Tales of Destiny 2:
The Grand Fall

Review by Chi Phan

What can I say about Tales of Destiny 2?? When I was first introduce to this series with Tale of Destiny 1, I immediately fell in love with the gameplay, especially the battle system which was very unique. The only downside to Tales of Destiny was that it was more a 16 bit rpg game then a 32 bit rpg game. Just when you think the gameplay can't get any better, along comes Star Ocean 2 which pretty much uses the same gameplay but expanded it even more to fit the Playstation in a 3-D environment. Far be it for me to say, Star Ocean 2 in my opinion is the best overall rpg for the Playstation. So with the promise of a Tales of Destiny 2 geared more toward the Playstation engine than the previous Tales of Destiny, fans like myself couldn't wait to get their hands on this game. And as expected, Tales of Destiny 2 doesn't disappoint. Also very surprising is the influence of Star Ocean 2 on this game which will pleased many Star Ocean fans. And now we move onto the review.

I'm a thinking man. You may call me Captain. One thing about Star Ocean and Tales of Destiny series is that their stories aren't in-depth, thought provoking, and emotional ones. They're good stories but not ones that would give you a lasting impression like say Suikoden series. Nevertheless, Tales of Destiny 2 story is a good one that goes along well with the gameplay. The story starts off with the 2 main characters Farah and Reid on a look out point talking with one another when suddenly a Spacecraft crash landed nearby. Like the good heroes that they are, the duo quickly investigate the crash site to discover a girl by the name of Meredy who is from the world known as Celestia. Without being able to understand what the girl is trying to say, Farah and Reid decided to take the girl to their old childhood friend name Keele. Soon afterward, the groups learn that the girl came to warn them of the Grand Fall, a collision between the two worlds, Celestia and Inferia. With this dire danger ahead, the group sets off on a journey to stop the Grand Fall. Thus ends my short brief description of the story. The story move along at a nice pace with alot of voice acting to accompany the story. But if you are annoy with the voice acting, you can turn it off in the option settings. What I like about the story is how they slowly introduce us to the characters in this game and the history of the Eternia. The weak part is that the story doesn't really have any key major bad guy such as Sephiroth for the heroes to fight. But then again, not many rpgs do. It's a good story but it could be better.

I'm Meredy. Nice to meet you. The game feature 4 main characters with 2 optional supporting characters. The four main characters are Reid, Farah, Meredy, and Keele. The 2 optional supporting characters are Chat and Max as the two optional supporting characters. The game does an excellent job in introducing us to the main characters. As the story moves along, it gives us flashback sequences of these characters and their past childhood. You'll soon learn about their secret past and why some of them act the way they do. The only disappointment here is the lack of presentation from the supporting characters, while the supporting characters are a part of the storyline, it's when they are a part of the group that there's a lack of involvement. It's as if they're not even there. Chat and Max could also use a little bit more of a background character developement. But since they are optional supporting characters, I'll let it slide. Overall excellent character presentation.

The fire power of a Craymel. Wow! That's what I think about the graphics. The game uses a mix of everything. At the beginning of the game there's a minute and a half of excellent anime presentation to the game just like with the first Tales of Destiny. The only downside is that's it when it came to anime sequence. We need more of that stuff. Now throughout the game, there's quite a few FMV sequences. The FMV sequence are excellent in quality but they are a letdown in a sense that it only shows FMV of your ship much in the way of Star Ocean 2. We need to see some characters FMV. Now for the gameplay graphics. Beautiful and I do mean beautiful colors. One of the best presentation of colors in this game. The background graphics are drawn in a somewhat 3-D settings with a beautifully hand painted drawn backdrop like with Saga Frontier 2. The sprites are drawn small but beautifully drawn with excellent details. I just love the graphics in this game. One of the best to look at.

To save Eternia! The music in this game is very similar to Star Ocean 2. Most of the sounds are base on an up tempo mood as to travel on your quest. The music for battle fights are excellent. The only drawback is that there really isn't one single sound that define this game. Usually a really good rpg always have at least one song that define it. But overrall musically is just fine and nothing to complain about. Now for the voice overs or voice acting in this game. The game uses alot of voice acting, from voice acting during the story and in game battle sequence such as spells and special attacks. Personally I think the voice acting is pretty good. Maybe average or better than average. Nothing that will hurt the enjoyment of the game. But if you're one to be turn off by the voice acting then you can easily turn them off by going into the option menu. A good way to please everyone.

