Tales of Phantasia reborn!

Lovers of the Tales series on the PlayStation (Tales of Destiny) and Gamcube (Tales of Symphonia) consoles, look to an unlikely system for your next love: The GBA.

Tales of Phantasia, Namco's excellent action-RPG that started off the amazing Tales series more than ten years ago, is being brought to North America at long last. Finally, Americans will get an accurate translation of one of the best games on the Super Famicom, in the form it was meant to be played.

Better yet, it seems that, similar to Square Enix's GBA updates to the earlier Final Fantasy games, ToP will be getting a graphical enhancement as well as a smattering of new features.

Due out in March next year, ToP should be an excellent addition to any RPG lover's library.

Sounds awesome. I played the de-Jap ROM before...

Tales of Symphonia is one of my favorite RPG games. Can't wait to play Tales of Phantasia.

I've played the ROM as well, but from what I can see the GBA version will be superior.

My main concerns, however, have to do with the translation. For one thing, several of the names seem to be quite different in their official translations. Cless and Klarth, for instance, are Cress and Klaus. It's Aeris/Aerith all over again.

My other worry is whether or not we will get an accurate translation. There's actually a fair bit of swearing in Phantasia ("Mint has that quiet elegance about her, but I bet Arche f***s like a tiger."😉 and some sensuality ("Bring me back to the forest, and I'll do a little favor for you! We can even use the rope!"😉. Sadly, the Fire Emblem translations' use of "blast" and "dang" has made me lose faith in NoA's ability to give us a true translation of the game.

Yeah, I was worried about that, too... They're probably also cut out/edit Arche's dream aboard the ship <_<;

Is the combat turn based or like Tales Of Symphonia? I don't like Turn-based much..

Final Fantasy did way too much turn-based action so I'm sort of sick of it also.

Yes, Phantasia was the first RPG to introduce an action element to its battles. It works almost exactly like Symphonia did, just in a 2D space. At the time, Namco couldn't use graphics to compete with Final Fantasy, so it was the action element that made the game notable.

Fans of Symphonia should be able to get into the story rather easily as well, because Symphonia is actually a prequel to Phantasia (over a few thousand years).

YAY! I cant wait for this game!

So this is Tales Of Destiny right for Japanese Ps1? 😕

No, Tales of Destiny was the sequel to Phantasia. The series goes like this:

Tales of Phantasia (Super Famicom 1995)
Tales of Destiny (PS1 97 for Japan, 98 for US)
Tales of Phantasia (PS1 98)
Tales of Eternia (PS1 2000 for Japan, 01 for US as Tales of Destiny II)
Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon (GBC 2000)
Tales of Destiny 2 (PS2 02)
Tales of Symphonia (GCN 03 for Japan, 04 for US; PS2 04)
Tales of Rebirth (PS2 04)
Tales of Legendia (PS2 05 for Japan, US release planned for February 06)

So the Tales series is ten years old now, with nine official games and many more spinoffs. North America has only seen three so far, but if the response to Phantasia on the GBA is big enough, Namco may see fit to translate more of the series.