Move Over Symphonia, Bandai Namco Launches Tales of the Rays Today

In Tales of the Rays, players travel with heroes Ix and Mileena across diverse landscapes, exploring dungeons full of treasures and battling monstrous enemies in an epic quest to revive their world.

[PhoenixUp]

What does Symphonia have to do with anything

[Iloveherliezz]

Arguably the best one. Writer must think this will be better.

[The 10th Rider]

Which is weird, there's been plenty of Tales Of games since then and they (arguably) haven't managed to be better, why would a phone spinoff suddenly be?

[Null1980]

Now with microtransactions! Sounds like a winning formula to me! /s

...and just for the record, I do love Tales games.

[babadivad]

GTFOH with that shit. Symphonia is no where near the best. Abyss destroys Symphonia. Predictable simple characters and plot. I have play probably every Tales of game ever released. I don't understand why some hold Symphonia in such high regard. It defies logic. Hell, Graces f was better than Symphonia.

[Harkins1721]

@babadivad. Graces F is great but the story is no where near Symphonia. Symphonia has it all while Graces F has gameplay and characters. Get use to it

[babadivad]

@Harkins1721

I'm not saying Symphonia is bad. It's just not the best, not by far. It's odd that it's acknowledged as the "Gold Standard" of Tales games. The story on Symphonia was not stellar and very predictable. It wasn't bad, just OK, nothing to set it apart from the others. And yes the gameplay was great, but it wasn't better than others in the series like Graces f, Abyss or even Vesperia. And the story was far better in Abyss. A game released in the same time frame.

With all this said, how is it the best? It doesn't have the best story or gameplay. I think the fact that it was a grat game for Game Cube. So it's fans over-rate it. But judging the game by it's own merits, its far from the best in the series.

[kitsune451]

@babadivad It's almost as if other people have different tastes and opinions than you. All Tales games have predictable plots. I found Symphonia's characters much more interesting and memorable than Abyss. Luke is a whiny brat.

[The 10th Rider]

@babadivad,

I haven't played others Tales Of games and I honestly haven't played much of Symphonia. When I looked into buying one for PC (a year or two ago) I found that most people seemed to be of the opinion that buying Symphonia was the best way to go because it was still the best entry.

Since in researching which one on PC to buy I found that most people seemed to hold Symphonia as the high point in the series, I said that they haven't managed to be better. Since I haven't personally played all of them, I included "arguably" in my post.

It's largely based on opinion anyways, so there's no need to be so upset about it. Personally I imagine there's Tales Of games with better stories, combat, worlds, (obviously) graphics, etc . . . But when I looked into it many people seemed to be of the consensus that Sympohnia had it all. It's also possible it's held in higher regard because for its time it was an incredible game, one of the best RPGs of the generation, whereas many of the modern ones don't stand out so much among today's games.

[babadivad]

@Harkins1721

Luke WAS a whiny brat. But he showed ridiculous character growth by the end of the game. As a matter of fact every character in Abyss had deep secrets a d different motivations for doing what they were doing. EVERY main character showed immense character growth in that game.

Lloyd stayed a cluless dolt for the entirety of the game.

@10 Rider

Like I said before. Symphonia came out on GameCube. And it was a great game for that system. So the people who played it on GameCube over rate it. But Abyss, which came out at around the same time was better in pretty much every was. Especially the story.

GameCube fans seems to have started an echo chamber that it was the best. It firmly believe it was spead by people who's only Tales game they've ever played was Symphonia. Then picking up a different one, they say "why isn't this like Symphonia"?

I'm just saying it's nonsense. Most the people saying that, Symphonia is the only one in the series they have played. I was having a conversation with a Game Stop guy about the next Tales game release.

He was like I love that series. Symphonia was the best. I asked which others had he played. Turns out it was the only one in the series he's played. It's just silly that's all.

The most childish game in the series is classified as the "best". But no one can really give a reason why. They just agree with what others told them.

At least you can admit that you haven't played them all.

[PhoenixUp]

It could be someone's favorite, but it's not the definitive best

And a mobile game isn't going to unseat any mainline title

[Null1980]

The touchscreen only controls are enough to turn me off. I absolutely love Tales of Hearts R on the Vita (a remake of the 2D DS title) in the way you play with analog sticks and buttons, but can also implement special attacks with flicks of the touch screen. THAT is fine. Full touchscreen though? Not my cup of tea.

And I'd rather pay more, buy a title out right than play a free-to-play with microtransactions. :\

[narsaku]

Call me when a Tales games utilizes current gen hardware appropriately. I ain't paying for a ps3 game in 2017 on 2016 hardware.

That or give me them for the price of other old games, 19.99. Or toss it up on PS NOW so I can rent it for 5 bucks.

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

Well the next Tales of game is coming to Switch, Whether it's a port of a old, collection or Switch exclusive or timed we don't yet.

But yeah I don't get why Tales team didnt drop PS3 years ago.

[babadivad]

There is a very noticeable leap graphical fidelity from Zestria to Berseria. Not nearly as dramatic as the leap from Abyss to Vesperia. But these consoles are not as big a leap in graphical quality as we got from the transition from Gen 6 to Gen 7.

I was stunned by how good Vesperia looked when I first started playing. I thought it was still cut scenes.

The PS360 era consoles were about 20x more powerful than their predecessors. That kind of leap is likely never going to happen again in the console space.

[feraldrgn]

It's a mobile game & you're saying move over Symphonia? Lol...

[Servbot41]

I think it's sarcasm.

[Princess_Pilfer]

Symhonia is aggressively mediocre. 1 decent plot twist in a game otherwise consisting entirely of stock anime tropes and with a painfully simplistic and clunky battle system does not make a good game. This is the same reason SOTET doesn't hold up as well anymore. Granted it has a better battlesystem and you can exxplore the characters in more depth to see how they're at least somewhat different than the tropes they seem to be, but the differences aren't quite enough to save most of the characters.

I'm betting its popularity is entirely a "right place, right time" thing for people who'd never played an actually good anime-styled JRPG (say, Persona or Legend of Heros or Skies of Arcadia) so it puts on a lot of peoples nostalgia blinders. FF13 is better. It's boring and bad, but at least it's weird and flashy.

Really anything even kinda good could say "move over symphonai" and be fine, and a lot of (though far from a majority) mobile games are at least kinda good.

[TheOttomatic91]

Ugh mobile sorry I'll pass on this.