VS.
Recently, I've started playing two JRPGs, Tales of the Abyss for the 3DS and Tales of Xilia for the PS3. I'm quite a bit further in Abyss due to the fact I can play it while waiting for my Dungeon queue to pop up in Final Fantasy 14 and so far I'm very much enjoying it. Thank God for auto battle by the way. It makes grinding on the go much easier.
For those of you who haven't heard of these games, they are both part of a long running series of games made by Namco. They are similar to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest in that each one is its own individual game and each has very little to do with the other. They aren't quite as popular here in America but in Japan, they have a very big following. By far the most popular game in the series was Tales of Symphonia released for the Nintendo GameCube.
Tales of Symphonia was the first in the series to use the now standard free moving battle system. It definitely put the series on the map here in America. At least that's how it was for me. A lot of my none gamer friends back in high school simply adored the game. But I haven't seen nearly that much love given to any of the other Tales games. While playing through Abyss, I was reminded of another game from another series. A game that has equal parts love and hate for the fans. Final Fantasy VII.
Now I'm going to state right here, both Tales of Symphonia and Final Fantasy VII have a very special place in my heart. Both introduced me to excellent series and both have excellent game play. But do they deserve the recognition as the best in the series?
When I started doing my research, I found that a lot of the number crushing had already been done for me, at least for Japanese sales. Apparently Namco hasn't released the numbers for other countries. The most useful article I found was the following Kotaku article. Unfortunately the sales numbers were only really for the Japanese market. Based on what I saw though, Tales of Symphonia wasn't quite the power house I originally thought. At least sales wise. If I compare that to the sales numbers for Final Fantasy VII, it seems that my original idea about just how popular Tales of Symphonia was in comparison was a little off. Final Fantasy VII had outsold every other Final Fantasy game by leaps and bounds. At least according to the info here. Perhaps maybe my hypothesis was unfounded.
However when I looked at game forums such as Neogaf and GameFAQs, I noticed a few threads dedicated to disusing weather ToS was over rated. Through some more digging, I was able to find the sales for ToS for the first few weeks in America to be close to 10,000. That's pretty good for a GameCube title. It also had enough recognition to warrant an HD remake of both the original and sequel originally released on the Wii. Unfortunately it looks like the HD re release has seen very poor sales. Compare those to the sales numbers for Tales of Xillia, which sold a little shy of 100,000 copies in its first week in the US alone and you'll see that the popularity of the Tales series has only gone up.
So then why do so many people still regard Tales of Symphonia with such high regard. A lot of it has to do with the overall quality. While Tales of the Abyss is a great game, it's story pales in comparison to Symphonia. I saw the the big plot twist about Luke the second I saw the back of Ashe's head. If you look over at Tales of Xillia, you will see plenty of complaints about the world feeling closed off and repetitive, something that I don't feel about Symphonia. In fact, Symphonia seems to almost have a cult following since it has become difficult to find a copy of the original GameCube release, although the demand for them has gone down thanks to the HD remake available. All in all, I feel that Symphonia deserves every once of love that is given to it. In fact, I might be better off comparing it to Super Mario 64, another game that moved the series from 2D to 3D in such a seamless way. Meanwhile Final Fantasy VII, while still great hasn't aged well at all. There is a reason why fans are so interested in a remake.
I guess what I'm saying is, if you haven't played any of the Tales games, you can't go wrong with most of the games. Just don't tell that to any die hard Tales fans. Those crackers be crazy!
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