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So, lets just jump to the nitty gritty. Like I said, the game is long. How long? The box says 80 hours of play. I beat it in 65 and felt like I was flying through it. I believe 80 hours or more can easily be spent if you power leveled and completed every side quest. While you can pick up this game brand new for 50 dollars, one way of looking at it is that the game provides entertainment for less than a dollar an hour. The other way to look at it is if you spent 80 hours working a 6.00/hr job you'd have made over 500 dollars (when you count in the 50 you spent to get the game). So, we've established that this game is either low cost entertainment or a total detriment to the gross national product. So, does the rest of the game measure up to the epic time proportion of Tales of Symphonia?

The intro to this game exceeded my standards. A cut-scene anime approach had me expecting to see a lot of anime cut-scenes throughout the game. Unfortunately that isn't true, though you are graced with the occasional fully animated cut scene. The rest of the graphics are certainly high enough quality that you don't question it very often. The game is a combination of 3d rendering and 2d cell shading. This, when done poorly, would give the game a very disjoint feel. In Tales of Symphonia it is done very well, though when you are shown close-ups of characters at a "flat" angle, you do get that disjointed feeling. The special effects are good enough, though I was a little disappointed with overland travel being very dull to the eye. Had the game received the graphical quality of the intro throughout it would have been incredible… but also would have taken a dozen discs to play, rather than just two.

The weakest link of this game, in my opinion, was the story. It has the epic tale feel, a world in peril, a savior in red (named Lloyd? Who's idea was that!?), a cute girl with an annoying personality… oh, the elements were all there. Unfortunately, the plot is a tad bit predictable, surprising you only by constantly bringing you new things to do. Several times you will catch yourself saying "What the heck is there left to do? I know there's the whole CD2 in front of me… but this looks like the end of the game to me." The reality is, no element of this plot is truly original or truly unpredictable. The only part that may qualify as original is so convoluted that it really makes me wonder. Overall, I would have said this plot is above average if not for, at the end, there being several loose ends that are never tied up. Without spoiling the story (Since you learn this at the start), Lloyd has a special "exsphere" that people are after… but even at the end it never tells you what was so darn special about it! That's just one of the many examples of unresolved plot lines. Ergo, the story is the weakest link in our epic.

The characters of Tales of Symphonia are a mixed bag. The main characters, Lloyd and Collette are about as annoying as you get. Genis, Lloyd's best friend, is a close third in the annoying-o-meter. The rest of the characters are pretty well done with interesting, logical, and funny personalities. My personal favorite is Regal, who is handcuffed throughout the entire game. While this, in its self, is a little funny, what makes his character worthwhile is that, due to an awkward position of his hands, any time he is facing away from the camera it looks like he is taking a wiz on the nearest object. Try it! You know you want to! They use a very innovative "optional cut-scene" which displays at intervals throughout the game. This does a lot to help advance the character's personalities. Sometimes they are designed to give you hints or non-required abilities, but most of the time they are just silly chats between characters. Another reason why I beat this game in 65 hours was skipping some of these cut-scenes. They involved Collete, Lloyd, and Genis far too often (given my previous assessment of how much they annoyed me) to risk clicking the Z button (which is used to pull up the optional chats).

Combat is where this game shines. Tales of Symphonia has a real time combat system that is, overall, a work of art. There are 4 characters in each battle; each can be played by a human. In our game we were blessed to have 3 humans available every night for 65 hours of play. The multiplayer aspect, while brilliant, has a significant downside. The camera follows around only the first player, which means most of the time you can't see the second, third, and fourth player characters. This makes it very hard to block and attack things in real time. The solution we came up with was to have second and third players (me and my brother-in-law) play two spell casters, since it doesn't matter where they are as long as nothing is beating the crap out of them. Each character can move, block, attack, use items, cast spells, do special attacks, and the all powerful "Unison Attack."

Movement is restricted and "dumbed" down for the player's safety (you can only move towards or away from your current target, making the 3D board actually more 2D). The simple block - counter attack is fairly effective, but the real melee power comes from linking special attacks together. By figuring out ways to link special attacks you can really cause some major damage. Unison attacks are another key feature. The first player initiates a unison attack and using their controller commands everyone else to do some kind of attack. If you chain the right attacks back to back you get a whole new special combo. We found a couple of these but I know we missed a great deal of them. The equipment system is standard, nothing to write home about, except for the EX Gems. EX Gems are special equipment that give your character a special bonus. They range in level from 1 to 4, and each character has 4 gem slots. A character may get something as simple as a higher attack or as strange as nullifying damage at a low percent rate. By combining different EX Gems you can also get special EX abilities, similar in fashion to the way you string unison attacks together. These two features are icing on the combat cake and will keep you busy swapping around unison abilities and EX gems for hours alone.

Like many epic RPGs the game consists partially of combat and partially of puzzles. The puzzles in this game are mostly good. There were a few that were totally ridiculous, but on the whole with a little intuition and trial and error they could be solved without resorting to a walkthrough. I personally resorted to a walkthrough at only two of the many puzzles in this game, and I am sure someone with more patience or more intelligence could get through without any. Only one puzzle in my mind stands out as simply a "bad" puzzle and more than one stand out as very innovative, so I think it was well worth it.

So, what is my verdict? If you like epic-style RPGs, Tales of Symphonia is the game for you. If the thought of losing 60-80 hours of your life to a single game is too daunting look elsewhere. The exquisite combat system, nice graphics, and sheer volume of things to do in Tales of Symphonia, backed by an average plot and overall average characters, give this game no strong downside to counteract its many good points. I strongly recommend finding some friends to play it with you. Not only can they help with the multitude of puzzles and slaying the zillions of bad guys, but you will find endless fun mocking Lloyd and Collete in their "sexually frustrated teenager" conversations, which wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable if you didn't have someone to mock them with.