Tales of Phantasia

aka: Huanxiang Chuanshuo, Tale Phantasia
Moby ID: 10905
SNES Specs
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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

Voices
Character Designer
Game Design
Total Programming
Expression Programming
Graphic Design
Sound Programming
Music Composition
Solo Piano
Based on "Tale Phantasia" written by
Package Designer
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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 65 ratings with 6 reviews)

The first Tales Of is fun...

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

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

Very nice roleplaying adventure, but not without flaws.

The Good
Welcome to my review for Tales of Phantasia, which is a well-known action RPG for the Super NES (and re-released later on the Play Station and the Game Boy Advance). Note that as the game is from Japan, only the Game Boy Advance version is officially existing in western countries, but decent fan translated versions of the game can be found on the internet to play the Super NES version in another language.

The game is overall very well presented and take place in an interesting fantasy world, that shares elements of the real world but where magic, monsters, etc exists. The main difference between Tales of Phantasia and another random RPG is the battle system. It's very innovative, as battles are random, but they take place in a side-view screen, and you directly control Cless (the main protagonist), while the other characters (when there is any) are controlled by the computer, you only give them instructions. While this battle system is not the best I've encountered, it's very innovative. The controls are responsive and easy to learn, and the menus are very easy to use and cleaned out. In battle, you just use A to attack and B to jump or use special abilities and X to open a menu which allow you to give command to your friends or use an item. Very attractive gameplay overall.

Additionally to dungeons and battles, there is some other stuff to have fun with, such as puzzles or accessories giving special abilities to your characters. You also have to eat food in order to have your HP and TP gradually restored outside battle, making the game much easier. It's better to buy food, but you can also grab it from monster or transform food into better food with rune bottles. Such bottles also allows you to transform lot of items into other items, and many of the best items of the game are "secretly" available through this. The game has a lot of secrets, too. I know this is highly subjective, but I really loved the "respect mother nature" and the "team up with elements spirits" things present along the game.

Another element that make Tales of Phantasia worth noting is its very attractive fantasy world, due to the high attention the developers put in every detail of background and characters. The graphics in Tales of Phantasia are, for the most part, incredible, and way superior to many Super NES games. Reflects in water and in mirrors, random animals moving around pretty much everywhere and transparency effects in object's shadows are the most notable efforts put in the graphics. The tile sets are varied through the game and just feel "natural".

The soundtrack of the game is nice and varied, each song fits where it's heard, and the instrument used are varied enough. The battle music is full of energy and never get annoying. The sound effects are less varied, but good enough and does their jobs. Additionally, this is the first console game ever that has voice acting during battles, and even better the first console game that ever have a intro song WITH LYRICS ! The quality of the voice is questionable, but anyway it's here, and on the Super NES, as an unique proof this was technically possible, and emulators seems to support it without problems.

The story through the game is not the best I've ever seen in a RPG, but this is compensated by well developed characters and frequent fun cutscenes, which in fact made the game more fun and interesting than a very complex storyline. The story even involve time travel several times, trust me, you won't get bored with Tales of Phantasia. Also, I shouldn't give credit to the game for this because this is not official, but the fan translation is good and fluid, and you won't have much trouble to follow what is going on.

The Bad
In fact Tales of Phantasia is not flawless. The worst flaw comes from the battle system itself, the way the monster moves too fast for Cless to smash them, and the fact they will too often smash him just when he's about to attack (taking advantage of his instant off-guard) and stunning him for a while, which is annoying. Monsters keep attacking very quickly leaving you few chance to strike back. The only good instant to attack is when a monster is just about to attack, so it's his turn to be stunned, but once you see the monster is about to attack, but when you see it it's already too late, because if you're starting an attack right now you'll be attacked first and be stunned. The game can get frustrating at times, as you can encounter a stronger enemy anywhere and be whipped out in a matter of second if you just attack the wrong time. The AI of your friends is sometimes annoying, as they keep calling spells when a simple sword hit from Cless would kill the monster. The worst was when they are calling a spell that the monster absorb, or an instant death spell that never works (fortunately you can disable them in the menu, but not in battle). The very worst was when Cless is equipped with an elemental weapon that the monsters absorbs, as every smash from hit will cure him, and you can do nothing about that !

Another thing that bothered me was the reused places that are spawned pretty much everywhere, and rooms that are abnormal and loop themselves in a weird way. This would have been fun here and there, but they really overused that kind of stuff along the game and that was annoying. There were glitches here and there in the game, especially in the menu, most of them are probably due to the translators corrupting some data somewhere accidentally.

The Bottom Line
Tales of Phantasia is a good action RPGs, that take place in a charming world, and anyone who likes fantasy and exploration should like this game. RPG gamers hating Square Soft for some reason (popularity ?) will claim this is the best game for the SNES just because this game is not by Square but by Wolf Team and Namco. Honestly I think the game is great but not that great. It should still not be missed, as is has interesting content, especially near the beginning of the adventure. At the end it can become much more repetitive, but it doesn't get too annoying. The game can get really hard at times, but levelup fixes the problem in no time, and the battle system while flawed does not get too boring, so levelup isn't boring either. Anyone should give this great game a try I think. It took me 48 hours to beat hit with about the half of subquests/secrets done, which is long for a Super NES game. So yeah, I'd recommend download the game and give it a try. I don't recommend buying the GBA version by the way, because I tried a friend's copy and pretty much everything, including the graphics, the music and especially the battle system was worsened. Just play the SNES version instead.

SNES · by Bregalad (937) · 2007

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

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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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 September 17, 2023.