The coming of high horsepower consoles did many things for the home video game industry. It allowed developers to create faster, better, and most importantly, Three Dimensional Fighting, Action, Racing, and Sports games. This is all great, but, what about the traditional RPGs, where other elements are far more important than "flashiness"? Were they too going to suffer the same fate? After playing Tales of Destiny, I can tell you with absolute certainty, that the 2D traditional RPG is not dead yet.

The first thing you will notice about this game is the high quality manual. If you are as sick as me of the 14 page black and white leaflet, that some companies try to call manuals, than you will surely enjoy the 70 page high quality *color* manual. A good manual is definitely an important part of the gaming experience, and TOD has one.

TOD's graphics consist of well drawn Super-Deformed characters on well drawn, extremely detailed backgrounds. The palette can sometimes get a bit dull, mostly in towns, but the backgrounds are always well done, and extremely detailed. For instance, when a character opens a door, it smoothly swings open, rather than just disappear. Also, when your character walks by a light source, like a lantern, he casts a shadow. There are also good uses of reflection in mirrors, water and other shiny surfaces. You can even see the leaves of trees moving in the wind. The overworld is very colorful, and has a very innovative rounded horizon line simulating the way objects would disappear in a real world. It is also 3d, so objects do pop out of the ground, instead of looking pasted on. In the battles, the sprites are also well drawn, and nicely detailed as well. The battle spells look very good, while not distracting from the play. The game starts out with a great, well drawn anime intro, but the rest of the animation is few and far between. This is not really a bad thing, but if you are expecting a lot of animation, you will be let down a bit in this department. For the most part, the graphics are extremely well done, with a lot of attention to detail.

The Gameplay is mostly standard RPG fair, except for the battle system, where this game really excels. Basically, it is a side-view, real-time engine, similar to a 2d fighting game, but with many RPG elements. You and up to 3 other characters that are controlled by AI (or can be controlled by other people with a special item), fight using the various RPG elements: use items, cast spells, etc. But this time, rather than just sit there, going through different menus, you get to control your character. You still have a lot of control over your party members though. You can give commands to them, and you also decide the formation. And you choose the strategy of the characters (e.g., "Always Heal", or "Obliterate").

The control very responsive, as would be expected from Namco. The only real problem here is the encounter rate. It is really high throughout this game. When I saw people saying this about Breath of Fire 3, I thought they were just a bunch of whiners, because I thought the encounter rate in BOF3 was acceptable. But TOD's encounter rate is far higher. So if you didn't like the encounter rate in BOF3, you are going to hate the TOD's encounter rate. It is a tad annoying when you are trying to navigate through a large dungeon, and you get interrupted every few steps, making it impossible to remember where you are going and where you have been. But personally, I don't count that against TOD, for two reasons. The first is that there is an item that lowers the encounter rate, and second, the battles are just so darned fun. All things included, TOD's battle system is still innovative and extremely addictive.

In the area of sound and music, quite a bit was changed from the Japanese release. Rather than do poor English dubbing of the spoken dialogue, most of it was removed. The spell casting voices are there though, and they sound really good. As far as the music goes, it was all above average, but not fantastic, although there were a few stand-out songs. And the J-pop intro. song from the Japanese version has been removed. That can be good or bad, depending on your opinion of that type of music, so I won't comment on that.

The plot of this game is interesting, while not exactly breaking any new ground. This is one of the millions of RPGs, that starts out one thousand years after a war ended, and now trouble is starting again. But it has many original features, once you get beyond that, including sentient swords among other things. The Characterization is very good as well. I won't go deep into the plot, but, others have complained of ups and downs in the plot. I seriously didn't notice this. I thought the whole thing was pretty good, but of course, this is entirely subjective. There are also many side quests including an optional 60 level dungeon, adding to the length and replayability. Expect this game to last 40 to upwards of 70 hours, if you are not rushing through it.

My final topic is one that the Japanese players never have to worry about (except possibly with Shadow Madness, if it is to be released there), and that is Translation. TOD's translation was extremely good. You can forget about the "No, way - Off Course, He are sick" crap that some companies feed us. Namco actually cares about the English speaking world, so we got a top quality translation. This is Working Designs quality translation, with WD-Style jokes in it as well. Truly a great translation here.

Overall, this RPG is definitely in my top 5 of all time, and I have played many. From the great characterization, to the innovative battle system, this game is great. If you were a fan of any of the SNES RPGs, and it takes more than flashy graphics to make you enjoy a game, then you will certainly love this title.

--Matt Flynn