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[Shouta]

Just finished my second run through the game a few days ago playing through the English version of the game. I was much more pleased with the game on my second run through than when I first played the game. The story is as dumb as ever (premise is interesting, plot twists were dumb, plot devices could've been better) but the characters were a bit better to me this time around. This probably is due to a fairly nice translation (I see j00 john_tv) that seems, well, a bit less cliche than befire. The very good translation accompanied with the very good voice-acting (sans a few characters and several scenes and etc throughout the game) made me come out more impressed with the overall package non-gameplay package.

A really integral part which made the game more satisfying was beating it on Hard and then taking the last few bosses and the secret bosses out on Mania. It made me really work the game's juggling and combos and tested how well I knew how to set and manipulate the AI (which btw seemed a lot better than I remember it but still dumb in some regards). Abyssion, one of the secret bosses took me like 10 tries to beat on Mania at level 71-73. That was one helluva hard fight. Although it was really satisfying to land a 135 hit combo against the bastard.

Oh and the very fact the first half or so is very open-ended in how you want to approach things was very nice. You could go in different directions and tackle challenges as you see fit but the game still kept a linear progression overall. I do wish more RPGs took that approach to their design.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Abyssion, oh no! not that name.. /runs

Jesus christ i never got to beat the bastard, tried on my first playthrought though so on 2nd time i probably could get much higher level since my 2nd start i selected 2X exp or something like that. Been a while since i havent played it, probably gonna pop it back in whenever there's a drought of games.

 

[Deku Tree]

Oh and the very fact the first half or so is very open-ended in how you want to approach things was very nice. You could go in different directions and tackle challenges as you see fit but the game still kept a linear progression overall. I do wish more RPGs took that approach to their design.

I thought that was great too.

 

[thomaser]

A friend of mine was going through it for the sixth time last time I met him. It's his favourite rpg ever by a long shot.

I have it sitting unplayed in my shelf... I need to finish Paper Mario 2 and go through Metroid Prime 2 first

 

[Shouta]

Abyssion was super nasty, the strategy I used allowed me to beat him at my level but man I ran out of items by the time the fight was over (Mania Mode). He was total cake on Normal though.

 

[kiryogi]

Abyssion was fun...but I've only messed around with Symphonia on normal tho, but ToD2j still takes the cake as hardest of the bunch. (I'd be playing around on second too) Given it's not fair to judge Symphonia like that, the battle system itself was rather simple in comparison to the 2d ps2 titles. :/ Grade was also much tougher to score as well, not to mention a good meter to measure your ability. While in ToS, it's not regarded too much.

Meanwhile, Rebirth is easy as hell in the beginning (I have it jacked up to hard even), but it eventually gets harder thankfully.(Bosses can be a bit mean all around tho) More insane hard games like ToD2j please! Also to note, ToS possibly had the best AI settings so far. Rebirth took a step back to ToD2j if not worse.. hmm.

I'll probably get impressions on Rebirth up really soon, just been busy playing it <_<

 

[Sagitario]

I would have started my second playthrough already but I've other 3 games to finish (I had 4, but finished Echoes yesterday).

 

[GaimeGuy]

I <3 Tales' battle system.

So. forking. fun.