I bought Tales of Symphonia and so far have spent an hour and 50 minutes on the game. So far so good, I haven' t had the urge to shut the game off and throw it aside like every other Non-Ys RPG I' ve checked out so MAYBE this just might be the RPG to appeal to me while waiting for Ys 6 on the PS2 and PSP.

Tales of Symphonia has some nice music, cool graphical presentation and hand drawn cutscenes, not prerendered CG thank goodness.
Of the most importance I really liked the Battle system. It' s a solid mixture of real-time battles and menu based battles but done in a way that' s quite painless. I can control my character in real-time and engage in some hack n' slashfests until my enemies are obliterated. You can perform some nice attack combos as well. What' s cool about the battle system is that while I' m dishing out punishment in real-time, my merry band of misfits can be set to automatically attack enemies and fend for themselves, freeing me up to worry about the character I' m controlling.

I' m looking forward to investing a little more time into this game as it seems pretty solid so far. Of all the RPGs on the market I picked this one because of my growing interest in Namco.

And I bought the U.S. version to boot - OOOh I feel so dirty! ;0

I did some research on the game and it looks like all you do is fight.

Check out this Quicktime. That has to be the the most poorly produced sound that I have ever heard in a game. Do all of the characters really need to talk at once? Why do they announce their moves? If I was in a battle I don' t think I would take the time to announce what I was doing. The voices make the game appear childish to me.

Also, I take issue with any game where the hottest chick is actually a guy. [:' (]

I was reading something that said that there may be a bunch of battles but they designed the battles in such a way that makes them fast paced and not last long so you don' t spend tons of time fighting in battles.

Meh...I still say you should' ve gone with either of the BG: DA' s, CoN, or Kingdom Hearts. All real-time, and after checking out ToS, I still like all of them better, too.

Meh...I still say you should' ve gone with either of the BG: DA' s, CoN, or Kingdom Hearts. All real-time, and after checking out ToS, I still like all of them better, too.

I' m still planning to check out those others, no doubt about that :)
It' s just that my recent bias towards almost All things Namco (except for their fighting games) made me want to try out their RPG especially since it was just released.

But I' m definitely checking out the rest of your list before Ys 6 hits!

That has to be the the most poorly produced sound that I have ever heard in a game. Do all of the characters really need to talk at once? Why do they announce their moves? If I was in a battle I don' t think I would take the time to announce what I was doing. The voices make the game appear childish to me.

The group of " warriors" seem to pretty much be Elementary School kids in a fantasy world.

As for poorly produced sounds, you should check out Orphen for the PS2 :D

Also, I take issue with any game where the hottest chick is actually a guy.

Heh...you have a bias towards ALL things Namco? Not Xenosaga, which I loved, but can guarantee you didn' t.

To be fair, I didn' t really play enough of ToS to make an accurate assessment, but I just adored those other games I listed. Getting to the end of CoN now. Just for the record, though, that one should be last on your list (although it' s first on mine), because it' s the closest to a truly in-depth traditional hack ' n slash RPG. It' s like Baldurs Gate mixed with Diablo. I think you' ll get more of a kick out of the simpler (but just as fun!) BG: DA' s or the surprisingly charming and entertaining Kingdom Hearts.

Finish ToS first, though. Let me know what you think.

These types of games are not usually to my taste; however, I' m willing to give TOS a try. Kingdom Hearts looks great too, so I' ll probably add that one to my list as well (my son wants it anyways).

Heh...you have a bias towards ALL things Namco? Not Xenosaga, which I loved, but can guarantee you didn' t.

I was actually VERY tempted to try out Xenosaga 2, but from what I noticed that' s not Namco developed,, it' s only published by them. I think the developers were listed as some company called " Monolith" ?? Or something like that. So with that I just backed off.

It' s like having a game published by Sega-AM2, the gods of game development only to learn that it was developed by THQ or some other company ;)

Yeah, both Xenosaga I and II are developed by Monolith Soft and published by Namco. They' re turn-based, though, so that' s why I knew you wouldn' t like them, regardless of who they were developed by.

Xenosaga is a waste of life for anyone who plays them. Remember, you could have been doing something else that is better than Xenosaga, like clipping your toenails. The time you waste on Xenosaga you will never, ever get back.

It turns out that you can turn off the battle voices in Tales of the Symphony.

Namco is king. Marvel Land rulez. Soul Calibur ownz. Soul Calibur II ownz. Burning Force roX0rz. And who could forget the fabulous Megapanel?

They' re turn-based, though, so that' s why I knew you wouldn' t like them, regardless of who they were developed by.

DAMMM STRAIGHT lad!
Being the complete Sega whore that I am I lasted about 10 minutes with Skies of Arcadia before shutting the demo off and never touching it again. Damn turn-based battles just killed me! They KILL ME!! Argh! I like the battle system of Tales of Symphonia cause you can Button Mash your way to victory, no real Chess-like strategic thinking involved! You can also perform some fancy sword combos by going crazy on the analog thumbstick while jamming away at the attack button and drooling all over the controllers!

Joe: Any particularly reason why it' s a " waste of life" , or are you just good at stating opinions without any reasoning behind them?

The thing that kills me about Xenosaga 2 is that it looks SOOOOOOOOOO friggin Ultra Cool! I kinda get a Zone of Enders vibe whenever I see pictures of the game which is another reason I was really interested in it at some point. I was about this || close to getting it but then had to keep reminding myself that it is turn-based, it is turn-based, it is turn-based!

Oh well. I' ll be playing that " ultra-coolness," that' s for sure.

Any game where you seem to watch more than actually play gets a big thumbs down from me. XenoSaGa 1 had 8 hours of FMV. Is that really necessary? What if I want to save and go away in the middle of one of those clips? XenoSaGa 2 only has a measly 6 hours of FMV, but that is still ridiculous. These games should be on the Phillips CDi platform.

Xenosaga has a little less than 3 hours of non-interactive gameplay. The sample XS DVD had a billion extras in it. I timed the game myself, simply because I had heard that blown-out-of-proportion number until I was about to vomit. I proved it was incorrect, as I knew it was.

It took me 50 hours to beat the game, and get where I wanted to be. 50 vs. 3...you do the math.

I wonder why XenosaGa 2comes with a " Digest DVD" (" digest" meaning " shortened" ) with 4 hours of footage from the first game... all FMV? Sounds like you missed out and didn' t play the game 100% :)

This is like dejavu...I think I read this same argument about cinema' s and gameplay about Final Fantasy X, and fathoms was involved in that as well.

Anyhoo, as much as it pains me to say it I have to agree with fathoms. When people complain about the cinemas in a game like Xenosaga...well, usually the X amount of gameplay hours outnumber the X amount of movies. I do occasionally like a good movie to help visualize certain parts of the story.

It is important to remember that no matter what Fathoms says about anything, no matter how well thought out, convincing and logical his argument is, he is always wrong.

Logic and reason are all I use. Few like it, because they seem to be unable to use such things.

And it' s not just " X number" (in time) of movies less than " X number" of interactive gameplay. The discrepancy, especially in RPG' s like Xenosaga and FF X that easily last at least 40 hours (much more, if you want to do everything there is to do). Once you crunch the numbers and figure the ratios, FF X ends up with about 2-3% non-interactivity while Xenosaga doesn' t even top 5%.

MGS 2, on the other hand...