Collection essentials #383: Tales of Destiny (PS1)

This is the second game in Namco’s long-running “Tales of” series, and the first one to be released in America. I previously covered the first game, Tales of Phantasia, for Super Famicom. Tales is one of those series where the games generally are completely independent of each other, so Tales of Destiny takes place in a different world with different characters. Although two characters from Phantasia do make a cameo appearance for a quiz minigame.

In this game you play as Stahn Aileron, a sword-wielder with big and long yellow hair. As the game begins, he’s seeking adventure and stows away on an airship. He is discovered and forced into manual labor, but then the ship is attacked by a bunch of monsters. In the chaos, Stahn goes around looking for a weapon (not sure why he didn’t bring one), and he stumbles across a sword…that talks!! He says his name is Dymlos and that talking swords like him are called “Swordians”. As Stahn and Dymlos escape, a new adventure begins as they quickly run into more characters who wield Swordians. And, of course, the fate of the world winds up on their shoulders and all that jazz.

In terms of gameplay, as I described in my post about Tales of Phantasia, these games generally resemble a typical JRPG, but instead of turn-based battles, you instead fight in real-time. You control Stahn and freely move left and right, able to do a basic slash attack with your sword, plus you can use a number of techniques or spells which consume MP. You can have up to three party members fighting alongside you, and you can customize how their AI behaves. Or, if you have a certain item, you can even have a friend control one of them directly.

Outside of battle, Tales games often have a little more puzzle solving then the average RPG. One thing to help with puzzle solving is a recurring item in the series called the “Sorcerer’s Ring” which shoots out a little blaze of fire.

Tales games are known for having strong characters. I certainly wouldn’t call this my favorite cast in the series, but Destiny has some pretty good ones. The spunky treasure hunter woman Rutee stands out, as does Leon Magnus, a cold teenage captain in the kingdom who first opposes our heroes and has them arrested, but then winds up accompanying them.

The developers of this game had the great idea of recording voiced dialogue of frivolous conversation between the main characters which would sometimes be heard on the world map. These were often humorous and fun, adding a lot to the characters and their appeal. However, sadly, these conversations were completely removed from the English localization. Somebody has translated many (if not all) of them and uploaded videos to YouTube with English subtitles, which is nice, but it’s a real shame that they can’t be experienced as intended when playing this game in English.

Tales of Destiny didn’t sell very well in America, which isn’t very surprising given that the game has rather underwhelming 2D graphics in an era where gamers were hungry for the latest and greatest games in 3D. It was a hit in Japan, however, and it wound up being one of the most popular Tales games over there. The game wound up getting a full-fledged remake during the next console generation which only released in Japan, but now has an English patch. I actually played the remake this year and…well, I thought it was pretty underwhelming and disappointing.

My first experience with Tales was with a future title that I have yet to cover up to this point. When I played that game, I found out that two previous Tales games had been released in America, and I wanted to play them. And so, I sought out and grabbed a copy of Tales of Destiny at a local Gamestop (though that’s not the one pictured, since my initial copy was just a loose disc). 

My evaluation of Tales of Destiny is that it’s pretty good, but in the crowded world of PlayStation RPGs, it certainly doesn’t come close to the top. Future Tales games would add a whole lot of polish in various ways, so I don’t think it’s one of the best in the series either. Admittedly the main reason it’s on this list is because I’m a big Tales fan. It’s still an enjoyable game, but I would recommend checking out one of the other Tales games first. If you do so and find yourself wanting more Tales, then Destiny can be worth checking out, provided you have the right expectations.