Tales of Destiny (Directors cut)

         

     First things first, I want to give a quick shoutout to furiousg4m3r who made the patch I used when playing through the game. You can get the patch yourself at https://github.com/furiousg4m3r/Tales-of-Destiny-DC.

     Tales of Destiny is an amazing game, 9 out of 10. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, have a good night.

     In all seriousness though, this is a fantastic entry in the Tales of series and is a must-play for any fan. The characters are as lovable as ever and the combat is some of the crispiest in the series.

  If you are not a fan of how slow and cryptic the original PS1 version is, then this version fixes all those problems. 

     Let's take this one step at a time. First, most importantly, is the combat. Instead of the HP/TP system seen in Tales of Phantasia and the original Destiny, this version uses a CC system most comparable to Tales of Graces F. Basically, you have a certain amount of stamina you can spend before you have to stop attacking for a second. Different artes also have varying CC costs. As you can imagine, the stronger the arte or spell, the more it costs to cast. At the beginning of each battle, each character starts with a minimum CC which is determined by their equipment. Then, every time they spend CC they gain one more. This is repeated until they reach a maximum value that also changes based on equipment. However, once an attack/combo is used while already at max CC, the value will return to the minimum.

     This can be frustrating at first if you are used to the TP-based system and just want to keep attacking. But as you progress through the game and gain more maximum and minimum CC, as well as more ways to gain CC in battle, it doesn't feel very limiting at all. It is just a maximum combo count that prevents you from spamming artes. However, characters with a high critical rate can gain CC almost as fast as they lose it so if you want to keep hitting the attack button then I'd recommend playing as either Leon or Lillith. Be warned though, those characters are glass cannons with very little health and defense compared to the rest of the party. 

     Speaking of the party, this game has one of the series's strongest casts. While on the surface the characters seem like stand-ins for common archetypes; the nice guy, the tsundere, the edge-lord, etc. Where these characters shine is in their interactions with each other. Now, this can be said for almost every Tales game, but the casts always make the generic RPG save the world adventure feel more like a fun trip with some friends. 

     Okay, everyone is great but the stars of the show are obviously Stahn and Leon. These two see the most character development out of the whole party and have a wonderful dynamic. Stahn is cool mainly because of how grounded he is. Compared to the rest of the group, Stahn has the least life experience since he grew up in a small village. This creates a strong set of family values that Stahn attaches to his friends as well. However, he is also ignorant of how the world works and is easily tricked. He does not like to believe that someone he initially thought was a good person would betray. These morals end up being both a positive and a negative for him, but in the case of the latter, he sees some great development.

     But in my opinion, Leon is an even better character than Stahn. Not only was he my favorite character to play as, but he also changes the most over the course of the story. Even though he starts as an enemy, Stahn eventually considers him his best friend and vice versa. My only complaint with Leon's character is some of his decision-making in the second half of the game. Up till that point, he always seemed like the type of guy who would not let himself be used by someone else. However, when the woman he loves is kidnapped, he faces the party as an adversary yet again instead of just working with them to save her. The villains never even harm her. 

     Overall, Tales of Destiny is easily a top 10 Tales of game for me. I don't know exactly where I would place it but is most definitely the best of the 2D games. (I have not played Tales of Hearts R or Destiny 2 yet though so that could change.) I don't know why North America got the mess that was Tales of Legendia, and not this game. I'd say this game is better than both Tales of the Abyss and the first Tales of Xillia. It is tied with Tales of Graces as my 5th/6th favorite game.