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A poor rpg in most respects.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 16
Date: March 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Legendia is certainly not a AAA title, as it seems to define the word generic.

Graphics - 7/10

The graphics aren't bad and use the SD model which makes them look like the old Tales characters. The backgrounds are bright, and the charcter drawings are decent. No widescreen, no prog scan.

Sound - 5/10

The voice acting is reasnoble although some characters seem forced and Celia in particular has the typical high-pitched voice so favoured when voicing the typically weak damsel in distress. There is also an echo when characters talk, as it seemed to be recorded badly. Overall music is OK but nothing memorable.

Gameplay - 5/10

The game consists of wandering around a world map, and going from one location to the next with some collecting of items and incidental dialogue. The battles are on a 2d plane much like an old fighting game, they are decent if limited but never dull. The enemy variety is not great though, as you will see the same enemies over and over agains for long sectons. There are a decent number of sidequests to complete so it does have some longevity. However nothing really stands out.

Overall - 5/10

Not really bad, but lacking any real spark of creativity, this is light years away from FF, DQ, Shadow hearts etc

Disappointing, boring...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I snapped this title up as quickly as possible, having loved Tales of Symphonia to death. I was extremely excited to play, as it seemed to have all of TOS's gameplay mechanics with a new story and characters.

Well, call me disappointed to say the least. Sure, all the ingredients are here for a great RPG, but the chef has left the building. TOS's unique, charming characters and dialogue have been replaced by bland sterotypes and endless conversations that I could have predicted after the first sentence. Here's a hint, Namco: Gamers like to play as people that they actually LIKE. There's nothing fun about having as a party a perpetually angry teen (who looks like a mutant), his nauseatingly sweet sister, a bland older man who could be everyone else's babysitter, a whiny female knight, a "cowboy" with a stupid accent...the list goes on and on.

Gameplay is similar to TOS, but it's dumbed-down and feels like an endless pattern of "go here, talk to some people, run around these corridors, get into a battle, mash the buttons to win, repeat..." And the random encounters were irritating--I would have liked to see my enemies before battling.

Overall, it seemed that Namco wanted to duplicate its previous RPG success, but failed to add that extra kick and charm. In a previous review, an enamored me called Namco "the next Squaresoft". I guess this is only true when they develop for the GameCube.

Good Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: February 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Honestly this game is good. Okay but um... let's see uh.... IT'S NOT GAME OF THE YEAR MATERIAL AS OTHERS MAKE IT SEEM!People say it is better than Symphonia NAHA! NO FREAKIN, WAY! Reason 1 Norma uses a STRAW! Grune uses an URN and Shirley which ya don't really use at all uses a PEN!!!!!! But now for the positive. It's very humorful for kids but not adults. And remember the Wonder Chef he had a sex change into the Wonder Baker who constantly trips after being made fun of. The graphics I guess are actually pretty good. The combat is fun of course.But you know every about 12 steps you are in a battle What a pokemon! I think it's educational because Shirley uses a pen LOL!
We have beatiful Anime cutscenes too. We have Senel the main character who punches and kicks,Shirley his sister who always gets kidnapped. We got Will who is the smart one with a hammer and the voice of Kratos Aurion.Moses the bandit who jokes and has a spear.Chloe who seems to crush on Senel and wiels a sword as a knight. Norma who is funny and makes up nicknames.Grune uses an urn kisses Senel all the time and lost her memory. Jay the info dealer who is my favorite and wields a dagger.The envirements are cool. But before you play let me tell you that map navigation is hell!!!!!

Some decent story and a flawed battle system

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 18
Date: June 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game after playing (and loving) Tales of Symphonia. I was quite a bit disappointed by this title in the series.
The story is decent, but nothing spectacular. Character development is minimal for most characters, and you never really feel a deep attachment for them, or the story in general.
The game is split into two portions: the "main game" and when that is wrapped up, the "character quests." For a total of 80+ hours. The character quests come after the main "ending" and actually tie up all the many loose ends for each charcter... many of which are major plot points. In this way, these long quests feel more like they should have been sidequests in the game, especially since they only rehash old areas of the game and up the monster difficulty. But, the character quests also add in another main enemy, and you really have to play them to get the "real" ending...

