Tales of Symphonia, a forgotten RPG for the Gamecube

The Nintendo Gamecube is the game console that unfortunately is sandwiched in between two very successful consoles for Nintendo, The Nintendo 64 and the Wii. The Gamecube was not as successful as either of these two systems and was set back in the console race that was created in that time with the Cube going against the Playstation 2 by Sony and the Microsoft Xbox. While the Gamecube is not remembered as well from the previous generation, there were still an amount of good games for the system, and not all of them were games that were made by Nintendo.



Tales of Symphonia is such a game, released in the US by Namco in 2005, it is an installment in Namco’s ‘Tales’ RPG franchise, much like how Square Enix has the ‘Final Fantasy’ series. Tales of Symphonia takes place in a fantasy setting where there is a group of people called Desians that enslave humans in order to harvest mana, the world’s life force that is steadily dwindling. Therefore, someone goes on a journey to replenish the Mana to the world. Enter the characters that you will be playing for most of the game. Lloyd Irving is a human living in a small rural village along with his friends, Genis Sage who lives in the village with his sister Raine, who is also the town’s school teacher. And Colette Brunel, who is revealed to be what is called ‘The Chosen of Mana’ and it is she that must go on the pilgrimage to restore the mana to the world. However, the events of the game all play through Lloyd’s perspective. The story itself takes a small bit of time to get going, as is usually the case with many Japanese RPGs, but once the plot is in motion, it doesn’t stop at all.

The battle system of ‘Symphonia’ is what makes this game unique, unlike most Japanese RPGs where the characters battle in a turn-based system, ‘Symphonia’ is real time. You take control of the characters and move them around a preset battle field and attack the enemies and cast spells all in real time. The battles get very frenetic at some points, but you always have good control over your character and can customize what you want your battle mates to do while in the heat of battle. The graphics in this game are decent, but the character designs are what give it that feel. The designs of the characters were done by Japanese Manga artist Kosuke Fujishima, who is probably well known, for those who have read it, for the ‘Ah! My Goddess’ manga that has been running since 1989 in Japan.

Overall, if you haven’t played this game yet and you have a Wii, go ahead and search out for a copy and try this out, this game should be a pleaser.