There are no turns or waiting on action meters, you just mash the attack button while your mages fling magic until the enemy croaks. Characters freely roam about a horizontal screen in battle, hacking, thwacking, and blasting each other with magic. There's a collection of great ideas to compliment the story, like the ability to cook foods that bestow temporary buffs, as well as restore HP and MP an assortment of spells, summons and sword techniques to motivate you to scour every dark corner and an action-based battle system for which the Tales franchise is known. The plot gives us enough to like the characters, but not enough to love them.

Some bury parents or friends, and move on with their lives with a new sense of resolution. There isn't as much character growth as desired, but we do feel for them as they advance through heartache after heartache. It took an average premise, one of warriors chasing down a war-bent sorcerer, and turned it into a decent adventure. It was, as a certain someone would say, the humble beginnings of a great series. Decent, sure, but phenomenal? It doesn't compare to some of the great RPGs that came out in the 16-bit era. Not that Tales of Phantasia was an amazing of a game to begin with. This either shows that Namco didn't care and wanted to crank out a port with the cheapest translation, or it was an honest mistake and they'll (hopefully) never trust Browne Global Solutions again. It's pretty bad when a fan translation with no financial backing outdoes one by a firm who specializes in translations. Instances of 'Ragnarok' transformed into 'Kangaroo', perplexing some and insulting others. As the story goes, Browne Global wasn't paying close attention when spellchecking their finished product. I'm hunting for one last joke to attach to that, but this one tells itself. For it's here that you read a prophecy foretelling the brutal apocalyptic war: Kangaroo. What can I say except that I'm an ex-boozer I know a party when I see one.Ībout halfway through the campaign, you encounter the coup de grace. Even without looking for a citation to prove my assumptions (which I eventually did), I knew Brown Global had not-so-cleverly covered up a hearty party.

Oh, but what would children who aren't likely to purchase this game think if their heroes consume malt beverages? Instead of drinking too much, they're now 'eating' too much and waking up with 'stomachaches'. There's a scene in which our travelers binge drink and complain about hangovers in the morning. The end result is clumsily disguised alcohol censorship. Namco and Browne Global Solutions, the firm responsible for the localization, aimed for an E rating, most likely because they wanted to move more units. However, thanks to spotty localization, it does the story little justice. The Game Boy Advance port of Phantasia is adequate if you didn't have access to the Internet or don't fancy emulation. Namco admonished them, and others flew to their defense: 'Whose fault is that? You're the ones who decided not to release it here!' So Namco issued a logical response: they released Tales of Phantasia stateside! Now we can all delete our illegal copies and live happily knowing that Namco has graced us with a quality localization of one of their finest games. They jumped at the first sight of a fan translation online and downloaded it, eventually trading up the SNES version for a superior PlayStation ISO. There are those of us who didn't wait for a legit copy of Tales of Phantasia to manifest in the US. Namco should know better than to flip off their fans with weak ports and lousy translations.' 'While the 'Kangaroo' incident is insulting to fans who craved a legit localization, it's not nearly as infuriating as wading through 20+ hours worth of dull, clunky battles with annoying voice acting. Tales of Phantasia (Game Boy Advance) review

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