This would have been decent still, even with no new areas to explore and very uneven difficulty, except for the flawed combat system. This game felt like a real step back from Symphonia, and didn't live up to its "RPG that plays like a fighting game" promise. Basically, you get a three hit melee combo, and you can follow it up with "eres" your special moves. Once you learn enough, you can chain them together with the AI character for big combos. Unfortunately, the AI wasn't usually good enough to accomplish this - they will attack enemies that are well out of range, break your combos, and cast costly magic spells AFTER battle is over.
My biggest complaint: a glitch in the game causes you to perform the same "eres" twice in a row after inputing it only once almost 75% of the time.
This means you will waste resources, most likely miss, and break your combos. This being an action RPG, this glitch caused me to actually lose a few battles by performing the move twice and missing the target. An inexcusable problem, in my opinion, and it really knocked an entire star off my rating.

The game is overall easy, as well. There were a lot of times I would simply button mash and not even pay attention. However, once you get to the character quests a few of the random mini-bosses are extremely more difficult than the surrounding enemies. Very unbalanced.

Visually, the game is alright. The painted backgrounds were very pretty to look at, and the anime cutscenes had their moments. I didn't like the squatty character models at all, and thought the 3D didn't look as good in this game.

All in all, a less than satisfying game that I often felt like I was forcing myself to finish rather than enjoying.

One of the worst games in the series... but not a complete waste

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: December 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Usually, when a new game in a franchise comes out, you expect it to be a step up from previous entries. Unfortunately, Tales of Legendia, while a decent game overall, fails to live up to its predecessors in almost every way imaginable, and is a big step backwards. Fortunately, this is mostly due to the fact that it was made by different people than those who were responsible for Tales of Symphonia, which was arguably one of the best games for the GameCube, so you know it's not really a sign of things to come for the franchise (to wit: Tales of the Abyss was fantastic).

First of all, the main story, which covers about the first half of the game, is pretty terrible. The villains are horribly cliche, and the story revolves around by far the most unlikeable of the main characters (a shame, since the rest of them are so likeable). Symphonia's story wasn't the greatest, and one of the weaker things about the game, but it had some strong points to it. The same can't really be said about Legendia.

But the reason to play a Tales game is really the battle system, right? Well, unfortunately, the game fails here again. Instead of building upon the system used in Symphonia, Legendia retreats into the style of the older games, and there's really no excuse for it. It doesn't work here. There's no variety to the encounters, and the enemies have the tendency to be horribly cheap, which makes for less fun and more frustration. The encounters are completely random, so there's no way to avoid them outside of escaping once the battle has started. (All though I always am amused by the shades of Timmy Turner in the way Tara Strong's Norma shouts "Run!" during an escape.) Legendia, unlike previous games, brings nothing new to the table here, and it's a big mark against the game.

Not to mention there's no exhibition match in the arena. 'Nuff said there, I think.

The dungeon design is also pretty lame. Not to mention any puzzles are confined to boring "puzzle booths" that can be completely skipped (what's even the point, I ask you). I was never that fond of Symphonia's penchant for block puzzles (probably the games biggest flaw, in my opinion), but at least they were somewhat integrated into the dungeon and had a purpose. There's no purpose to Legendia's puzzles, and the temptation just to skip them is very strong.

The map in general is also one of the most annoying and frustrating things about the game. I have a notoriously bad sense of direction in video games, but it was even worse in this game. Blah, is all I have to say there.

The cooking system, not to mention the annoying Mimi Baker, is not very good either. In Symphonia, cooking was a cheap but very effective way to heal HP, TP, and various status effects in between battles. In Legendia, you have to cook everything at bakeries and stoves before you venture out, and you can't carry much at any given time, all of which makes it far less useful.

Legendia gets some things right, though. The presentation in general, though especially the music, is nicely done. In that respect (music, that is), Legendia is probably one of the strongest in the series. Shame that's the only aspect about which that can be said, though. The voice acting is also well done, but I've come to realize that there are always going to people who can't tell taste from quality in this respect, so we'll leave that at that.

It also gets a gold star for character development. In Symphonia, there was really only one character who got much development. Some of the characters, like poor Regal, felt like they were just there. In Legendia, everybody gets a chance to shine in the character quests, which, despite the lack of any voice acting (big thumbs down, NOA) are in my opinion the best part of the game. The character quests comprise the second half of the game, and they're a nice change of pace from the terrible first half. The enemies are just as cheap, the bosses probably even cheaper, but at least you get the benefit of some entertaining character exposition. There's a part of me that wishes these could have been integrated into the main story better, but I understand why they weren't, and I suppose it's best just to get past that main story as quickly as possible anyway. That way, the character quests remain untainted by the likes of Vaclav and Walter.

