Tales of Symphonia was the entry that first pulled me into this franchise that would go on to almost define my online brand, but this latest release of Tales of Symphonia Remastered has left me tired, deflated, and disappointed. Outside of the fact that it is now easier to play on consoles and (barring you having a Steam Deck) that it can also be played on the go, there is little-to-nothing redeeming about Remastered, and that really sucks. This means that even when it comes to content, Tales of Symphonia Remastered isn’t a content-complete version when compared to its prior releases. Some of my gripes with this port could have been blunted had Bandai Namco at least also included things like the cameo outfits or the divisive sequel Dawn of the New World, but alas, that isn’t the case. Later on, once you get stronger, this can mean you will spend more time loading screens than you would in the encounter itself. These same transitions were near instantaneous in other versions, without a single loading screen.Īt nearly seven seconds, the worst offender are the loading screens when you go back into the world map after every battle encounter you run into while on the world map. Load screens are plentiful, popping up anytime you enter or leave a location and head to the world map, which can top three-to-four seconds. However, what cemented Tales of Symphony Remastered for me as the worst option to play were the atrocious load times (at least on the Switch version, I cannot confirm how the PS4 version times are). Frankly, this is unacceptable at this point and makes the port come off more as a cheap money grab than a celebration of Symphonia’s 20th Anniversary.Īnnoying as these issues are, they are arguably not game or experience-breaking. Even the pause screen has done away with blurring out the background and replaced it with nothing but a solid black background. In their places are ugly and abrupt straight cuts to scenes that haven’t loaded all the way, leaving an empty screen for a split second before the models pop in, or in the case of combat a blank white screen. Some effects, such as the breaking glass transition into combat or even subtle fades between scenes, are just gone entirely. Even the basic font that’s used runs into issues with strange floating dots hanging conspicuously above occasional letters. Portraits look grainy and compressed in spots, particularly around the edges of the art. Seams that as far as I could tell, were not present in any other ports of Symphonia.Ĭharacter portraits and other 2D assets don’t escape the downgrade here, either. What is new, however, and rather odd, is somehow in this process, a plethora of seams are now present, cutting textures in strange places and standing out like a sore thumb. And much like other remasters that utilize this process, many textures now are blobs of smeared color that resemble shapes in most cases. In the scheme of things, however, this is the least of this port’s issues.īeing the hot new tool in the world of remasters, Remastered has utilized an AI upscaling process to make the previously standard definition textures more visually appealing for the higher definition world we live in. However, besides the convenience of being able to play on modern systems such as the PS4 and or portably on Switch, “Remastered” may be the worst way to experience this classic.Ĭontinuing the tradition of every re-release of Symphonia, Remastered retains the 30 FPS lock that has dismayed fans for years due to it relying on the PlayStation 2 build of the game instead of the original Gamecube version, which ran at 60 FPS. Tales of Symphonia is no stranger to being re-released, with this new Remastered release bringing the count up to number four. As a staunch supporter of video game preservation and ease-of-play for classic games, I always get excited when a game I love, such as Tales of Symphonia, receives a remaster announcement that will put it onto modern platforms.
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