I'm sure Dracos or someone else on the forum will come up with a much better review of this game, but since I bought it and have played through a couple of hours I figured I'd give my first impression of it.
Now while I have been a Tales fan ever since I bought Tales of Destiny as my first PSX game, I have never played Tales of Phantasia. PArtially because it was several years after I bought ToD that I even heard the games prequel even existed. Partly because ever FRIGGIN ToP ROM I tried to DL got corrupted or crashed whatever emulator I tried to run it on. So I was pretty happy on hearing it was coming out for the GBA.
Naturally I made sure i had a reserved copy, and since I work nights at walgreens and its pretty dead around 2am I was even able to get some game time in during work. (To date I just got Dhaos reawakened). While this means I am no where far enough into the game to give a indepth review I can give my first impressions.
Story- So far very mysterious and I feel they cut out a bit (Okay is it to much to ask for a little bit more on this Mars charcter? 'Hi I'm the evil warlord who burned your villiage and stole your pendant to unseal a great mage, now I'll go and quietly be disentegrated by the great evil I awakened') Since Time travel is invovled I can only hope theback story is fleshed out a bit fuller. So far there isn't that much that isn't in a cliche RPG. Still like I siad I'm still in the beginning of the story so it may change.
Graphics- Fairly good for a 16 bit game. Interestingly like ToD its the small details that impress me about the graphics in ToP. IN the first pass of the game, there is a cliff where if you stand still you can see not only clouds in the painted backdrop, but shadows will actually pass over the ground and your charcter. When you walk into puddles, ripples will follow. Its the small things like that that impress me about how well this game was crafted. Sure after a while you don't even notice them anymore, but they add to the atmosphere.
On the downside some of the dungeons are DARK. Be prepared to squint to try to find the difference between the wall and the passageway your traveling around. Since I have a GBA and not a SP, I'm not sure if Backlighting will help this problem, make sure if you don't have a backlight to play in a well lit area.
Sound- The sound is pretty good, and there are voice clips. However be warned that ont he tiny GBA speaker some of the voice clips get rather garbled. Others come out clear as a bell. On a side note, is it me or does the opening voice clip about evil in the heart of men sound like Sean Connery? Headphones would probably help here.
Music- I'm actually in a rather unique position here. See I managed to win a few weeks ago the OST for Tales of Phantasia on Ebay. And the 2 CD OST was completly worth the 40 dollars I spent on it. Very nice musical pieces (my one complaint for the OST is the 4 tracks on disc 2 *out of 38* that are less than 10 seconds long) and a pleasure to listen to. I'm not sure if Nintendo will re-release the soundtrack for the game, but if not I highly suggest you try to find the OST if you can.
Combat- It is pretty good, following the trademark Tales 2-d combat system. Its not quite as fast and furious as ToD, but thats more due to teh age of the game than any glitches. I DID run into a couple of slowdown moments while fighting. But they were rare for me and fell more into the catagory of minor nuisances, instead of gamebreaking. Overall I find it fiarly well done and no more complicated than any other Tales game fighting system. Although I do have to wonder why the heck they have that 'stay' command......
I do have one major gripe with the game... You can't find out how much cash you have in the menu screen! COme on this is a BASIC. I don't want to have to look up a peddler to see how much money is in my purse. Especially if I'm mosnter hunting to earn enough moola to buy some pricey armor or sword!
Anyway there you have a brief glance at Tales of Phantasia. Something to tide you over till Draco writes a better review.
While the graphics for the 16 bit version are godly for that era, it bears notice that this is off the 32 bit PSX version ported down to the GBA.
It also bears notice that the port isn't a good one. The color problems come from that and slight adjustments to make it 'workable at all' on the normal GBA.
Dracos