Tales of Legendia... finally completed.

[Cless]

I finally finished this game. today I only had the last "dungeon" left to do... can't believe I waited almost a year and half just to complete this part. It feels good to have this game off my back though.

But, shrug. Nothing in that time really redeemed the game at all to me. It was just an incredibly easy and annoying boss gauntletexcept Dark Shirley and Senel, who actually managed to kick my ass once... actually had to adjust tactics for once!. And then the final boss, who managed to drain my supply of life bottles, but it wasn't really an exciting battle. I suppose the only thing that surprised me was that Grune actually left. Usually after 10 minutes of characters acting sad about someone leaving for good, they usually come up with an excuse to leave the character alone after all.

I got a chuckle that a "studio cliche" was credited in the ending credits. Lovely name that, hardly ironic...

Perhaps this post would've been better on the "now playing" thread in the other board, but I'm trying to spend sometime clearing some unfinished games. I suppose I'll go finish FFXII and ToA after this.

[Kogahazan]

I just barely finished the main scenario two months ago... One can only take so much repetition. I'm on, like, the second character quest right now but haven't picked it up since. Dunno if I can bear to grind through the rest of the game, especially with the voice acting gone. That was one of the few things holding my interest.

[Cyllya]

I thought the lack of v/a made it better personally. The character model size/detail and the fixed camera angles made it pretty oldschool-like, the English version dialogue was written to account for the lack of voice, and reading it myself instead of waiting for the actors to read it out loud made the game go much faster.

[Kajitani-Eizan]

massive spoiler time!

FFXII: EMPIRE IS BADGUY also, opening certain treasure chests makes CERTAIN other treasure chests disappear... uh-oh!
ToA: MENTOR IS BADGUY also, equip wooden sword on people before certain cutscenes for added hilarity.

oh, the humanity!

[Dimentionalist]

I got ToL the day it launched and gave up in Grune's CQ. Haven't beaten it yet... I have to say I liked the main quest a lot better than the CQ's (no, not just because of the voices, either.)

[Panda_Samurai]

I got it on launch date and quit 13 hours in. I bought it again over Winter break of 2006, and beat the whole game.

[jdhathrisen]

I liked the environment and the music, but it ended being too sickly sweet for the most part.

I still prefer it to ToA in general (the character designs in ToA seem to try so hard not to fall into stereotypes and end up being too hackneyed. Aside from Jade, the funniest Tales character bar none.) I keep coming back for the battles and the C.Core stuff (giving Luke massive strength etc.)

[Kogahazan]

Okay, took the last week to finish up CQ and beat it this morning. The boss gauntlet would have taken damn forever without the Extreme Symbol. Dark Senel and Dark Shirley were quite difficult but beat them on my first try. Cost me three of my twelve Elixirs, and the final boss using up about four or five. I found the ending to be sort of nice. Shame that Grune had to leave.

I don't really find any of the battles throughout the entire particularly game hard, it's just a test of mental endurance... Most common enemies can be held back by Senel's basic three-hit combo. I was just about to consider going through hours of that just to get everyone to lvl 100 on my first playthrough but then the experience required in the 90s is just so ridiculously high that it takes forever without any experience enhancers.

Started a bonus play carrying over the important stuff with combo exp and formal costumes. Got up to the Bandit's Lair but that's enough for a day. I missed a few things that I need to remember to get around to this playthrough but I don't think I'm going to touch this again for a while.

[raigan]

I always find it somewhat difficult to play again when I know that the story won't change at all on the second playthough. That's mostly why I really enjoyed Tales of Symphonia is because it had optional character sidequests and scenes you could only get when your affection levels were high enough. More to see means more reason to play again. It's up there with the Star Ocean series as some of my favorite games.

I don't think I'll ever play Legendia all the way through again... maybe just up to the CQs. The game has awesome music after all. And I'll change up my party next time... mostly so I can see the cool victory scenes I missed. Moses Happy Dance, anyone?

[Magicpaint]

I played the Japanese version so I enjoyed high quality VA throughout. probably helped me because for some reason I really enjoyeds the CQs, and loved all of the development each character went through, despite the repetition and useless backtracking towards the last couple of CQs.

[raigan]

Unfortunately I speak/read Japanese as well as my non-existent cat speaks Turkish. I wouldn't get much out of the Japanese version I'm afraid... except maybe a burning desire to kill Norma.

[Magicpaint]

Shame that the CQs didn't get the voice treatment as it was superb in the Japanese build and the characters really came out of their shell convincingly. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the CQs half as much without the voice work. But then again I heard a bit of the English voice acting, and I remember them being of significantly lower quality, which is a shame really.

[Kogahazan]

I personally didn't really like the English dub as much when I first heard it but then it grew on me. The acting itself is well done. It didn't sound disjointed like some early anime dubs did from having everyone record voices separately with no context.  It's just that the problem of finding that perfect voice is still hard. I namely didn't like Moses' voice at first but then as the game went on, it started feeling more appropriate. I still don't think Jay's is completely on the mark, even though he's 16 and not 8 as his Japanese voice would have you believe. I don't think the dub's that significantly worse than the Japanese version.

[raigan]

I have to agree on Jay's voice. It's one of the few I've heard since some of his Japanese voice files are still intact the ADX archive. Just for the fun of pointing this out: it would appear they still make calls to the voice file they should be playing from the archive -- it's just been replaced with a 2 second silent file.

[Olimpior]

The music was the 1st thing that pissed me off on this one. It sounded out of place with the scenes from the very begining! If I wasn't a Tales fan, I would've dropped it like a bad habit. 

The story wasn't a total failure, but predictable. The arena was a piece of cake(with all characters) so that was kind of a let down!

We need to see some ridiculously hard stuff like The Adventures of Batman & Robin game and FFVII's extra bosses(well... maybe not this hard).

[Magicpaint]

The MUSIC?!

ToL's music is probably the best thing about it. >_<