“Name the great RPG series of our time. Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, the Mana series and too many others to condense into an opening paragraph. Another in Japan is right inbetween that cult and mainstream status of RPGs, and that’s the Tales series. Tales of Phantasia is finally coming from across the pond to the United States and is mixing the RPG scene up with a new real-time control scheme. No more waiting for turns. This time around, the Tales series comes to the Gameboy Advanced and could turn out to be a memorable little adventure.
The story is straight fantasy-fare. Young Cress Albane finds out his village is destroyed and goes on a journey through space and time to find the evil doers who commited this crime. So far this is normal stuff. As said earlier, what sets this apart from normal RPG’s is the new Linear Motion Battle System. Namco’s new battle scheme has the player using the directional buttons to fight instead of waiting to press the “attack” button. You move tCress and attack while the other characters in the party are controlled by the CPU. This may lead to a few annoying deaths but is meant to give the game more of an action feel then that of the traditional RPG. Another new approach is the use of the addition of cooking. Instead of stocking up on potions from the local item shop, you must find recipes and gather ingrediants so you can create your own healing items. Finnaly if you meet an enemy in-game it’s added to the Monster Dictionary, a file that includes all the information on a creature including strengths and weaknesses.
So far the graphics are normal for the GBA, with little sprites running around the screen like colorful cottonballs. In-battle animations are top-notch though, and impressively fit onto the small cartridge Our hero Cress isn’t the only character by the way. He’s joined by his neighbor: archer Chester Barklight, and Mint Adnade, the girl of the group is to no surprise: the white mage.
Roleplaying games are welcomed on the Gameboy and titles with a name behind them even more so. Namco wants Tales of Phantasia to break out of the pack and offer a new type of RPG to gamers. Real-time battles and cooking up your health items? It will be interesting to see how this one goes. More info closer to release.”
