What do you think of the "Tales of" video game series.

[Magus]

I just began to play the series and I find it pretty interesting so far.  What's your opinion on it?

So far, I'm hoping to nail the gamecube and wii versions.

[Subsonic_Noise]

Sakuraba.
Also, I played Tales of Symphonia, Symphonia 2, Tempest, Phantasia, Eternia, and several "Tales of the Word"s. Not a single bad one in this series, and I still consider Symphonia one of thr best RPGs I ever played, and I played alot of them. Don't let the "clichee" story at the beginning scare you, after short time you'll get some of the most dramatic plottwists ever.

Sadly Merona isn't here anymore, she knows everything about the tales of games. xD
It's her and mine favourite games series.

[winkio]

I can't speak for any of the other games, but Tales of Phantasia is one of the worst games I have played for the SNES.  The story, isn't too bad, but it's impossible to enjoy it when you are fighting one 20 second battle for every 8 steps you take on the map.  Also, the controls for battle are severly unintuitive, and even though I was fighting a new battle every 30 seconds, I wasn't able to control my character effectively until the second half of the game.  Also, the skill system where you have to use skills an obscene amount of time to master them and get new skills just encourages more grinding.

If they would have focused less on the soul-sucking random battles, which literally took up 80% of play time, and instead allowed me to enjoy the story and the characters, it would easily have been a great game.  But it didn't, and that's why it sucks.

[Subsonic_Noise]

I can't speak for any of the other games, but Tales of Phantasia is one of the worst games I have played for the SNES.  The story, isn't too bad, but it's impossible to enjoy it when you are fighting one 20 second battle for every 8 steps you take on the map.  Also, the controls for battle are severly unintuitive, and even though I was fighting a new battle every 30 seconds, I wasn't able to control my character effectively until the second half of the game.  Also, the skill system where you have to use skills an obscene amount of time to master them and get new skills just encourages more grinding.

If they would have focused less on the soul-sucking random battles, which literally took up 80% of play time, and instead allowed me to enjoy the story and the characters, it would easily have been a great game.  But it didn't, and that's why it sucks.

Well it's the first one in the series. The remake for the game boy advance was improved alot.

[Ryex]

its true I've only played Phantasia and only on the GBA it was pretty good. the random battles and skill system weren't nearly as bad as you describe but they were pretty bad

[Diokatsu]

I know Aqua likes the series. I've never played them tbh.

[Blizzard]

That's weird, I think that Phantasia was decent. O_o Though, I don't remember how frequent the battles were, I do remember that I spent almost 40 hours on that game. And that's a lot for a game at that time.

[WhiteRose]

I started Tales of Phantasia, but never really got into it. I've heard that most of the series is really good, though.