Smile for the camera. Extra boss fight coming up next! Special guest star, Leon! The meat of this game of course is the excellent gameplay. Especially the use of the battle system and cooking. The main concept of this game is the same with the other rpg games. Go on a world quest with random encounters. Talk to people and progress through the game with a few mini games thrown in here and there. What I like about this game is that the random encounter rate is done to a point that it's perfect. Not too high of an encounter rate and not too low. And with a unique battle system, you don't mind the encounter rates at all. Plus there's a 100% escape rate. So you can just escape every battle if you want to. Now the two unique things that this game uses is the cooking system very similar to Star Ocean 2 and the magic system. First the cooking system. Throughout the whole game are hidden chefs. Once you discovered a chef, you will get a recipe and ingredients for a dish. Now once you cook a dish and eat it, the effects of the dish will vary from hp restoration to tp restoration or both. Now you can cook dishes manually or set it on auto cook. Auto cook is basically you assign a member of your group and then choose a setting to when he should cook the dish after a battle. The setting varies from every battle to when all allies hp are in half. This is very cool as you don't have to worry about healing or restoring lost skill points after each battle as your members will cook a dish to automatically when the needs arises. And now for the magic system. Your magic is deprive from your Craymels. Basically think Craymels as Guardians or Summons spells. Each Craymels comes with it's own unique elements. Now as you play along in the game, your Craymels will start to gain level. As they gain levels you will have access to high elemental magic but most if not all of the high elemental magics can only be access by fringing. What the heck is fringing?? Basically fringing is combining two Craymels to produce a new higher level of magic. The two Craymels don't really stay combine together, it's just that inorder to get high level magic, you will need to fringe. That's about it with the magic. Oh, inorder to summon a Craymel in battle, you will have to raise the vitality of the Craymel to maximum level. You can raise the vitality of a Craymel by constantly using that Craymels elemental magic.That should pretty much summed up the magic system of the game. The rest of the gameplay is pretty basic that I don't need to point out such as buying items and accessories. Now for the heart of the gameplay, the battle system. Man, this battle system rocks just like Star Ocean 2 and the first Tales of Destiny. Unlike the typical rpg battle system, this game uses a more interactive system with free style action movement. Basically you can have up to 4 members in a fight. You can only control one party member manually during the fight. Now for the rest of the 3 members you have to assign them their actions. First you need to assign the fighting action for the overall group. Some of the selections are Defense mode, All Out Attack mode, and Quick Attack. These are just some of the example. Use the different fighting mode to your advantage. Secondly you can set each character fighting move. What do you mean you ask?? Well each character has their own unique fighting style from pure martial arts to magic use. Each figher also comes with his/her own special skills and magic. Now inorder to activate certain fighting skill or technique, you will have to perform certain move a set number of times. For example, each fighters and mages comes with attack, followed by 2 different type of fighting style. The magic users would have Attack, Tp, and Tp. The fighter would have something like Attack, Slash, and Thrust. You will then set from 1-5 on how aggressive you want the members to use each type of attack. If you want your magic user to only cast say spells then you would set their Attack at 1 and Tps at 5. For fighters you would set their Attack on 5 and then choose what you want to them use more during battle. Attack, Slash or Thrust. These of course are only example. Why is it important to set the aggressiveness of these type of attack?? As stated before, inorder to activate a special attack, you would need to perform certain attack a number of times. For example: Special Skill A can be access by doing Slash attack 100 times and Thrust attack 50 times. This wouldn't be a problem if you are controlling the fighter manually but if the computer is then it's a good idea to set each characters aggressiveness. The only downside is that the battlefield is in a 2-D side to side scroll environment like with Valkyrie Profile and not the 3-D environment like Star Ocean 2. To perform special attacks, you can just assign the special attack to shortcut keys like R2 and L2. The special attack are very cool to do and sometimes funny. Downside is that you can't do link combos of special attack like in Star Ocean 2. The battles are in a very pace action like sequences that gamers would love. The only thing I didn't like is that dashing back and forth isn't as smooth as could be and that there isn't a jump button available. You have to press the up key to jump and I'm not use to that. Gameplay overrall is excellent. There's always something special about a game when you don't mind random battles at all. And that's a big thumbs up for me.

Oh, yeah!!! Okay there's alot to do in this game if you look for them. Now throughout the game, there a quite a few hidden bosses to fight. Some of these bosses are very hard to defeat and a challenge. Then there are secrets hidden items scattered throughout the world of Eternia for you to find. Then you have the many mini games that have nothing to do with the game to keep you busy. Now after you finish the game, you will have an option to save a game+ in a different slot. Once this is done, you can then reload your previous save game and access an extra dungeon. This extra dungeon have 6 floors and no save point. The catch to this extra dungeon is that on the first 5 floors there's a sub-boss for each floor. Now you can only access the first 5 floors with one character each and not a party. Once you used that character, you can't use that character again for the other floors so you have to plan which characters to use for which floor. Once you make it all the way to the top, you will get your party back and have to fight a very tough boss fight. The catch here is that without any save point, this dungeon is extremely hard and very time consuming. Nothing is more annoying then to make it through to the top floor to fight the extra hard boss just to get killed and have to do everything over again. Very annoying. But that's the whole point of this dungeon. Another thing is that in the new game+, you can have to option of a mania mode which is hard mode. The hard mode is exactly that. The bosses are harder and with the extra bosses, they are extremely hard as hell. You literally have to be a mania to want to fight extra bosses. The replay value is there and so is the extra value.

In terms of buying value, this game is a definitely a must buy. In terms of ranking this game in the top list of rpgs for the Playstation, it's definitely in the top 10. If you love Star Ocean and an interactive battle system that's fast and furious then I recommend that you get this game. Heck I recommend you get this game anyways. This is probably 2001 best rpg game but then again Dragon Warrior 7 may dispute that. Final Score: 9/10 Time to complete: an average of 40 hours. Difficulty: Medium to Hard depending on what Mode you're playing. Favorite character: Max Least favorite character: Chat Most useful Craymel: Maxwell Coolest Craymel Summon Spell: Destiny Best spell: Meteor Swarm Best special attack: Omega Demon Chaos Best heavy duty damage attack: Elemental Master Funniest but very powerful attack: Eternal Hammer Favorite quote: Yeah! Also try: Star Ocean 2

STORY A decent story that will keep your interest for the long haul. Nothing major in terms of plotlines though.	8
CHARACTERS A solid core of main characters with solid character background developement with each character's own unique personality.	9
GRAPHICS Unbelievable graphics. Excellent colors with beautifully hand drawn sprites and backgrounds. Anime and FMV are nicely done.	10
MUSIC A good quality selection of upbeat musical scores. The introduction theme music is the best.	8
GAMEPLAY A great and interactive battle system that keeps you busy to the point that you don't mnd random battle plus a unique cooking system as well as mini games.	10
EXTRAS/REPLAY Lots of secret hidden items to find and side quests and story scenes to be had. Also an option for a hard mode for replay.	10