Tales of Phantasia is one of the more famous Japanese role playing games released for the Super Famicom that never came out stateside. Despite fans best efforts it wouldn’t be until a decade later that a port of this game would be officially translated and released in North America on the Game Boy Advance. Unfortunately this suffered major issues and it’s impossible to recommend it with a straight face. When Namco announced a port of Tales of Phantasia for iOS it was pretty surprising news. What was even more unusual was that they were translating and releasing the title worldwide, and it now followed the free to play mobile formula. Unfortunately Namco Bandai screwed up this release in some pretty major ways, and it’s even worse than the Game Boy Advance version. Normally I don’t mind the free to play format but it’s ridiculous here.
This game follows your standard Japanese RPG formula. You play as a young warrior named Cress who lives in a small village within a fantasy medieval world. One day while on a routine hunting mission he and his friend Chester return to find that their hometown has been burned down, and everyone within it has been slaughtered. The two set out to get revenge, but are swept into a grand old story which eventually leads them to save the world from an evil sorcerer named Dhaos. The story is pretty standard fare, but it has likable characters and it’s somewhat interesting to follow so I have no major problems with it. Where Tales of Phantasia really innovated upon initial release was its battle system. This mixes both real-time and turn based elements, and the fusion works surprisingly well. The glorious battle system is, for the most part, completely retained in this mobile remake. This surprised me a great deal considering the touch screen only controls, but Namco did an amazing job at translating them to the format.
Like your traditional role playing games battles occur on a separate screen, and these encounters are random within caves, dungeons, and while traversing on the world map. These fights take place on a two dimensional area wherein you can move your character only left, right, and upwards should you perform an aerial attack. Combat is entirely real-time, but damage and health are calculated numerically. Because there are no physical buttons in this version of the game you must control which style of attack you perform by pressing different heights on the touch screen. The only on-screen buttons you have are for running, and the menu. Despite the simplicity of controls you still feel as if you have great control within battle with easy to use skills, and a menu system for more demanding commands such as using items and what have you. It’s not quite up to par with other versions of the game, but considering the mobile it’s more than acceptable.
The game would be a great port and all around enjoyable if it wasn’t for the free to play format Namco went with. Tales of Phantasia is free to download and you could, in theory, play it from start to finish without paying any money, at least according to the developers. The fact is they significantly increased the difficulty during boss fights which makes many of them unfair. The biggest and most pushed for purchase is a special item which revives your characters and gives them temporary stat boosts to even out the odds. Unfortunately I found so many of these special encounters unfair, and therefore players will have to spend money at several points to advance. This is just the worst kind of design in my opinion. The final kick in the pants is the fact that this is one of those mobile titles that you can’t play without an internet connection (an effort to no doubt push for more in app purchases). Free to play can be done right, but it wasn’t in this case.
The graphics here are based off of the PS1 remake (as far as I can tell) and the game looks really nice. For the most part this is a 2D sprite based game with simple animations, super deformed characters, and an anime infused art style. The world map is fully 3D (though your characters are still rendered in sprites) and though the framerate takes a bit of a hit in these sequences on all of the devices I’ve tried it on. Even the full motion videos from the other remakes made it into this version which is a really nice touch. The soundtrack is one of the most memorable across the entire genre. The high energy battle theme is very well done and is my favorite in the entire series. The rest of the music is really well done as well. This version of the game supports voice overs during many of the story sequences, but they’re all in Japanese with no English option. It’s still a pretty cool inclusion even if it’s impossible to understand what anyone is saying with no subtitles.
It’s really unfortunate that North America (and Europe for that matter) have never seen a decent release of Tales of Phantasia. This mobile version is being removed from the app store soon, and considering the fact that it requires a connection to play it will be totally gone forever. It might be worth checking out before then just to laugh at the in-app purchase spectacle that this is. It’s hard to be upset that it’s being retired because this is by far the worst free to play game I’ve experienced so far. Thanks for nothing Namco; you could have redeemed yourself with this one.
