Tales of Symphonia Remastered

Genre: Action-RPG / JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Tales of Symphonia, the fifth main installment in Namco’s Tales series, is an Action-RPG and JRPG originally released on GameCube in 2004, receiving a Japan-only port to PlayStation 2 with additional content, and then a high-definition remaster to PlayStation 3 in 2014 alongside the game’s sequel, Dawn of the New World, with another port to PC in 2016. Then in 2023, this newly-remastered port of the game based on the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 versions (but lacking Dawn of the New World) was released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Before moving on, I need to address the complaints many have made against this game. When it originally released, this version of the game was extremely buggy, and players bemoaned that because this was based on the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game, which hard-coded the gameplay to those versions’ 30FPS framerates, that this version was inherently inferior to the GameCube version’s 60FPS framerates, and that’s before taking into consideration additional framerate drops many players noticed. Plus, the loss of Dawn of the New World meant that this release only included half of the content of the PlayStation 3 version that came out nearly a decade prior.

I think some of these complaints are valid – it’s terribly disappointing that Dawn of the New World got cut from this release, and it’s certainly disappointing that the framerates were halved. On the other hand, I feel like this version’s framerates are still perfectly playable, and the bugs and framerate drops that plagued this game at launch have since been largely resolved in post-release patches. In short, I think some of the biggest complaints many players have about this game are overblown.

No, the biggest complaints I have about Tales of Symphonia Remastered are about the original game, and how poorly it has aged in 2023 and now 2026.

Graphically, this version may not have the original game’s framerates, but it does boast a higher overall resolution, and its cel-shaded 3D visuals have been reworked to be more subtle this time around. That said, the textures are a bit muddy in places, and the game’s character models and animations are pretty chunky-looking. Even with the visual improvements, this is still a very dated-looking game.

And while the music has aged reasonably well, the writing and voice acting is pretty terrible. And the story about a team of heroes joining a “chosen one” on a journey to revitalize the world’s connection to a goddess seems pretty cliche and uninteresting, even if the characters themselves weren’t cringe-worthy.

Then, when it comes to the gameplay, I feel like this game’s take on Tales’ real-time combat system is pretty terrible, with enemies able to attack you in 3D but players only able to move on a 2D plane at any given time, and with a very limited range of attacks, at that. Combat isn’t satisfying, and the forced limitations on movement are extremely frustrating.

Look, I know that there are some players who cherish their memories of playing Tales of Symphonia on GameCube back in the day, but I simply do not believe this game has aged well at all. And while complaints about this port may be somewhat overblown, it is nevertheless worse in some ways than both the PlayStation 3 release and the original GameCube release. With this being the case, it’s very difficult to recommend this game to anyone other than players with a great deal of nostalgia for the original who doesn’t particularly care what form the game takes in this port. I can’t imagine that’s many players.

tl;dr – Tales of Symphonia Remastered is a remastered port of a 2004 GameCube Action-RPG and JRPG, based on an earlier remaster released in 2014 on PlayStation 3. Unfortunately, this game suffers in comparison to both of those earlier versions, and even if that wasn’t the case, the game itself has aged terrible, with clunky, frustrating combat, terrible writing, poor voice acting, and unimpressive graphics. Unless you love the original game so much you don’t care what condition its port is in, I cannot recommend the Nintendo Switch version of the game.

Grade: C-

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