What About Lunar Eternal Blue Remake Again???

[Kizyr]

The only Tales game I've played was Tales of Phantasia. It actually ranks up there with Lunar: The Silver Star and Eternal Blue in terms of my all-time favorites. KF

[fates]

Same basic thing in Phantasia, but obviously a little more primitive.

Designs were by Kosuke Fujishima (the Ah My Goddess guy), who's done a lot of other Tales of games.

Depending on which Tales you played first, you may or may not be able to play Phantasia, especially if Vesperia was your first. The SNES version hasn't really aged well, and the GBA version isn't much better. The other versions are a PS1 and a PSP version, neither of which are available in English (thanks to Bandai Namco being retarded @ PSP version), these ports are updated and are much more playable.

[Monde Luna]

fates are you saying if we have played Vesperia we might not be able to play Phantasia purely because of graphics?

[fates]

Not graphics, gameplay. In comparison, Phantasia (at least the SNES/GBA version) is very clunky and frustrating at times.

PS1/PSP versions on the other hand, play wonderfully.

Some games just don't age well, and not because of visuals. I love the Dragon Quest franchise a lot, but even I have trouble playing DQ1, because again, it just didn't age well.

[Monde Luna]

Oic that makes a lot of sense then. I'd still like to give it a shot someday though.

[Silver Phoenix]

Tales of Phantasia always seemed to be highly acclaimed so I was always curious about it.

On a side note, I was just watching some SSSC videos where Alex and co. leave for Meribia. When I think about it, Ashley Angel doesn't sound right for Alex at all in that game. When he originally voiced Alex in TSS he fit better because he was younger, but I think Yuri Lowenthal is a far better pick for Alex in Silver Star Harmony.

Perhaps that is blasphemy for some people, but I'm really looking forward to this new transition of Lunar with an all new cast. I also don't want to hear Nash say "Check This Out!" 10 MILLION times, because that shi+ needs to go!

[fates]

What did Nash say on his first date with Mia?

[Silver Phoenix]

"I've never had this happen before....."

[dairugger]

wasnt the ps1 version of tales of phantasia translated via a fan patch? im sure ive played it on my psp via popstation.

[Kizyr]

There was a fan-translation of the Super Famicom ROM of Tales of Phantasia; I don't know of one for the PS1 (not saying there isn't, just that I don't keep up with that news). The only official US translation was the one for the GBA.

All versions are worth it, by the way. Though if you only get one, you may as well get the PS1 or GBA version. KF

[Sonix]

The PS1 version is also fully (fan) translated. I've played it or rather I'm still playing it.

[Lunar Eclipse]

The fan translated PSX version is definitely the best. The GBA version is still okay and playable, but the localized version is pretty badly hampered by a strikingly awful translation effort from the now defunct Bowne Global Solutions. The fan translated SFC version is also kind of okay, but the battle system has aged quite badly, plus it retains the weird incongruity between the Yoshiaki Inagaki-based in-game character models and the actual character designs from Kosuke Fujishima that stood as one of the lasting reminders of the in-fighting between Wolf Team and Namco.

[LunarRaptor]

This is me jumping into the topic and in direst reply to the first post:

Harmony has to make a buck, first, before we ever see an Eternal Blue remake.

[Dark_Fairy]

Everytime I DON'T check a topic something exciting happens or something I know is talked about. I need to just start reading every single post every day, lol.

Anyway, about Phantasia, definitely try to get the PSX version if you're going to try it since it has a fully English translation patch. It's actually really fun. The other versions of Phantasia are slow, and kind of boring in my opinion. I don't know what it is that makes the PSX versions fun, but it is. ^_^

Phantasia is probably closer to Lunar than any other game in the series. Even then, those two are quite different.

But, if I'm going to recommend ANY tales games, I would recommend Tales of the Abyss or Tales of Symphonia since they are both in English (otherwise I'd say Tales of Rebirth, even though Rebirth does have a translation guide). I may not care for Symphonia that much, but it's definitely a good place to start playing the Tales games.

[Temzin]

Sure, I'll come back for a Phantasia talk! Tales of...games are mostly pretty terrible, as far as direction and writing are concerned (and I hear still worse things about translation), but seeing has how it's the original, Phantasia works, especially for PSX, far and away the best version. Unlike later games in the series, it had the good sense to keep its story simple and out of the way so that you could enjoy the fun atmosphere and battles, and occasionally be charmed by the (admittedly archetypal) characters. The story and characters have nothing of the development or complexity of Lunar, which was far beyond its 16-bit time, but they're light and enjoyable, and most importantly, unobtrusive. Even on PSX, it's enjoyable in a very "16-bit" kind of way that the other games simply aren't.