So, basically, in sum, if you're looking for a Tales game, look elsewhere. Tales of Symphonia for the GameCube and Tales of the Abyss for the PS2 are much superior entries to the franchise. But if you've already played these games and are looking for an RPG with engaging characters and don't mind repetetive, cheap battles, Legendia's not a bad way to kill some time.

Worth playing for RPG fans... 3.5 Overall

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

RPG fans can be a little picky when it comes to their games. Some play for the story, some play for the gameplay. Overall, Tales of Legendia is good. Its not groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination, nor is it the best Tales game. But is it fun? Thats really the bottom line when it comes to games. Are they fun? Well....

...the answer is yes. It is fun. I don't have time to play every game on the market, so I'm somewhat picky with what I choose to spend time playing, and I have numerous games in my closet that are unfinished. Yet I spent about 64 hours on ToL. So that certainly speaks for something. Honestly, the game gets off to a rocky start. Its boring and the pacing is not very good. But don't worry, it gets better.

The gameplay of ToL is very engaging, deep, and compelling. You will fight alot of battles, but they typically don't last long, so this doesn't bother me. You control only one character at a time, but you can switch around and each character is diverse and unique in its combat style, so this adds alot of diversity. The only complaint that could be levered against it for me is that most of the game is quite easy. I died maybe twice the whole 60+ hours.

Let me also say that the overall story is pretty weak. Nothing great. The real strength is in the characters. The characters really really grow on you. 3 characters in the game are easily some of the most memerable and unique characters in all of gaming, for me anyways. The dialogue can be cheesy, but for the most part, I found it compelling. The interactions between your group is great, and very funny. I laughed alot during this game, and its a real draw in having you coming back, so this imo offsets a poor story. However, after the main portion of the game, you get the character quests, and these add alot to each of the characters and this part of the game which starts about 30 hours in is much better than the first 30 hours. When the credits roll, don't stop playing, save your game and play the characer quests, they really define each person more fully.

Well, thats about it. If this sounds like your game, go for it, I enjoyed it.

Interesting Story - Nothing Spectacular

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The game was decent. It is definitely worth playing through once but after you've done that there really is no need to play it again.

Unlike most of the Tales series this one revolves specifically around one floating island. There is one main town which sits at the center of the island but like most tales games there isn't much besides the main storyline in terms of what to do. I did enjoy learning new recipes to bake food (you can use baked food outside of combat for healing) but besides that there wasn't much else.

The combat system is the same as with other Tales games where its a side scroller fighting based battle system. This has its own advantages and disadvantages but the system here seems just about the same as the other games. One thing to note though is the bonus you get for the fight is dependent upon if you meet certain criteria while fighting (avoiding the user of skills for example or beating it under a certain period of time). These side little bonuses are fun to strive for but get old fast.

I have to admit though that the story began to pick up towards the end of the game. You'll see once you play, not going to spoil anything.

Decent RPG but one of the lesser gems in the series. Play it for the story though even if it's just once, it's worth at least trying.

Good story, but repetitive combat

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I am about 10 hours into this game and doubt I am going finish it. So what is the problem? Why is it boring for me? The combat. I was extremely excited when I found out that there is a combo system within the combat. When I learned how to do the combos I realized that there is no depth in it at all. You connect 3 different moves and that's it? Why can't I connect 5? Why can't I mash moves together and accidentaly discover a great 6 hit combo? No, you use your regular attack, then any base skill, then any higher level skill. I was siked! It's boring and it has no depth. Besides the weak "combo system", combat is nothing more than button mashing. When you are not using your skills with the main character, Senel, you are doing nothing more than hitting the same basic 3 hit combo by pressing your attack button 3 times. Boring and repetitive! Sure it is nice to have real time hack and slash battles in an RPG, but at least make it fun and innovative! I saw the same thing already in Tales of Phantasia and I was not pleased with that game either. Sigh. The story is interesting and may be the only reason for me to play this game. The combat does not impress! I will try to finish this game, but doubt I will. It's becoming a chore to play, but at the same time I can understand why other people may like it. I am just not as patient and forgiving as other players. It's a cheap buy, so buy it if you want; you may like it.

