Tales of the Fetch Quest
Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology is neither radiant nor my-thological, but it is almost pure fanservice. Shame it's not an actual Tales game, though.
Published: August 1, 2007
Okay, fine, I'll admit it: I'm a recent Tales convert. I got lucky; I realistically came into the series with Tales of the Abyss, which some will probably admit wasn't a bad way to get properly indoctrinated -- most obviously because the game took a massive level of faith in the series to get past the complete douche of a main character. But it eventually paid off in a big way and became one of my top 5 favorite RPGs on the PlayStation 2. Given the wealth of great role-playing games on the system, that's no small feat.
So I started backtracking, playing some of the earlier games. At the advice of friends and the more hardcore of the fanbase I explored the GameCube Tales of Symphonia first then started plugging back into the PS2 archive. Though I'm by no means a well-rounded or seasoned vet of the series, I at least got the gist of what the series was about.
Guess what? Tales of the World sure as shit ain't it. One of the best parts of the Tales series is getting a sense of character growth and personality and exploration of the world and guess what else? Tales of the World is seriously lacking in two of those respects. Is it cute? Sure, I suppose. Is it well translated? Hell yes, it might be the most personable of the entire bunch, but whereas the series in the past has been about the growth of the main characters and exploring some semblance of a world, ironically a game called Tales of the World keeps you roped into a painfully small realm.
Now, part of me can understand the reasoning: the PSP isn't exactly the PS2-level portable powerhouse some thought it to be. There are some serious deficiencies, but games like Brave Story are showing you can do a by-the-numbers RPG without many concessions, and though it may not be a huge free-roaming world, even something top-down would have worked. Instead, the game relies on the copious amounts of fan service, a great translation and a fantastic battle system to carry it. Were the battle system completely new, that might have added more oomph, but instead it's merely something that should be in a Tales game -- much like a proper adventure and interesting storyline.
Part of the disappointment (most of it, really) stems from the fact that there's an awful lot of tedium and repetition in the game. Going on repeated fetch quests for a handful of items in the same dungeons with look-alike floors just drains all the energy out of the story. The idea is that your created character was birthed from the World Tree to defend it from a great evil that wants to strip-mine the world of its resources. Apparently you do this by joining a guild and then running around on a single quest at a time, talking to townspeople and then running into a dungeon for a quick 5-10 minute jaunt through the environment to bag creatures or harvest resources.
Yes, there is something approaching a story, but it's handed out so slowly that all the busy work in between becomes the focal point rather than in exploring some of the characters. Worse still, because "you" in the game have no real back story nor an actual personality, there's no one to glom onto or identify with aside from plenty of familiar faces that you've seen in the other Tales games. Their conversations are rife with references to those previous games, but even still, it feels like a reunion of old faces rather than something fresh and new.
So I started backtracking, playing some of the earlier games. At the advice of friends and the more hardcore of the fanbase I explored the GameCube Tales of Symphonia first then started plugging back into the PS2 archive. Though I'm by no means a well-rounded or seasoned vet of the series, I at least got the gist of what the series was about.
Guess what? Tales of the World sure as shit ain't it. One of the best parts of the Tales series is getting a sense of character growth and personality and exploration of the world and guess what else? Tales of the World is seriously lacking in two of those respects. Is it cute? Sure, I suppose. Is it well translated? Hell yes, it might be the most personable of the entire bunch, but whereas the series in the past has been about the growth of the main characters and exploring some semblance of a world, ironically a game called Tales of the World keeps you roped into a painfully small realm.
Now, part of me can understand the reasoning: the PSP isn't exactly the PS2-level portable powerhouse some thought it to be. There are some serious deficiencies, but games like Brave Story are showing you can do a by-the-numbers RPG without many concessions, and though it may not be a huge free-roaming world, even something top-down would have worked. Instead, the game relies on the copious amounts of fan service, a great translation and a fantastic battle system to carry it. Were the battle system completely new, that might have added more oomph, but instead it's merely something that should be in a Tales game -- much like a proper adventure and interesting storyline.
Part of the disappointment (most of it, really) stems from the fact that there's an awful lot of tedium and repetition in the game. Going on repeated fetch quests for a handful of items in the same dungeons with look-alike floors just drains all the energy out of the story. The idea is that your created character was birthed from the World Tree to defend it from a great evil that wants to strip-mine the world of its resources. Apparently you do this by joining a guild and then running around on a single quest at a time, talking to townspeople and then running into a dungeon for a quick 5-10 minute jaunt through the environment to bag creatures or harvest resources.
Yes, there is something approaching a story, but it's handed out so slowly that all the busy work in between becomes the focal point rather than in exploring some of the characters. Worse still, because "you" in the game have no real back story nor an actual personality, there's no one to glom onto or identify with aside from plenty of familiar faces that you've seen in the other Tales games. Their conversations are rife with references to those previous games, but even still, it feels like a reunion of old faces rather than something fresh and new.
