Tales of Phantasia

Tales of Phantasia follows Cress Albane, a young swordsman who lives in a small and peaceful village known as Toltus. One day as Cress and his best friend Chester are out hunting in the forest, they are alarmed when they hear the sound of the village bell. When the two rush back to Toltus they are terrified to see that the village had been destroyed and the ground lay covered with the bodies of the dead villagers. The two friends then set out on a quest to find out why their homes were destroyed and to have their revenge on those responsible!

While in battle, it’s possible to have up to four characters on your team fighting against the enemies, but only one of them can be controlled by the player. As you control one of the characters, the others will automatically attack or use their abilities. The player can determine what the other characters will do in combat by changing their equipped strategy, but won’t have direct control. It is also possible to play as a different character other than Cress. Being able to play as the other characters is a nice change, because most of them are quite different from the main character.

Throughout the game, as characters advance in levels, successfully finish side quests, and so on, they will occasionally gain new character titles. When the game begins, Cress is a mere Apprentice Swordsman, but once he learns a certain ability he becomes a regular Swordsman. These character titles not only make your characters seem cooler, they also have some affect on the actual game. Depending on the title, your character’s level and rate of stat increases may change.

As far as the graphics and sound go, Tales of Phantasiamanages to do well in both categories. The characters look very nice in combat, and the enemies don’t look too shabby either! The towns and other areas of the game are quite detailed and pretty. The sound is even better than the graphics, but only as good as you can expect from a GBA game. The game’s soundtrack is done well, and also features some pretty good voice acting that appears mostly during battles. On the downside, the voice acting can be occasionally difficult to understand.