Collection essentials #385: Tales of Destiny II / Tales of Eternia (PS1)

The third game in the “Tales of” JRPG series was originally called Tales of Eternia in Japan, with “Eternia” being the name of the world the game takes place in. For the English release, they changed the name to “Tales of Destiny II” to emphasize that the games are in the same series, even though the stories of the two games aren’t connected. This would become confusing later because Tales of Destiny went on to get an actual direct sequel. For that reason, fans like me almost always refer to this game by its original title.

This game places you in control of a hunter named Reid who is friends with a farmer girl named Farah, and their simple rural lifestyle is interrupted when one day a mysterious ship crash lands nearby. As the two go to investigate, they meet Meredy, a mysterious young girl who speaks a foreign language and seems to be trying to warn them about something. Reid and Farah seek out their scholarly friend Reid as they try to figure out how to communicate with Meredy and heed the warning she’s trying to give. And of course, many more things happen which you’ll have to play the game yourself to see.

Conceptually the gameplay is very similar to the previous games, with “random battles” occurring like a normal JRPG leading to real-time brawls instead of turn-based affairs. But when you start fighting, you’ll instantly notice that battles feel different. Fighting now feels a lot more fast-paced and fluid, and it’s awesome! A big and very welcome change to battles is how casting spells works. In Phantasia and Destiny, when you cast the bigger magic spells and summon magic, the entire battle would freeze for a short time as the attack was carried out, and then damage would be dealt. But in Eternia, aside from a literal split second when a spell gets cast, all spells play out in real time along with the action. This does wonders for keeping battles at a brisk pace, and it’s a massive improvement. 

I certainly wouldn’t call Eternia’s cast of characters the best in the series, but the dialogue is still often very fun. There is full English voice acting now, and it’s not the best quality acting in the world, but it gets the job done. Meredy is a standout character. She’s very energetic and playful with little regard to what others think of what she does, which is highly entertaining. She’s known to start dancing in public seemingly at random, for example. She’s very important to the story too, which I can’t share details about.

Eternia’s characters do suffer in the English release of the game, sadly, because they cut out most of the skits, which had fun frivolous dialogue that helped deepen the characters and endear players to them. The game is still plenty enjoyable without them, but it’s a pretty significant omission of a series staple feature.

Unfortunately, this game didn’t sell very well at all in America. Not only did it still have 2D graphics which likely limited its appeal, but the next console generation was already underway by the time it came out so the original PlayStation was already starting to feel obsolete. Also, I don’t know if this bad timing had any actual impact on sales or not, but the game had the misfortune of releasing on…September 10th, 2001. Yeah, that’s not ideal.

It’s been very many years since I played through Eternia myself. But from my fond memories, I’d say it’s a great example of a “very good” RPG that’s just a smidge below being one of the best. The characters, story and soundtrack are all good, but shy of being in that upper tier of the genre. I’d say gameplay is where it fares the best, as the battle system really is a lot of fun. 

I bought the copy shown in the photo in early 2005. In fact, in just a matter of days it will be the 20th anniversary of when I bought it, which is kind of wild to think about. It’s a wonderful game, and though I probably wouldn’t put it in my top 5 RPGs on the original PlayStation, it would definitely make the top 10. Unfortunately there’s no modern version of this game to play, but I’d still recommend seeking it out somehow. It’s definitely one to try for RPG fans, especially if you’ve played and enjoyed other Tales games.