A look back at: Tales of Destiny 2

And I mean the actual Tales of Destiny 2, not what Tales of Eternia was marketed as in the West.

And sadly the game never got imported to the West at all. Heavily anticipated as a Namco title in Japan yet never saw a Western release and at the time of writing this, fans are clearly having a hard time translating it all. At least it's a Tales game through and through, giving us most of the stuff we'd know from playing the previous titles, though things look a lot bigger. As far as the game's plot, a lot of it fanservices previous characters, one of which is THE most famous character of the previous game returning as a totally different man. No translation meant I had to consult someone's own translation of the lines on GameFAQs and just watching as characters speak a language I never really studied.

Well gameplay can be more important, and I've never been a fan of grading you after battle to get better rewards. It emphasizes nigh-perfection in every battle in order to get better rewards, and the more sophisticated a game's battle system is, the harder it is to get a good grade on your battles and thus a better tech for your characters who could use it. Especially when you have the Linear Motion Battle System making it that you can only control one character and having AI control the rest of the party, which has mixed results usually. Also especially when enemy HP gets to be quite high in the end of the game, with end dungeon enemies having around 10000 HP. Also also especially when melee attacking isn't that good, and spellcasters make or break the battle on both sides, making a party of three main spellcasters (usually Reala, Harold, and Judas) and one physical fighter (usually Kyle) a default party throughout the game.

The characters are at least fun, and the plot loves time travel so much it becomes a central theme. Judas/Leon is a nice addition, not the best, but at least he sticks around throughout the game. Nanaly's funny skits with Loni are fun, and Reala's plot importance as the mysterious girl with godlike praying is kind of redundant. Harold is a breath of fresh air too. Yes, we do get to see the Swordians in their human form in the past, which is really cool. Yes, we get to see our former heroes from Tales of Destiny 1 in better roles. Rutee's the mother of Kyle now, unfortunately her husband Stahn dies in the current timeline. Philia and Garr are leaders of their respective areas, and even Lilith and Chelsea have minor roles. Our main two villains are actually quite decent. Elrane is basically a foil to Reala, both being avatars of god but Elrane being deranged and wanting to destroy all to cure all. Barbatos, woo, he's on another level. Imagine if you will a boss that wants you to fight like a true man, so much that if you try using healing spells, spells in general or USING ITEMS, he'll counter it hard. He thinks it's a fair way to fight too, but this kind of counter makes him one of the truly hardest battles ever. And he's just totally crazy as a character. To think that he also tried to kill the former heroes, somehow ONLY succeeding in the case of Stahn, it's insane.

But the time-traveling is only so much fun and the plot sort of devolves into a whole "Kyle loves Reala" thing, and while it's not the single worst romance overall, I was able to make at least one comparison. I remember how Lunar 2 went, with the epilogue involving Hiro making a one-way trip to finding his love Lucia again. This is kinda like that, but with a bit of amnesia on Kyle's part after the storyline time distortion brings everything back to the way it was. So when Kyle ends up going to the ruins where he first met Reala in the erased timeline, she's back and gives the memory back. Really weird.