...though if I could have been the editor for Tales of Abyss and trimmed the 30 hours of rubbish out of the 50 hour story, you'd have a wonderfully paced 20 hour RPG with an intriguing world! ...but, too bad!

[Lunar Eclipse]

Just wanted to point some things out. ^.^;

... Tales of...games are mostly pretty terrible, as far as direction and writing are concerned (and I hear still worse things about translation), but seeing has how it's the original, Phantasia works, especially for PSX, far and away the best version.

Er, yeah, the storylines are usually pretty dry and generic, but the character interaction is where the games are meant to shine, which isn't really so different from the Lunar series, in my opinion. As for the translations, Destiny is just bleh and Eternia's voice acting is meh, but they were released a decade or more ago when the standards were a lot lower. They were pretty typical of the time, and Eternia's VA aside, the text translation was actually quite good, I think. Certainly around BoFIV level, and not anything like the horrors of Legend of the Dragoon and its ilk. Anything since then excepting Phantasia has had an exceptional translation from Namco Hometek (now Namco Bandai) with generally excellent voice direction and selection plus good text translation. Phantasia is the exception because, as I mentioned earlier, it was outsourced to Bowne Global Solutions (possibly by Nintendo rather than Namco?), which did an incredibly shoddy job.

Unlike later games in the series, it had the good sense to keep its story simple and out of the way so that you could enjoy the fun atmosphere and battles, and occasionally be charmed by the (admittedly archetypal) characters.

Uh, Phantasia actually has one of the most convoluted plots in the series, and people are constantly debating about the way the timeline functions. You change a lot of major things in the past but then return to the present where almost nothing has changed at all, which could be explained away as the timelines being separate except that there's one major problem with that theory (which sits squarely in the forest outside the first town, though I won't bring it up for the sake of spoilers, but I imagine you know what I'm talking about). Since that particular thing is affected by meddling in the past, everything else ought to be as well, but it just isn't. Add to that the fact that Dhaos is supposed to be an antihero but that it's never expanded upon in the game and required several followup novels and you've got something that feels incomplete and hacked together. Phantasia has tons of informational supplements (novels, drama CDs, etc.), but they should really be called requirements rather than supplements since the plot of the game doesn't do so well standing on its own. As for the characters, Phantasia probably has the worst characterization in the series. Heck, they didn't really even have personalities until they added the skits in the PSX version.

The story and characters have nothing of the development or complexity of Lunar, which was far beyond its 16-bit time, but they're light and enjoyable, and most importantly, unobtrusive. Even on PSX, it's enjoyable in a very "16-bit" kind of way that the other games simply aren't.

Eh, I don't think Lunar is really very complex from a story or character perspective. Again, everything's fairly cliche. Where it shines is in storytelling, character interaction, and development of world lore and atmosphere. I'd say storytelling is where Tales lags, but its character interaction is as good if not better (in particular because of what skits add). The world lore and atmosphere is hit-or-miss. Like, I thought it was excellent in Legendia, but Abyss was just a horrible mound of technobabble to me.

...though if I could have been the editor for Tales of Abyss and trimmed the 30 hours of rubbish out of the 50 hour story, you'd have a wonderfully paced 20 hour RPG with an intriguing world! ...but, too bad!

Yeah, I'd have to agree here. As far as the series' mothership titles go, I think Abyss might be my least favorite, which oddly contrasts with the opinions of many hardcore Tales fans.

[ShindoW]

I am waiting for a Lunar 2 EB remake/port on the PSP. I would even import it first.

I'm just not fond of the new sprites, I think it takes charm from the originals away..

As for Phantasia, I got a little ways into the SNES DeJap vers, then the US GBA one I got far until I skipped 3 towns and now I'm stuck. >>;

[Aaron]

I actually really like the new sprites. I think the animation is atrocious though. If you play the demo watch how they swing the swords. Whoever drew it made them slash in only 2 dimensions. It looks bleh, they could have easily gone for something a bit more fluid.

[Silver Phoenix]

Lunar has never had fluid sword movement.