Tales of Symphonia - Review

Just how long is too long? That's the question that I kept asking myself while playing Tales of Symphonia. In my opinion, when I finished it with 90 hours played, Tales of Symphonia was too long. 90 hours played, and keep in mind that skipping a lot of sidequests just trying to finish the game... I imagine that if I had done all the sidequest and done more exploring I would have easily put another 10 or 20 hours into the game.

Don't get me wrong, a game doesn't have to be a set amount of time to be enjoyable. I put 125 hours into Oblivion and enjoyed every minutes. Between my two playthroughs of Fallout 3 I've put in damn near 200 hours. I don't even know how many hours I've put into Morrowind between all of my different games. I enjoyed every minute I put into those games and not once did I wish they were shorter... but they're different. Each one of those games involves a ton of exploring, it's a free and open world and you're encouraged to explore it. And because of this freedom you can spend a lot more time with these games. For those types of games, essentially the skies the limit on how long you can play them... but there's always the knowledge that if you want to finish the game, the main quest is always there to complete. But what about when there is little exploring and the main quest is 70+ hours long?

So how long is too long when it comes to RPGs? It's a hard question to answer, and certainly varies from person to person. I asked my brother that question, he thought that an RPG should be about 25 hours long. I thought that 45 was a good number... though it all depends. I'd gladly play a 60 hour game as long as I enjoy it. But to me, 35 to 45 hours with the possibility of 15+ hours of exploring is a good number.

Along comes Tales of Symphonia. A video game that can easily hit the 100 hour mark... and yet at about the 50-60 hour mark I was really wishing it would come to an end soon. Generally not a good sign.

Let me get this out of the way. I really enjoyed Tales of Symphonia, I really did. I just wish it had been about 30 hours shorter. It was just too damn long for me. Towards the end I began to feel like some of the quests were not essential and could have easily been cut or shortened and still the game would have been good. In fact, looking back at it there seems like the game could have easily been shortened without losing too much.

There seemed to be a lot of going back to places I had already been, doing quests that I didn't feel I needed to, a lot of back story that seemed like it could have been part of side quests and not as much of the main quest... there's the other problem. I'm not 100% sure what was and wasn't the main quest. As far as I know I didn't stray too far from the main quest, but on the other hand I'm really not sure. I just kind of went where I thought I should go next, or followed the synopsis that they give you in the game. All I know is that it took me 90 hours to finally beat the game.

Like I said, despite the fact that the game felt like it was dragging on in parts and was way too long, the game was fun. I had a very good time playing it as well as beating it. The combat is great, the voice acting is good, the story is good, and overall it's a great little RPG.

Like I mentioned before I originally started playing this game in about 2004 or so and it was a whole new experience. I had never played an RPG like this before. It was like a mix of Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy and a hint of Street Fighter during battles. And even though since I have played games with a similar battle system or similar gameplay this game still feels fresh and new to me.

Overall this is a good game and well worth playing, just make sure you have plenty of time to do it.

Squid.