Spirit Animal (Day 331)

Tales of Destiny is very much like any other game in the Tales series. It is generally lighthearted and features a real time combat battle system that very often devolves into button mashing. At the same time, these battles systems are frequently very fun and carry what would otherwise be aggressively mediocre games. That is not to say that I have disliked every Tales game I've played. In fact, I quite enjoyed Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Phantasia, especially the PlayStation remake that I played last year. Phantasia and Symphonia featured casts of shallow but likable characters not unlike the Lunar games.

Tales of the Abyss is an example of a game in the series that has a profoundly unlikable protagonist whose predictable redemption halfway through the game does little to flesh him out as a character. It also had an extremely convoluted and often boring plot featuring long stretches of asinine dialogue read out by a laundry list of voice actors who sound profoundly bored. Johnny Yong Bosch showed up once again as he so often does in JRPGs and anime to voice the character Guy, whose personality and backstory were likely as nondescript as his name--although admittedly I don't remember much about it.

Aside from those issues, Tales of the Abyss featured a very unsatisfying story arc that consisted mostly of moving from one unexciting town to another--and another, and another. I think JRPGs from the last ten years or so tend to noticeably suffer from being padded to artificially lengthen the gameplay. Abyss featured a great deal of pointless and boring travel. Not even the game's reasonably engaging battle system could redeem the game for me, but I still managed to finish it. On the surface it was a very similar game to Tales of Symphonia. It featured an almost identical battle system and graphics engine and such traditional Tales elements such as skits and titles. Symphonia wasn't a perfect game either, but I found it infinitely more enjoyable than Abyss.

Tales of Destiny is of course much more similar to Tales of Phantasia. However, it is a noticeable step back from Phantasia's PlayStation rerelease, which included advancements like cooking and basic combo attacks. In newer Tales games, it is possible to chain 3-4 basic sword slashes together in combat before then chaining into a special attack (called Arte in many games). In Destiny, it is generally only possible to slash once time before being forced to pause for a moment. This was very difficult for me to adjust to when I first started playing the game but considering how fluidly you can chain these attacks into special skills it doesn't really bother me that much.

The Sorcerer's Ring invariably makes an appearance in every Tales title

The verdict is still out on Tales of Destiny's characters. Stahn Aileron is not as aggressively unlikable as Luke fon Fabre from Abyss, but it's hard for me to form that much of an opinion on him at all. This kind of characterization is somewhat similar to Cless from the first game, whose personality was relatively nondescript. Leon is your typical brash asshole character, but I find that the other characters I've recruited so far don't adhere too closely to established tropes. A powerful female warrior named Mary is introduced pretty early. As you play further into the game, the backstory that it reveals about her is surprisingly interesting.

Some of the dialogue is questionable

One thing I do like about Tales of Destiny compared to its predecessor is the ability to customize my party to my personal tastes. I had no real complains about the choices available to me in Phantasia because I liked Cless, Mint, Klarth, and Arche pretty well--but it would have been nice if I'd had more choices for party members other than Chester, who was admittedly pretty strong. In Destiny, you have a few more choices. I haven't recruited every character in the game so far and I don't even know how many characters the game has, but so far I have Stahn, Mary, Rutee, Philia, Leon, Garr, and Karyl. I'm not sure if it's even possible to have more characters than this at one time, but it's nice to have a choice.