Tales of Phantasia
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| Tales of Phantasia {{#if:{{{image|}}}|<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">{{{image|}}} | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Wolf Team/Namco Tales Studio {{#if:{{{publisher|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)<td>{{{publisher|}}} |
| Release date(s) | Image:Flag of Japan.svg December 15 1995 Image:Flag of the United States.svg March 6, 2006 Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg March 31, 2006 |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer {{#if:{{{ratings|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)<td>{{{ratings|}}} |
| Platform(s) | Super Famicom, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation {{#if:{{{media|}}}|<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media<td>{{{media|}}} |
Tales of Phantasia (or sometimes Tales of Fantasia) (Japanese: テイルズ オブ ファンタジア, Teiruzu obu Fantajia ) is a Super Famicom game in the RPG genre created by Namco and released in 1995. It was later re-released or remade on various other gaming machines, including the Game Boy Advance.
Tales of Phantasia launched the popular Tales series which has since become the third most successful in Japan, after Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, although it has yet to rival those series in America.
Namco had deliberately kept this game Japan-only, believing that Namco of America would not make enough money from the game to warrant its publishing. However, the Super Famicom (SFC) version of the game was unofficially translated not only into English, but also into Italian, German, French, Spanish, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Finnish (by various online translation groups under the supervision of DeJap Translations who made the English version, and using the Japanese version as a reference). Not only has the game been fan translated, Gingo17 attempted to translate the actual in game speech. This project is titled "Vocals of Phantasia" and is at version .999.
Tales of Phantasia was developed by Wolf Team, written and programmed by Yoshiharu Gotanda, and scored by Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura. The character designs were created by manga artist Kosuke Fujishima. It was the first SFC game to be 48MBit in size and was also the first to feature streamed audio voices, made possible by sound programmer Hiroya Hatsushiba. Specifically, this sound engine was titled the "Flexible Voice Driver," and overcame the SNES's small audio memory capacity by swapping short vocal samples on the fly. The fan translators did not dub the voices, however.
Tales of Phantasia was remade three years later for the Sony PlayStation (PS1). The remake was released only a few months after the sequel Tales of Destiny had been released. The remake runs on an enhanced Tales of Destiny engine and benefits from all the enhancements and refinements to the gameplay it had to offer. In addition, it gave birth to many new features still seen (and being improved upon) in modern Tales sequels today, such as cooking, titles, event voice-acting, voice-acted face skits, and the ability to control any party member (as well as take Cless, the hero, out of the fighting party). Many other changes, such as adding a fully animated anime style opening sequence, new sidequests, new spells, a new summon, a new playable character, and a more generous battle encounter rate were also made.
In 2003, Tales of Phantasia was ported to Nintendo's Game Boy Advance handheld system. This version combines various elements from both the original SFC and PS1 versions. The sprites and battle graphics were from the PS1 version, while the opening credits sequence, map, and field graphics are from the SFC version. The GBA version features a handful of original additions and sidequests, and many, but not all of the additions made to the PS1 version. This version of the game has been localized to North America and Europe by Nintendo, and was released on March 06, 2006 in North America.
Of the three versions released, long-time, hardcore Tales series fans generally consider the PlayStation remake of Tales of Phantasia to be the superior version, because of its enhancements. The PlayStation remake is also undergoing fan translation like the Super Famicom original did in 2001.
Tales of Phantasia is regarded as a classic gaming gem and an import classic by some RPG fans, because it is a quality game but is not well-known by average gamers since it was never released outside of Japan. It had some of the most impressive graphics ever produced on the SNES/SFC, a memorable soundtrack, and an innovative battle system (Linear Motion Battle System, a real time battle system similar to Street Fighter) that distinguished it from all other RPGs of the time.
Tales of Phantasia also makes extensive references to Norse mythology, with many locations named after Scandinavian mythical locations (Midgard, Valhalla, etc) and gods (Thor, Fenrir, Heimdall, etc), weapons such as Odin's Gungnir, the Tree of Life Yggdrasill, and countless others. It is likely that this is due to Fujishima's contribution to the game, as his most famous work (Oh My Goddess) heavily borrows from Norse themes.
Tales of Phantasia was released in the midst of what many gamers consider to be the Golden Age of RPGs. Other games of that era that were of comparable influence include Chrono Trigger, the original Star Ocean, Final Fantasy IV, V and VI, Terranigma, the SFC Dragon Quest games and the early Seiken Densetsu games . In particular, Star Ocean is often regarded as a spiritual cousin to Tales of Phantasia. It was developed by tri-Ace, a company founded by members of Namco's original Wolf Team, who created Tales of Phantasia, as a result it employs many similar gameplay and battle traits found in the earlier game.
Tales of Phantasia is now also a 4 episode anime OVA, based off the game's plot.
