The End of Tales of Eternia.

[leene_chan]

I finished the game in a little over sixty hours. I did end up beating Sekundes but I have no idea how I won. In a last ditch effort to save my skin I had Meredy cast Indignation and she ended up doing a Hi-Ougi that took off 30,000 damage. Fatality! :D

My final party consisted of Rid, Farah, Meredy and Keel and they were all at level 72. I don't know who got the death blow because the screen was flashing around so much I almost had a seizure. ^o^ Compared to Sekundes Shizel in her two forms was waaaaaaaaaaay easy.

Now here comes my review!

Gameplay: The character sprites were small and the enemies were small and this made fighting hard at first. The battles in TOE were more difficult than I was used to with Tales games (except with TOD2!) but Meredy and Keel were like magical tanks! I had to revive my characters a lot during boss battles but the only bosses that I lost to repeatedly were Maxwell and Sekundes. The dungeons were a reasonable length and the puzzles weren't that difficult (except that one in Shizel's castle with the sliding ice-blocks, grrr). If I compare it to TOP (because I can't compare it to TOD, TOD sucked that badly) I would say that TOE is a worthy successor. I'd give it a 9 for gameplay. There were a few fun extras and I loved exploring underwater. I just wish the battle sprites were bigger!

Characters: I hated Keel. It's not that he was a poorly developed character, though, (I just personally despised him) and I can't consider him as a reason to give TOE a lower rating for this category. I didn't really have a favorite character but the interaction between the main party was genuine and heartfelt and Chat and Fog were fun to have around. I would give TOE a 10 for character development because even though the game didn't feature the most obviously attractive characters they all were fleshed out in a tender manner that you don't find in most current RPGs.

Music: Okay. Bad. But I knew it was going to be. I think I liked two tracks in the entire soundtracks and the rest sounded like fuzz. Oh well, I'll give it a 6 for music.

Graphics: Uhh....the overworld map looked horrible but the town graphics and some of the dungeons looked nice. The battle sprites were ugly and grainy. I'll give it a 7 for graphics because they really should have been able to do better with a PSX game!

Story: Probably the best out of the Tales games that I've played. It'd started out predictably but it had excellent pacing and pulled out a few twists and turns I wasn't expecting. I'll give it a 10 for story because even the games I loved had horrible plots and here, I actually wondered what would happen next. ^^

Fun Factor: A 9. There were a lot of extra events, funny skits and cameos but the poor soundtrack and graphics kept me from enjoying the game as much as TOP. I think that in many aspects it can be considered a step up and it's probably a matter of taste. TOE was a great game and might even be the quintessential Tales game if you could hack into it and make it look and sound better. Oh ho...

My overall score: 8.5.