Tales of Legendia Review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Tales of Legendia Review

I admit I was a little skeptical of Tales of Legendia when I saw the first news of its existence. At first glance, I felt that I would hate the character designs and the gameplay seemed to have regressed backwards a generation. Fortunately, time passed, and these were largely unfounded concerns. Tales of Legendia, while not a perfect game by any standard, holds its own against it's predecessors Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Eternia, adding it's own flair to the mix.

Characters and Story

Tales of Legendia seems to be one of those things where first impressions are usually negative and then they get better. Without going into too much detail, the storyline is intense and fast moving with lots of twists and turns. The entire game takes place on a large island that acts as a ship, created by the Kingdom of Terises. However, as Senel and his comrades soon discover, there is much hidden they don't know about the origins of the Legacy and the villains who will do anything to have its power. Every one of the main characters is thoroughly developed, especially Senel and Chloe, and they grow over the course of the adventure. With Senel, you a change from a brash, young marine to somewhat of a leader figure as he copes with his mistakes, past and present. The story is divided into two sections, a main quest and optional character quests, which contain some of the best written dialog in all the series.

However, I felt that much remained unanswered in the main quest that needed to be answered before the optional parts began. While the character development is deep for the protagonists, I cannot say the same about the antagonists and some NPCs. Very few of the bad guys in the first arc appear to be more than the average cruel henchmen of an overlord bent on helping him in world conquest. Only a handful of Ferines, a faction aboard the Legacy, were developed at all, those integral to the storyline.

Gameplay

First, Tales of Legendia was created by a separate team than Tales Studio, so there are some changes in the mechanics. The gameplay in Tales of Legendia consists of the standard exploring dungeons, cutscenes, running back to town, and then the progression of the story, sometimes in a different order. Since the world is one big ship, it is not very large, and thankfully, there are teleportation ducts that provide a shortcut between the various points on the Legacy and the home city of Werites Beacon. Battles are similar to Tales of Eternia with a single line of battle. Because Senel fights with his fists, the battles feel much tighter and intense than Tales of Symphonia. They are also very accessible for newcomers to the Tales series, and I found myself racking up 20 combo attacks with ease. One of the innovations is the idea of Chaotic Fields where higher level monsters lurk guarding a treasure like a powerful weapon or piece of armor. Unlike other games, Legendia makes you work for your upgrades.

Negatively, I did not enjoy the dungeon design of this game. Primarily, they involve a fairly linear path through a dungeon, ending with a puzzle booth in which you must solve a simple block pushing or beam reflecting puzzle to advance to the next level. To me, it seems to be an artificial way of introducing puzzles into the action. A better way would be to insert the puzzles directly into the process of progressing through the dungeon; for example, toppling a large piece of debris to get across a river. There are some flaws with the battle AI, also. In boss battles, melee characters tend to run headlong into enemies without regard for falling back when their health is low. This is sometimes frustrating if one is counting on them to hold the line for the casters.

Audio and Visual.

Tales of Legendia is the series first step into true polygonal 3D graphics, and they have done a good job making the leap. All of the characters, as described in some of the early Japanese bonus material, are motion captured, so their movements are smooth and natural. In an attempt to create an exotic world, the environments are elaborately decorated with many curves and colorful lighting for some areas and a more technological setting that seems to have been pulled out of the corridors of a space ship. One look at a level like the Great Hollow, one can tell the detail Namco put into crafting the world. The characters, though, are somewhat lacking in detail, since they are small compared to the environments.

Many people complained about Tales of Symphonia's synthesized soundtrack, and they will be pleasantly surprised to hear that Namco has worked with the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra to bring the players an orchestrated soundtrack. Every location's music is aptly suited from the quiet of Werites Beacon to the tense moments on the battlefield as Senel marches forward. Another thing to point out is there is one song that is constructed in Relares, the artificial language used in the game. It, along with some others, brings the player into the realization that this truly is another world.

Localization

Peter Garza, localization manager at Namco, did a fantastic job as he took the helm of translating it. The character's voice actors are properly chosen and fit the personalities. None of the voices are annoying and the dialog is without any major errors. While those people who have imported the Japanese version will lament the exclusion of TAO by Do As Infinity for the opening, the new instrumental song synchronizes cleanly with the opening movie. There are no Japanese voices, but with the talented English voice acting, I did not seem to mind. One major fault in localization was, due to budget constraints, the voice overs in the character quests and the voice of Mimi Bread the baker are missing. After a few hours in the thoroughly emotional character quests, I have not found this to be a large issue. The localization was a step above Tales of Symphonia and sets a new standard for the series internally.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I feel Tales of Legendia, while it has it's flaws, is still a worthy game by most standards. It has a fluid, intuitive battle system, an emotion filled story, enticing environments, and the best localization a game in this series has received. On the other hand, the linear dungeons, fragmented sections of the story, and underdetailed character models may be a drawback for some players. I would recommend Tales of Legendia to both fans of anime role playing games and people who are just getting into this series.

