Introduction

Namco just pulled this out of their asses. It's not a real quote by a philosopher or anything like that, and that's all we'll be saying about that until much, much later.


Click here to watch the opening.

Tales of Phantasia is the first game in the somewhat long-running "Tales of..." series. Released for the SNES in Japan in 1995, and then remade thrice (or four times depending on how picky you want to be) it is noticably lacking a few things that would be later added to the series to really make it stand out. The most notable of these things being skits, which were added to the Playstation version (which was, again, only released in Japan), and the GRADE system (which was added to the PSP version which was, yet again, only released in Japan).

We will however, not be playing any of those. No, we'll be playing the GBA version because it's the only version released in Europe and America (mere months before the PSP version was released in Japan...) and, even though, yes, the Common consensus was to change to the PSX one for the main LP so I did. You're welcome! You can even tell which version is used where just by looking at the colour of the link; a light blue/cyan is indicative of the GBA version whereas the darker blue is the PSX stuff.

Anyway, the SNES version does have a fan-translation available but there are a few things missing from it that exist in this version. Among these things include hilariously bad voice acting in English, a translation that doesn't have unnecessary sex-jokes, the ability to cook things and, perhaps most importantly, an extra character to use in combat. Also skits.

Oh and there's some anime thing or whatever made based on this game. I haven't seen it, but since it's apparently the game minus a bunch of content or something it's probably not worth it anyway.

If you're interested in seeing where the series went from here, there's always the great LPs for Tales of Symphonia, Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World and Tales of Vesperia.

This should go without saying, but don't talk about plot things until they happen in the LP.