While the storylines in most games in the main Tales series are not connected to each other (much like Final Fantasy), Tales of Phantasia has two sequels, Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon and Tales of the World: Summoner's Lineage, and a prequel, Tales of Symphonia. (Many fans are confused by the fact that Tales of Symphonia was not announced as a prequel when it was first released, but its creators, Namco Japan have confirmed the storyline connection between the two.Template:Ref)
Contents |
Storyline
Tales of Phantasia begins by showing a heroic battle between four unknown warriors against an evil sorceror, Dhaos, whose outcome changed the fate of the world. The warriors were victorious, and sealed Dhaos away using the power of two pendants, thus returning peace to the world.
The adventure begins in the town of Totus ten years later, where a young swordsman named Cless Alvein and his best friend, archer Chester Barklight, live. The town is destroyed by a dark knight named Malice and his soldiers while Cless and Chester are out hunting in the forest. Every villager is killed in the attack, including Chester's sister and both of Cless' parents. While Chester is in mourning, Cless vows for revenge and proceeds to the town of Euclid in search of the dark knight.
Unfortunately, he is betrayed there by his cowardly uncle and is thrown in jail, captured by Malice. The heirloom pendant entrusted to Cless by his father Miguel is taken away from him, but Cless does not know of its significance in holding Dhaos sealed, nor that his father was one of the original four who sealed him away.
Cless meets Mint Adnade (a Mana healer) in the jail, and she joins the party and helps him escape. Soon afterwards, the party meets Chester again at Tornix Morrison's house, another of the four original warriors. Tornix informs the party that he knew Cless' parents and Mint's mother quite well, and they once fought together to seal away a great evil. But he is horrified to hear that Cless' pendant has been stolen, and immediately runs off towards a nearby masoleum. Cless and party figure out that Malice must be there, and follow Tornix without him knowing. Unfortunately, Malice manages to release Dhaos using the pendants before Tornix and party can stop him. With no hope of dealing with the all-powerful Dhaos for now, Tornix transports Mint and Cless back in time so that they can learn about Dhaos and acquire the skills to defeat him. Chester and Tornix are left behind to suffer Dhaos' wrath.
In the past, Dhaos is still causing chaos with an imminent war against the two largest human countries - Alvanista and Midgard. These events happened almost a century before he was sealed. In this time period, Dhaos' evil pervades throughout most of the world, and he even controls the prince of Alvanista's royal family. The party learns that the only way to defeat Dhaos is by using magic, but neither Cless nor Mint can practice magic - only Elves and half-Elves can use the powerful magic spells. But they soon meets Klarth F. Lester (a summoner) and Arche Klaine (a half-elf witch), who join the quest. Klarth is a researcher of summoning (the act evoking a magical spirit or elemental) - and is thus one of the only humans who can indirectly use magic, by contracting with the spirits via rings and then summoning them to attack in battle. He suggests that the spirit Luna may be able to help their quest, and the party travels across the world to the deserts of Freeland, the depths of the ancient dwarven caverns of the Morlia Gallery, and to mountains above and caves below in search of rings and spirits to help them fight Dhaos.
Eventually, the party reaches Midgard and succeeds in helping fend off Dhaos' army in the war called the Valhalla Conflict. They continue to Dhaos' castle in search of the fiend, in the hope of restoring peace to the world and avenging the deaths of their loved ones. After opening a lock which requires a bit of coodination by the player, an epic battle with Dhaos ensues, and good overcomes evil. Unfortunately, Dhaos escapes.
The party travels back to their original time to interrupt the resurrected Dhaos from killing Tornix and Chester in the masoleum, and fight him once more. Good overcomes evil yet again, and the cave begins to collapse on itself. The party escapes and then decides that, with Dhaos most-likely dead, they have succeeded and can part ways so that Klarth and Arche can return to their original time. But at that moment, a traveller arrives from the future to inform them that Dhaos is still alive and is terrorizing the future. Cless and company immediately travel forward in time fifty years and have to deal with Dhaos and his minions once and for all.
Upon the advancement of their journey, Cless, Mint, Arche, Klarth, and Chester learned of the Eternal Sword, which is considered to be the weapon to eliminate Dhaos once and for all. After acquiring it, Cless and the gang ventures into Dhaos's floating castle, which is invisible to the naked eye, yet is visible with the Eternal Sword in hand. When they reach the top, they battle against Dhaos, whom they learn is much more than a simple sorcerer. He happens to being from another world that is trying to keep the Tree of Life (Yggdrasill, or as Dhaos calls it, Giant Kharlan Tree) from its demise. He needed the Mana to sustain his own people on the planet Derris-Kharlan. After his defeat, Cless and the gang return to the tree and Goddess Martel offers them a bit of history, which in turn come to realize that in the end, Dhaos was only trying to save his people and by defeating him, the gang annihilated his world. In the end, the Klarth and Arche return to their own time. Perhaps the situation between the human world and Dhaos relates to the phrase, "One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter." Martel, however, after the party leaves, decides to form a Mana Seed and travels to Dhaos' world to save their Tree of Life. In the Super Famicom version, Dhaos's corpse as well as Martel herself both become part of the seed, but in the remakes, Martel sends the Mana into space including only Dhaos. Template:Endspoiler
Localization problems
Many fans are unhappy with the localized GBA version, and especially with the names that Nintendo of America chose, likely in part because they were introduced to the game through the DeJap translation. Some fans hope that Namco will end up translating the PS1 remake. However, the chances that happening are not very great.
