To start things off, the first game I'm going to talk about is called:
I don't own this game and after beating it, I'm glad I just borrowed it from Morgan's brother. I give this game 2 out of 5 Matlocks.
This is the third and last game of an RPG series, the first two games being Tales of Phantasia (which is pretty raunchy and vulgar at some points, filled with sexual themes, and other things), and Tales of Destiny I (which I feel is a much better game than the other two as I will describe).
The basic story line of TOD II, if you can call it basic, is two worlds that are literally upside down from each other (if you were on one, the other world would seem like it ws hanging upside down in the sky) called Inferia and Celestia are in danger. The two combined are called Eternia, 'not' the place He-Man is from though. You start off the game seeing an FMV of some freaky looking girl with purple hair speaking another language and her getting into an odd "pokemon ball"-looking thing and her zooming off to somewhere else. You then are introduced to the main character, Reid, and his childhood friend Farah. They spot the craft coming down from Celestia to crash on their beloved Inferia. Why 'any' civilization would want to call their world "Inferia" I have no clue, they must be really stupid. So Reid and Farah find this girl only to discover that they can't understand a 'damn' word she says, but that when she touches Reid in any way, there is some kind of rainbow light that forms around them. Of course this prefaces the next event of "lets go together and try and help this odd, unintellible vagrant!" What happens later is that they finally get to understand this girl, named Meredy, and really they would have been better off in the dark. The only thing this girl is good at is telling them that their world is in danger because Celestia is starting to fall and will collide into Inferia, thus killing everyone. She doesn't even do 'that' well because her vocabulary and sentence structure verges on that of a toddler at best. You preceed to help this girl (and can't forget her annoying pet "Quickie") to save the world, meeting three more people for your party at various intervals: Keele (the other childhood friend of Reid and Farah), Chat (an obnoxious pirate girl from Celestia who gets mistaken for a guy at every turn), and Max (a humorous leader of a revolutionary group on Celestia who's a masochist and says "Yeah!" a lot) - no I do not make this stuff up. You'd think with such a bunch, this game would be really great, right? Well, think again. Mix in some horrible pronunciations of what would constitute as magical beings known as Cramels (Undine being pronounced OOnDEEnee), and mid-grade voice performances, and then the ending and you get a really disappointing game that took you roughly around 40+ hours to beat. Now don't get me wrong. There are a lot of things that they could have changed to make this game soo much better. The character development and even the plot (though it was overdone) was semi-well thought out. The downside was that you didn't give a damn about the characters at all, at least I didn't. So when I actually did manage to beat the game, and I knew enough about the characters through the grueling 3 disk game that I assumed they 'had' to have some kind of really good ending that detailed what happens after they save the world, as well as the small romantic episode that appeared to be developing between two of the characters (hey, if I had to play the damned game to find out, so do you), BUT they don't. This has to be the 'worst' thought out ending in the history of gaming, possibly anyway. It's not even a spoiler in telling you what the ending is! Since obviously beating the game entails having saved the two worlds, Reid and Farah go and visit Celestia in their ship. .. Yep, that was it. 'You're' disappointed for me aren't you? I sure as hell am and I 'like' video games and usually give them some slack.
At least I'm not alone in my dislike for the game. I just read a review at the Working Designs website and the author pretty much says what I did, but in a more professional and nice manner. Plus he agreed that Tales of Destiny I (not Tales of Phantasia mind you) was a much better game. I'll probably write something about that one later since it will give me something else to do. - chris
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