Review – Tales of Symphonia Remastered, Shame Comes at a Price

i wanted to love him My whole being was primed to relive this amazing and epic adventure. Unfortunately, the abundance of bugs, freezes and the laziness of the novelties prevents me from recommending this Tales of Symphonia Remastered. Worse still, its original version has the luxury of being more stable and fluid than its modern counterpart. Despite all my love for this game, it’s despicable to propose a remaster of this poor quality, mostly intended for fans from the very beginning. No standards are set, laziness and the lure of quick money have won the respect that the license deserves. A shame sold for €40 closer to a demake than a remaster. Go your own way if you want to preserve your childhood memories and your wallet.

A diamond that only needed to be polished

The Tales of Symphonia episode holds a special place in the hearts of fans of the series. The first work released in the European market, many players including myself discovered the franchise thanks to him. A work that shines with adventure which he proposed and even earned him the title Best Gamecube JRPG. The game deals with issues such as class struggle, education and racism more depth than its appearance suggests. The characters are all colorful, some adorable, some annoying, but each with their own personality. The gameplay doesn’t suffer, at least in its time. He offered himself particularly dynamically Real-time battles with control over each character, something rare when it was released in 2003. With a good lifespan on the mainframe, lots of additional and secret content to discover, all the material is there to offer a new version that will allow new players to discover the title. So what happened to get to this point, to break the facets and create new inclusions?

Choosing the wrong starting material

You see, one of the first issues comes from choosing the original version to lead to the remaster. Tales of Symphonia was first released on PS2 and Gamecube, and then a few years later on PS3. Unfortunately it was this last version that was chosen to create the game we have today. When it had additional content compared to its sister at Nintendo, it mostly relied on the PS2 version, which ran at 30 frames per second. A heresy to know that the Gamecube version reached 60 FPS without any problems. In order to be able to offer all the ultimate abilities, cutscenes, skins and additional quests of the Sony versions, Bandai Namco has chosen the latter. For everyone who experienced the game on Gamecube, This is heresy, as the comfort of having a higher framerate in a game of this duration is undeniable. Especially since it’s easier to add content than changing a frame rate for an entire title. Unfortunately, the drama does not end with this aspect alone.

When disgust and bitterness replace nostalgia

The frame rate isn’t the only issue the title presents. The character animation is lousy with repeated convulsions, outside and in combat. From many freezes up to three seconds before crossing a door, facing an opponent, changing scenes, finished burying my hopes. The coup de grace came from the graphical representation on the screen. It’s smoother, though Aliasing is consistently present on a 4K screen. We end up with a minimal service of a stupid and evil upper class. Some text even has that sad “stair case” effect in the menus. The Gamecube released a 480p picture for smaller TV sizes at the time. At the time, the game was excellent and loading times were minimal. The same cannot be said for this Tales of Symphonia Remastered, tested on an external hard drive and the console’s internal SSD. Granted, the game isn’t optimized for Xbox Series X|S, but it won’t stay that way not in the annals of the most beautiful and fluid remaster. All of these concerns are not limited to the Xbox version of this test. Compared to other players on Switch, the game also suffers the same treatment with some similar issues (visual quality) and some completely different (too deep blacks in cutscenes, FPS drop). Bandai Namco has apologized for the Switch version and announced an undated patch. However, still no word on other versions of the game two weeks after its release…

I appreciated:

• Find lovable characters
• The soundtrack

I liked least:

• The bugs
• Disastrous animation
• Loads longer than on Gamecube
• To mistake for a pigeon

accessibility criteria

test conditions