I played about a little over an hour of Tales of Symphonia. I guess I could be optimistic about a few things, but for the most part the game hasn't impressed me so far...

Fortunately, the first hour isn't just story or town scenes. I went to a temple, which is the first quest, got in a couple dozen random battles, and the temple even has some introductory "puzzles" (involving pushing some blocks to make a path).

But still, the opening exposition is really clumsy. Basically, the story is told to you while you're in a classroom, by the teacher. Because your not actually in the midst of any action, or have any first hand experience of what she's talking about, it all comes across as nonsense that's difficult to pay attention to. It sort of reminds me of a worse version of the exposition section in How to Write Good.

Also, yes, the game starts in a school, so you can probably guess that this is another RPG where you play as little kids. Fitting their young age, their dialogue is stupid (but verbose).

The story formed by the dialogue seems like it'll be stupid, too. One of the characters is chosen by the gods, so she has to go on some quests to restore the world. Why can't the gods just restore the world on their own? Also, it's a pretty inelegant method of motivating going on the quests that will make of the game.


Battles are fast paced -- they average about 14 seconds -- but so far they're mostly button mashing. I briefly fiddled with the "strategy" settings, but switched them all back to default (which lets the AI do whatever it wants). I also used some special techniques, but so far they don't seem to offer much advantage over simply attacking. I'll probably want to read the manual before I play again.

"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."
-Orwell