Released throughout Japan on November 30th, 2000, and on September 25th, 2001 in North America, Tales of Eternia is the third and latest installment in the long-running Namco RPG series. Known in North America as "Tales of Destiny II", Tales of Eternia is a somewhat mixed bag of RPG development. Unlike both Phantasia and Destiny, Eternia was developed by an internal team at Namco Ltd. This means that tri-Ace played little-to-no part in the creation of the third installment. The results of this change in development are the basis of this article. For one thing, the game's structure is very linear; while this isn't exactly a bad thing, it does take some of the freedom away that tri-Ace fans have come to appreciate from the previous Tales titles. However, don't take this linearity as a horrible flaw; Tales of Destiny II's story probably couldn't be told in any other way. Thankfully, this linearity also lends itself to the ways in which each playable character develops throughout the game's story. You have no idea how glad I was to realize that each character is fresh at best, and at worst, a far cry from being utterly stereotypical. Reid may be the typical hero type, but just wait until you read the dialog between him, Farah, the farmhand heroine, and Keele, the acedemic weakling; it's truly hilarious and downright witty. Even better, all of the dialog during scenes important to the plot is voice-acted; quite well, I might add.

  This factor, along with character designs by Mutsumi Inomata, causes Tales of Destiny II's characters to nearly leap from the television screen. Most, if not all, of these unique characters are individuals that you would probably like to get to know--if they were real people, that is. This isn't even counting an assortment of comical characters that you'll meet on disc 2. And if you think that's funny, just wait until the first time you meet Wonder Chef, or find the cameo appearences of characters from both Tales of Phantasia and even Tales of Destiny. Visually speaking, Tales of Destiny II is arguably the most vivid two-dimensional RPGs you'll ever have the pleasure of playing on the PlayStation. Rather than simply going with prerendered CG, Namco decided to make the game look more like a hand-drawn affair, with bright environments that look almost pastel in nature. At first glance, this might not be that big of a deal to old-school role-players, but it's not until you get into the enemy encounters that things begin to fall into place.

  Like tri-Ace titles of the past, Tales of Destiny II's battle system plays out in real-time, with four characters entering the fray on your team and the enemies holding any opposing positions. The beauty of this battle system is the complete control that the player is given over the main character. With the exception of affirming commands for your other three characters to attack indirectly through careful use of a Triangle-accessable menu, the three characters that currently support Reid will be automatically controlled by artificial intelligence within the PlayStation's CPU. And since the battle methods put to use in Tales of Destiny II are heavily combination-based, players will probably find themselves focusing more on Reid's special moves than those of his compatriots. Unfortunately, the problem ultimately hindering previous installments, also hurts Tales of Destiny II.

  When the computer refuses to accept a given command, such as a Manual Override, telling Farah to quickly cast Healer so that you won't die, the A.I. will often do whatever it wants to do, regardless of the current situation or severity. This makes the tougher fights a whole lot more difficult than they should be and players will likely find that they'll have to manually override all supporting characters' chosen moves in favor of choosing moves that would hand them the victory. While this isn't exactly a fatal flaw, it does bring into question why the "improved" support A.I. isn't able to intelligently choose the right move for each situation. After all, if you must tell your compadrés what moves to use during tight situations, you might as well be controlling them manually from the get-go, rather than letting the ever-clumsy A.I. handle situations in all the wrong ways...

  During the less-important encounters, this isn't much of an issue, but during lengthy, difficult boss battles, it can be nearly intolerable. On the plus side, Tales of Destiny II has some great mini-games to take your mind off of the impending mission at hand. And for some of the crazier folks out there, Namco Ltd. has even included an option to play Tales of Destiny II with up to four friends via the Sony Multitap peripheral. This could be an excellent way to share what would normally be a strictly single player experience. Sound-wise, Tales of Destiny II is nothing to write home about, with a collection of tracks that you'd likely find in a variety of 16-bit RPGs years ago. While the compositions are enjoyable, and some are downright excellent, the overall soundtrack does nothing more than simply support the game's pastel visuals and swift plot developments. With the notable exception of the battle themes, overworld music and travel music, Tales of Destiny II's soundtrack is one that is great to listen to within the game, but I wouldn't recommend going to great lengths to import the set of CDs from Japan. Still, excellent audio all around and a great backer for the colorful visuals.

  As far as some of the more technical advances made by Tales of Destiny II, there's one that sticks out far above all of the others. In a trend that I would be happy to see more RPGs follow, Tales of Destiny II lets you save almost anywhere in-game with the only exception being that you obviously can't save during a battle or while having a conversations. And while the game's save systems weren't perfect by any means, it didn't penalize you for getting killed during the lengthier dungeons, as a quick reload always revealed that all of my acquired items were still accounted for. A saving system that allows you to start back from wherever you left off on the world map or within a town is an excellent idea, but the fact that losing a battle within a dungeon causes you to go back to the last load point, but not lose your acquired items from your last save, almost made me ecstatic. You simply must try this out; just make sure that you save often, even during long dungeon treks. However, know now that even the longest of dungeon treks in Tales of Destiny II is fairly brief, especially when compared with other RPGs. This is mostly made up for by the aforementioned brillant saving system and the fact that the enemies, and especially the bosses, you'll face along the way to the next plot point are never pushovers. In fact, even some of the random enemy encounters, later on, can be downright vicious.

  While Tales of Destiny II definitely isn't a game for you role-playing beginners out there, it's one of the best paced role-playing games I've seen in years. And with the exception of a few times on both the second and third discs, Tales of Destiny II literally charges the path towards its own completion. With a sizable cast of likable characters, Tales of Destiny II is an excellent addition to veteran role-players who want to play something a little less menu-based and a lot more action-packed, with a plot that only slows a few times during the story's course. The title's learning curve is decent, and doesn't require you to be an intellectual giant to comprehend it. The combo system is straightforward, and almost self-explainitory, especially for most combo-minded fighting game fans. In the end, Namco Ltd. has managed against all the odds to produce a sequel that matches, and oftentimes surpasses, its predecessors in nearly every way that fans and newbies could possibly expect. Let's hope that Namco has plans to continue the Tales series, on another platform, with this same sort of gusto in the near future.
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