rented it.
hated it at first.
...but i must admit i'm starting to like it. i'm totally buying a copy once the local gamerush gets it in. i have awful crap to pawn off on them, and they have generous deals i'd like to exploit.
it's still shit in many ways. the writing is so, so bad. it starts off perfectly inane, and keeps getting worse somehow. somehow. i disliked ffx's plotting and dialogue and presentation so much it turned me off of the genre, but symphonia puts ffx in perspective. similar plot, but with that much less detail, thought, and quiddity. i don't think anyone's spent any time thinking about this world or these characters. and the dialogue suggests nothing so much as an inept translation from the 16 bit era. except parts of it are SPOKEN. yeah. sometimes i have to look away during the cutscenes and mash buttons 'til they're over.
but i love the battle system. love it. the degree of twitchy action control is remarkable, and battles are always pleasing to mash through. too often you can just mash through, but in the rare challenging battles, you can order your teammates out of the way and play it like it was an honest-to-god action game. this kicks ass. it's deeply satisfying to win a battle you have no business winning purely on the strength of your nimble backdashes and pithy combos. the mildly puzzley dungeons are good too. and there are little touches that endear the game to me - that your characters level up whether you use them in combat or not, the presence of an actual worldmap, the occasionally amusing skits. and then it's been years since i've attempted to play a conventional jrpg...just the effortless linear momentum of the thing can be intoxicating.
i guess the question is whether i can tolerate the plot long enough to finish it. tales of symphonia: not as poo as i initially suspected.
hated it at first.
...but i must admit i'm starting to like it. i'm totally buying a copy once the local gamerush gets it in. i have awful crap to pawn off on them, and they have generous deals i'd like to exploit.
it's still shit in many ways. the writing is so, so bad. it starts off perfectly inane, and keeps getting worse somehow. somehow. i disliked ffx's plotting and dialogue and presentation so much it turned me off of the genre, but symphonia puts ffx in perspective. similar plot, but with that much less detail, thought, and quiddity. i don't think anyone's spent any time thinking about this world or these characters. and the dialogue suggests nothing so much as an inept translation from the 16 bit era. except parts of it are SPOKEN. yeah. sometimes i have to look away during the cutscenes and mash buttons 'til they're over.
but i love the battle system. love it. the degree of twitchy action control is remarkable, and battles are always pleasing to mash through. too often you can just mash through, but in the rare challenging battles, you can order your teammates out of the way and play it like it was an honest-to-god action game. this kicks ass. it's deeply satisfying to win a battle you have no business winning purely on the strength of your nimble backdashes and pithy combos. the mildly puzzley dungeons are good too. and there are little touches that endear the game to me - that your characters level up whether you use them in combat or not, the presence of an actual worldmap, the occasionally amusing skits. and then it's been years since i've attempted to play a conventional jrpg...just the effortless linear momentum of the thing can be intoxicating.
i guess the question is whether i can tolerate the plot long enough to finish it. tales of symphonia: not as poo as i initially suspected.