Games / Game Reviews

Tales of Legendia Review

By Jonathan Mills
February 20, 2006 - 21:31

The Tales series has been around for a while in Japan, and has enjoyed some success. Tales of Legendia is the follow up (in the US at least) to the Outstanding Gamecube title, Tales of Symphonia.

First of all (and a clear indication of where this review is going) I only played Legendia for slightly less then 3 hours. Normally, I couldn't in good conscience review a game I barely even played, but since this is the follow up to one of my favorite games of all time, I think I can make an exception. Because of this, I'll only express my opinion and not actually score the game.

Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube was an amazing game, one of the few 60+ hour games that I wish never ended. My expectations for Legendia were high to say the least, but I was confidant enough that I broke my own rule and bought the game, without even scanning over the review scores first. But to be completely honest, even if I saw the review scores before hand, and they were bad, I still would have bought the game. Obviously wanting to recapture that same experience I had with Symphonia.

Of the little bit I played, it was anything but that...

First of all, the graphics, their bad. Everything but the character models just seem blurry, even the still images used in skit's seemed blurry to me. The voice acting and sound design is below par, I don't blame this on the actor's/actresses, but more so on whoever the production team was. It sounds like the voices were recorded in a cave, with an echo. Oddly enough, another Namco game I played called Baten Kaitos (Gamecube) had this very same problem. The battle system is decent, but clearly a step down from Symphonia. But more then anything else, It just felt like the game had no soul. Again, I played it only 3 hour's, but in that time you can tell a lot.

Playing 3 hour's is not long for an RPG, I know this, so because of this, I can't touch on the story, nor can I exclude the fact that the game could have become engrossing if I had played it longer, the truth, and the reason I didn't play it any longer was because I just couldn't stomach it.

Namco is an awesome company, I love them, especially considering they produce another favorite series of mine, Xenosaga, but I was really disappointed with Legendia. Now, their is a flip side to this, and that is that Tales of Legendia has been receiving good reviews from multiple sources, In fact, Gamespot gave it an 8.0. So, if you were like me, and a fan of this series, after all this bad stuff I've said, I'd still say give it a shot, seeing as how their are many who would disagree with me.

Final score is not based on an average

Last Updated: November 29, 2025 - 16:51