Oh so there is a sidestep action? Hmm, i dont remember there being one. I guess if it has that, thats enough. To be honest, i dont use free run that often if i can evade attacks by side/backstepping, like Graces for instance. Xillia, i used it a lot, because the sidestep in that game feels a little awkward to me.

Waiting til the HD version comes out in the US, to play it with my friend, since we've been playing all the games so far. The only ones left are Symphonia 1 & 2, Abyss, and Legendia. we've played pretty much all other games that allow multiplayer except phantasia (i think it has multiplayer), and i think Eternia (if that has it).

Phantasia forces you to get some ghey items for it.
Eternia does the same thing to iirc but you can get the items early or I might be refering to TOD Ps1.

Yeah i remember you had to equip some accessory for it. I think the game gives you one or two of them, and i think you have to buy the rest from a store or something.

I hate free run too, it made the games too easy tbh.

if anything i can honestly say symphonia has one of the worst battle systems
obviously not to the point of legendia (but i still loved legendia) but it's really not that great when you compare it to something like, say, vesperia or abyss and before we mention Yuri, Rita, Estelle, and everyone else, this is talking about the battle system itself, not the broken characters

Stopped when you said Abyss.
Lmfao Abyss was a**, the battle system was complete garbage it's slow paced as well not adding the broken free run system. Vesperia was a nice change in pace instead of the usual Base<Master<Arcane system you were able to chain just about anything or cancel some attacks for a typical OTG.
But back on Abyss it's system is legit s*** considering the battle system was unpolished and anything that ended in the air had a unnecessary amount of end lag.

i'm reading slow paced here but i'm also reading that symphonia has one of your favorite battle systems

Symphonia is my favorite tales of battle system and by extension the only tales of game I played.

Well, I played Legendia but the battle system and overworld were pretty grating so I stopped after I got Jay.

It's true, notice the amount of time it takes after throwing out a Arte like Fang Blade Havoc?
Compared to the majority of the artes in Symphonia it goes to show Tales of studio made some steps backwards.
If I remember correctly you could cancel some of the aerial artes but they still do have lots of end lag that they don't need which is pretty retarded.

do you notice how the majority of artes in the game are actually faster? just because some artes are a little slower doesn't mean the entire game is slower.
everything is really floaty in symphonia compared to abyss as well, take tempest for example. it takes lloyd ages to land after that but guy's is over within a few seconds.


legendia had a bad battle system (i enjoyed it at least a little bit though) but a great story
i'd suggest an english copy of abyss on any console to be honest, i enjoyed it but the pacing of the story is a little bad and it's easy to get caught up in in-game vocabulary at first
vesperia's like the opposite of legendia. the story really isn't good at all after a certain point but the gameplay is amazing
graces.. graces has some generic characters but by far has the best battle system out of the localized games and honestly the cast is one of my favorite casts despite being generic (asbel is the worst main character in my opinion but he's still not too bad)
innocence was great but the dungeons really sucked
i still suggest finishing dotnw

So you're going to compare the first game made by Team Symphonia with other games made down the road by the same exact team and criticize the battle system from there.

Good show chap, if I do say so myself.


Actually, one of the more dreadful things about playing Abyss was the sluggishness in the reaction time.
Running just felt really sluggish in that game. Like it didn't feel real time (prob because of the PS2's poor graphic engine), but out of the three, it felt like one of the worst in terms of gameplay.

perhaps i'm easy to satisfy, but i can still fully enjoy these tales games and really not see them as sluggish or anything
if anything, symphonia was sluggish (and had one of the worst battle systems but still a good one) compared to other tales games. but that's just compared to it, the gameplay is still just fine.



if we're going to b**** about startups, might as well point out that symphonia freezes the entire game so we can hear some yelling and watch colors fly around
sure, abyss does that with FOF changes but FOF changes are NOT nearly as common as genis or raine casting higher-tier spells

Since Kuro mentioned the game freezing, I'd like to point out, for multiplayer runs, free run allows easier controlled target switching rather than having to stop the game to scroll through the available targets. Its another reason I like it.

to be honest with small alterations to the battle system, free run can be incredibly balanced. graces did it fine with a different battle system but i have no doubt you can wedge SOMETHING onto symphonia.
also, looking at this argument

doesn't this also apply with jumping too? it comes with its penalty, hard to use and easy to punish but once you get good at it this rarely happens which is why i'm kind of against the whole "JUMP OR ELSE" bandwagon.

Graces really wasn't that decent imo. In regards to the battle system from all of the combo videos (MAD or other) that I've watched, most combos typically don't exceed 7 hits, not including blast caliburs. You can still f*** up pretty hard with jumping either way, but free running makes this less prone to actually occurring which was my original argument on the floor.