Barely the naked minimal.
I’ve fond recollections of taking part in Tales of Symphonia almost 20 years in the past. It was one of many first JRPGs I’d ever performed, and to today I think about it a gold normal of the style. With a posh narrative in an enormous world, fluid real-time fight, and a star-studded English dub that includes the likes of Scott Menville, Jennifer Hale, and Tara Sturdy, there’s loads to like about this recreation. There are some things that haven’t aged too properly equivalent to the shortage of high quality of life options from future Tales titles and a messy opening act with clunky exposition, however I’d nonetheless simply suggest the sport to anybody trying to play an absolute basic.
Sadly, I don’t have as many form phrases for the most recent remaster, which isn’t solely the primary time it’s been re-released on a Nintendo system, but in addition solely the third time ever that the sport has been made obtainable within the west. There are sufficient issues with Tales of Symphonia Remastered that it feels beneficiant calling it a remaster in any respect—not solely does it lack any new options or enhancements in any respect, however it retains each technical flaw from earlier re-releases whereas managing to introduce model new issues of its personal.
Symphonia Remastered is predicated on the PS3 re-release from 2014, and plenty of of its points are inherited from that model. There’s been a variety of speak about how the sport is locked to 30fps—a downgrade from the GameCube model’s 60fps that has its roots within the preliminary PS2 port. If that had been the one concern then issues won’t be so dangerous, however the recreation’s artwork type was additionally compromised with inconsistent rendering for the anime-style character outlines featured within the unique launch. The outlines by no means handle to look as daring as the unique GameCube model, and relying on the scene they generally vanish completely. Some scenes additionally bizarrely have dialogue that’s utterly lacking in PS3 and Change variations. This isn’t a matter of censorship or an up to date localization; characters will nonetheless reply to lacking strains as if they had been nonetheless there.
The problems with the PS3 port (which can be discovered on Steam) finally don’t add as much as a lot, and in case you’ve by no means performed the sport earlier than you in all probability received’t even discover most of them. The identical can’t be mentioned of the brand new points launched within the Remaster. Loading instances between maps, which was once miniscule, at the moment are a number of seconds lengthy. Colours are much less vibrant throughout the board with the sport’s brightness being turned down in all scenes. Textures have been AI upscaled, with visible particulars devolving right into a smeary soup consequently. The battle UI now options texture seams not current in another model, and small icons and textual content fonts now have seen compression artifacts. One particularly egregious instance I seen was a small black line that constantly appeared above any lowercase w in dialogue.
A few of Symphonia’s graphical results at the moment are merely damaged. The pause display which beforehand appeared on high of no matter was taking place within the recreation now encompasses a plain black background. The fashionable animation that transitions between exploration and fight is totally lacking, changed with a tough lower to black adopted by a tough lower to white that fades in after a pair seconds. Cutscenes additionally seem to have misplaced the flexibility to crossfade, now abruptly jump-cutting between pictures that was once gradual transitions. The one real enchancment on this model is that the sport runs at 1080p, a document excessive for console variations of Symphonia—however loads has been sacrificed to get there.
A lot is compromised on this remaster that if it had simply been an emulator working the GameCube model in HD, then it truly would’ve been an enchancment. That’s not simply hyperbole; I truly checked how the GameCube model appears to be like on a fan-made emulator rendering the sport in 4K, and the end result speaks for itself. There are not any compression artifacts within the UI, there are not any seen texture seams, the character outlines are absolutely intact, and the sport runs at a clean 60fps; all elements that the official remaster fails at. The one factor the GameCube model is lacking is the content material that was added within the later PS2 port, however at this level I’m beginning to marvel if that content material is even well worth the bother.
Tales of Symphonia appears to be a recreation that’s doomed to get a bit worse with each subsequent re-release. It’s troublesome to justify calling this new model a remaster in any respect because it contains the entire issues with the earlier model whereas introducing completely new issues on high of that. The naked minimal for a port of a retro recreation needs to be that you simply received’t discover any technical issues in case you haven’t performed the unique, and Tales of Symphonia Remastered doesn’t even clear that bar. It’s playable; it’s nonetheless Tales of Symphonia, however that’s the absolute least we will ask of it, and that’s the absolute most we’ve gotten from it.