However, I’m not opposed to minor changes here and there if it means a more dynamic reading experience for English cultural and linguistic sensibilities. Purists who balk at creative liberties will be happy that the script stays true to its roots. At least the colorful Japanese voices add the needed personality to the lifeless words. The text stays relatively true to the Japanese script and is free of any technical errors, but it reads stiffly at times and lacks the vivid personality of that well-known fan translation from years ago. Unfortunately, the updated script is only a mild improvement over the utterly dull and lifeless Game Boy Advance localization. It’s a rollicking adventure that starts out slowly, but builds up and gets better as it goes along. I enjoyed it a lot when I first played the game, and it still remains one of my favorite stories within the Tales series. JRPG stories have become more intricate and involved since Tales of Phantasia, but a good ol’ fashioned adventure like this never goes out of style, so long as the storytelling is engaging. The graphical highlight is the polygonal overworld that’s brightly colored, if blocky and dated-looking. I don’t necessarily need fully redone graphics, but some slightly refreshed sprites and tiles optimized for the platform, a more vivid color palette, reduced pixilation, and smoother overall rendering would have been acceptable. The character portraits in the menus look crisp, but most everything else looks pixilated and drab, making for a jarring contrast. Not only could the anime opening have used some freshening up to optimize it for the iPad’s HD resolution, but the in-game graphics could have used some restoration too. The best piece of music from Tales of Phantasia is that Yukari Yoshida vocal theme and its absence upsets me big time! On a positive note, the fully voiced cutscenes retain the fantastic Japanese voices, so purists need not cry foul there. As much as I love Tales of Phantasia, and recognize the painstaking effort that went into the music, the soundtrack simply does not hold a candle to such stellar golden-age 16-bit soundtracks, such as those of Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger or Phantasy Star IV, to name just a few. The rest of the soundtrack is solid, but the compositions themselves are not the most memorable. To be denied such a defining aspect of this game in not one but both localizations is an absolutely unforgivable travesty. That Yukari Yoshida song still remains one of my favorite video game vocal themes, and the version used for the PlayStation remake is even better. This was unheard of on a cartridge and it blew my mind. When Tales of Phantasia first came out on the Super Famicom, its sonic strength was in its opening song with full vocals. Even more disappointing was the generic piece of instrumental music backing it up. This is a shame, because it looked fantastic in the PlayStation version and deserves to look beautiful here too. When I first booted up, I was immediately disappointed by the poorly rendered anime opening that was not optimized for the iPad’s HD resolution. Sadly, I had to sell my imports some years back to pay off debts, and after both the GBA localization and this new iOS localization, I wish I hadn’t sold my A-grade versions of the game. I never had the opportunity to play the Full Voice Edition of Tales of Phantasia for PSP, which is a more definitive version of the game that this iOS port is based on. It hurt me to give the game relatively low scores then, and it hurts me to do it again now.īack when I was a semi-avid importer and actually had disposable income and free time, two of my most beloved import purchases were my Super Famicom cartridge of Tales of Phantasia and the PlayStation remake. Some of you may remember my review of the Game Boy Advance port of Tales of Phantasia about seven years ago, where I lamented that the localization and porting sucked the life dry of one of my favorite JRPGs.
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