Tales of Symphonia Remastered - Xbox One

Arrived on time and in great condition.

Arrived in perfect condition. Exactly what I ordered.

Throwback to a simpler time in the world. Gorgeous game, fun mechanics.

To preface this, Tales of Symphonia was one of my favorite games for the Gamecube, and when this was announced, I was excited as it gave me a reason to revisit it. Unfortunately, in the end, it came up a bit short.While this is a remaster and not a remake, very little felt like it was actually remastered. Textures on models are upscaled where they look sharper, but at points wind up looking way worse. Animations are worse as characters will sometimes snap to a new pose rather than animate it, and enemies will at times forget to animate altogether and instead aggressively T-Pose at you (for me, it happened the most at the Desian bases and in the Temples of Earth and Lightning). Loading times are somehow worse than the original Gamecube version, and will occasionally have to waiting for several seconds for the battle results screen to pull up (And I'm playing on a Series X). But the worst part is in the audio, particularly the character dialogue. If it's not sounding distorted and grainy, then it's oddly quiet to the point that you can't hear the characters talk over the other sound effects.As for the game itself, it's still at least a solid experience. Combat is fun (though if you're coming into it with other Tales games under your belt, you will regret not having Free Run), and the story is engaging, with the central theme about being what people are willing to sacrifice for their loved ones or their dreams, and what happens when those two conflict. The voice acting is also superb, with many prominent VAs like Jennifer Hale, Tara Strong, and Cam Clarke to name a few.It can become a bit of a slog if going for a full 100% completion. While the original only needed 2.5 playthroughs to experience everything, the remaster will take closer to 4.9 as much of the new content is tied to a singular choice (of which out of 8 total options you have, only 3 will be presented to you on each playthrough, and which ones those 3 will be are based off of all your other dialogue choices earlier in the game). Speaking of new content, there's nothing new compared to the PS3 or PS2 versions, but compared to the Gamecube version, characters have a few more titles to earn and learn a few new spells and techniques, skits are more animated now (but still not voiced if English is the chosen audio), a few small scenes are added throughout, and some bosses got made a little harder. So, don't go into it expecting changes to the degree that Tales of Vesperia did between its' versions.All in all, it's still a fun, older RPG, but this version just doesn't bring its A Game back to the table, making it feel lacking, especially alongside its more modern counterparts. It's a pity, as the game could've really shone if given a bit of polish to make everything work well, but instead we're left with a port that ultimately feels lazily done.

I really like this game. It looks more clear then it did on the GameCube. I really like the story and the graphics.

Great classic. Takes me back to when I first played this on gamecube. Bring us more of these masterpieces bandai. 😃.