way of using a skill over and over again to master it.
It finally came over here to North America, its only been 11 years since it was finally distributed (I am not counting DeJap's SNES translation).
The Bad
The game lacks a lot of things the original version had.
First off, the battle program is not really that great, its a lot harder than the original, and the game is a bit choppy sometimes in a battle scene. Ironically the original had one programmer doing almost all of the programming (Yoshiharu Gotanda, that is) and the original still had better programming, even though this version had 5 programmers.
Characters were smaller in the original, and were a lot better refined, you would think that they would be better, but they are not (Than again all the graphics crew went to Tri-Ace). Only the dungeons and cities look like the original SNES version, characters do not look like it at all.
The sound itself is still great, and is still composed by the two out of three composers from when this game was originally developed (Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura) , but you can really tell that sound is lacking the expertise of Hiroya Hatsushiba's sound programming ability.
The Bottom Line
Always good to try the original of the Tales Series. The original game is better if you want to play it, but any diehard should still buy the game for Game Boy Advance, as it is a real good thing to add to a collection.
Game Boy Advance · by Scott G (765) · 2006
Trivia
Super Famicom version
The cartridge size of the game for the Super Famicom version is quite impressive (48 megabit), and the game even has some voice acting.
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Related Sites +
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OC ReMix Game Profile
Fan remixes of music from Tales of Phantasia, including the album "Summoning of Spirits". -
Romhacking: Tales of Phantasia
English fan translation for the SNES version -
Tales of Phantasia
Official game web site by Nintendo of America. -
Wikipedia: Tales of Phantasia
Information about Tales of Phantasia at Wikipedia -
tales-cless.org
English fan translation for the PlayStation version
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Unicorn Lynx.
Game Boy Advance added by pedantic. PSP added by Fleshgrinder Bloodpack.
Additional contributors: chirinea, Alaka, gamewarrior, Ben K, Neville, DreinIX, Caelestis, Thomas Thompson, darkpilot.
Game added November 6, 2003. Last modified April 9, 2024.