The undying will of humanity

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: February 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

is the main source of this game
Pros:
-Cute graphics that suits the game's mood
-Awesome soundtrack(It's a nice blend of Jazz, and has nice chourses in some stages)
-Excellent voice acting
-Rapid fight style gameplay
-Great story(And a ending that might be a bit emotional for some, like me)
-I love the cheerful comedy this game brings(If you just played a horror game, it's never a bad idea to turn to this to cheer you up
-It said 70 hours, and man this was the clostest that any game has close to being right about it's lenght on the back cover(I was only 15 minutes over 70 hours)
-Very nice animated ciniematics(It provides much more than the 2 Tales of Symphonia had)
-Excellent group of characters:
--Senel:The main man who walks around with the strenght of 100 men. He can be a pain sometimes. (Like when he abandoned his party, and felt like a total @$$ later)
--Will:The 28 year old man, who uses a hammer, but uses to much magic.(What is the point of having a hammer that can crush a cinderblock at ease if you're hardly gonna use it)
--Chloe:The knight with a generation of greatness before her, but she has loads of doubt and revenge in her(At one point it will, and I mean WILL piss you off)
--Norma:Where would this game be without the cheerful, bubbleheaded Norma. She brings loads of comedy, keeps the game from being completly boirng, well she's like Ed from Cowboy Bebop.
--Moses:And no he's not the guy who said let my people go. He's kinda like Zelos, and he's a bit of a goofball, and he provides comedy as well.
--Jay:I swear the first time I saw this dude I thought he was a chick. She-male lookin' sunova... Anyway, he's the least likable for me, because he always acts like he's too good for everyone.
--Grune:Ah, other than the fact that she lost her memory, she reminds me of Sheena, super sexy, fights with a weird weapon, has a relationship with summon spirits, the perfect woman, a Goddess(Seriously, and she's generaly rather nice to Moses, unlike Sheena and Zelos' relationship)
--Shirly:Senel's sister, and he cares for her a lot, but yet, she always seems to find a way to be a complete burden for like 2 of the game, but she's usually sweet.
-Gald is hardly a problem(The fact that you usually have more than you can spend from time to time)
-Skits have voice acting(Which is suprising since it wasn't that way in tales of symphonia
-Nice load of extras after the game was completed
-This game is a ton of fun, and is very enjoyable installment of the tales series.
Cons:
-No multiheal items(Only Norma can heal everyone, but it's not always enough)
-No Voice acting through Character quest.(Throughout the final 35 hours the only way you can hear voice acting is through the animated FMVs or skits. I missed the voice acting so much, I almost forgot what the voices for some characters sounded like)
-No summon spirits used(Their names are mentioned but they're never used. What happedned there)
-I hate random battles(The dungeons are wayyy to long and random battles are a bit frequent. I don't know what was wrong with the Tales of Symphonia system)
-The world map sucks! The paths are not far away, but Senel runs way too dang slow!(Not to mention there's nothing of an airship or anything like that)
-Puzzle booths are annoying(The only good thing I found about it, is you don't get into random battles with them.
-During character quest this game suffers from Magna Carta syndrome where you backtrack through previous dungeouns(Dungeouns I thought I'd never have to see again. They could have gave a quick jump like Tales of Symphonia did.)
-I wish you could cook after that battle and eat, and get a limited status raiser like in Tales of Symphonia(But, you gotta wait till after the battle.)
-No alternative endings(That is a real downer, seeing as how it is very common in RPGs today)

Tales of Lengendia is a great fun experience, but in pails in comparision to it's Gamecube predicessor Tales of Symphonia. This game looks like it was the prediseccor, and Tales of Symphonia was the successor. Seriously this game was inferior to it. Yet this game is enjoyable, and PS2 owners that never played the Gamecube success, nor had a international PS2 to play the japanese version(Which was realesed on PS2 there, and had much more extras than the gamecube version, and a casino, which was messed up), should enjoy this Tales experience, altho I played better.

peace

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