Later games in the series
Many other games have joined the Tales RPG series, but few have been released outside of Japan. The most recent edition, Tales of the Abyss, has recently been released on Sony's Playstation 2. There have been 13 games in the series thus far. The GameCube edition was released in English, and even in Europe, a first for the Tales series. The Game Boy Advance version of Tales of Phantasia was finally released in North America on March 6, 2006.
Playable Characters
Names in parentheses refer to the American Game Boy Advance translation of Tales of Phantasia.
Image:Phantasia Cress.PNG*Cless Alvein (Cress Albane) (クレス・アルベイン, Kuresu Arubein ): The seiyuu (Japanese voice actor) is Takeshi Kusao. He is the frontline warrior, able to equip various melee weapons such as swords, spears, axes and the heaviest armor. He can also use various techniques in battle. His techniques can be gained through leveling and he gain combos from Secret Skill Books.
Image:Phantasia Chester.PNG*Chester Barklight (Chester Burklight) (チェスター・バークライト, Chesutā Bākuraito ): The seiyuu is Takeshi Kusao for the Super Famicom version and Kentarou Itou for the PlayStation version. He mostly provides support in battle by shooting arrows with his bow from the rear of the party and he can also use various techniques in battle. His techniques can be gained through leveling.
Image:Phantasia Mint.PNG**Mint Adnade (Mint Adenade) (ミント・アドネード, Minto Adonēdo ): The seiyuu is Satomi Koorogi for the Super Famicom version and Junko Iwao for the PlayStation version. The healer of the party, using her rod she is able to cast various healing and support magic in battle. Her magic can be gained through leveling.
Image:Phantasia Claus.PNG**Klarth F. Lester (Claus F. Lester) (クラース・Ｆ・レスター , Kurāsu F. Resuta ): The seiyuu is Kazuhiko Inoue. Having exclusive knowledge of spirits, he is able to call upon them in battle with his books to wreak havoc on the enemy party. His summons are gained by making pacts with spirits after usually defeating them and using a pact ring.
Image:Phantasia Arche.PNG**Arche Klaine (Arche Klein)(アーチェ・クライン , Āche Kurain ): The seiyuu is Mika Kanai. A magic user, just like Mint, but she uses offensive magic instead. She also flies using her brookmstick. Her spells can be gained through spellbooks, either found or bought throughout gameplay.
Image:Phantasia Suzu.PNG**Suzu Fujibayashi (藤林すず , Fujibayashi Suzu ): The seiyuu is Taeko Kawata. Suzu appears on the Super Famicom original as a non-playable character, but she is playable in the PlayStation and Game Boy Advance remakes. She is a young ninja, she uses her katana and ninja skills to eliminate the enemy. Her skills can be gained by scrolls or being taught by other ninjas.
Music
The original game soundtrack was arranged by veteran composer, Motoi Sakuraba. Sakuraba has a cameo appearance in the SNES version of the game. Also, there a few vocal tracks associated with the game or anime:
- "Yume wa Owaranai" (The Dream Will Not Die) - First heard in the Super famicon version, it was featured in the original animated opening to the PS1 release. It was performed by yo-mi(PS1 version) and Yoshida Yukari (SFC & GBA version) respectively.
- "Hoshi wo Sora Ni" (A Star in the Sky) - performed by Yoshida Yukari. This is the PS1 ending
- "Yume no Hate" (The End of a Dream) - performed by Masami Suzuki. Tale of Phantasia THE ANIMATION's opening song
- "Priere" (Prayer) - performed by Masami Suzuki. Tale of Phantasia THE ANIMATION's ending song
Screenshot comparison
Screenshots of typical battles:
 Super Famicom (English fan-translation) |
 Game Boy Advance |
 Sony PlayStation |
Notes
Template:Note - One such confirmation was by producer Yoshizumi in the Tales Ring radio show, volume 12.
External links
- Template:Moby game
- GameFAQs information page (SNES)
- GameFAQs information page (GBA)
- GameFAQs information page (PlayStation)
- Tales of Phantasia, information and multimedia on every version, including the anime
- Tales of Phantasia official North American website
- Anime News Network: Tales of Phantasia the Animation
- Temple of Undine (fan site)
Template:Talesde:Tales of Phantasia fr:Tales of Phantasia ja:テイルズオブファンタジア