[Teszt] Tales of Symphonia Remastered

The story takes place on the land of Sylvarant, which is experiencing a kind of ecological crisis. In a war fought 4,000 years ago, the legendary hero Mithos won against an evil race, the Desians, who, with the help of the goddess Martel, sealed them off from the world. Today, the world is dying because of the depletion of mana, or the power essential to life and the use of magic. Desians are free and risen again. Humanity’s only hope lies in the descendants of Martel’s angels, i.e. the chosen ones. Their task is to search for summoning spirits in sanctuaries located in different parts of the world who protect the land of Sylvarant, as well as revive Martel, with whose arrival everything can be restored again. In our story, Colette is the chosen one, who is initially accompanied on the adventure by her classmates, or by Lloyd and his best friend Genis. If we succeed, then the chosen one can fulfill his duty and save the world, and after the absolved trials he himself becomes an angel. Tales of Symphonia tells a fascinating story, even if the dialogues are sometimes a little unnatural or too cheerful regardless of, say, a dramatic situation. His characters are likeable one by one, so it’s easy to identify with them. Kratos is one of my favourites, due to his measured character and edginess.

In the game, in addition to the easy story guidance, during our adventure we also have to solve a lot of puzzles, which also added color to the gameplay. Its other great virtue was its excellent action-oriented combat system. You can only move in the plane, but the characters can learn a lot of skills, and because of this it is almost never boring. Each button and direction gave a separate attack, which could be linked into huge chains, and we could use them to perform hundreds of combos. Another strength is the cartoon cel shading graphics, which were very nice back then, and one of the best aspects of the game is its music, which is downright brilliant. Let’s see how it all sounds 20 years later, i.e. how the remastered version turned out!

The original release was only released for the Gamecube outside of Japan. Later in 2013, we got the 720p HD port of the Japanese only PS2 version on the PS3 console, which had extra content, but instead of the GC’s 60 FPS gameplay, it was only 30 FPS. In addition to the lower framerate, it also had the bug that some lines of dialogue were simply missing, so we were scratching our heads a little bit as to what the heroes could say. Such an error appears as an example right at the very beginning. The first angel Remiel introduces himself and then tells us that we are the seventh chosen one and he will guide us on our way. Our task is to open the seals that guard the tower of salvation. With them we can climb its steps and reach distant regions with them. In this version, she introduces herself, then there is an awkward silence, the camera goes over the characters, and then Colette accepts the challenge that we couldn’t even die – because of this, it is often incomprehensible. It was some consolation that the PS3 version included the Wii sequel Dawn of the New World.

The current Remastered is a re-release of this PS3 version, in which only the resolution has been scaled up, so that it now runs at 1080p resolution on all platforms. The image is sharper and there are less jagged edges, but that’s about all that’s new. The frame rate of 30 FPS remained, which is a shame because it ticked at 60 on Gamecube 20 years ago. It’s sad considering the recent releases of great remakes like Metroid Prime and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, which received a graphical overhaul and fresh textures, this is a lazy HD port. The game kept the dialog bug, but lost the Wii subplot. What is new is that both the Japanese original and the American intro are available, as well as Japanese and English dubbing. Let’s just say I’m not satisfied either way, because both intros are in Japanese and the subtitles are missing (it was included in the PS3 version), and we didn’t get the original GC intro without singing either. Unfortunately, the porting did not go well. The first noticeable mistake is that the black outlines of the characters have disappeared (or at least become significantly thinner), which brightened up the graphics nicely. Here, in the transitions, this is completely omitted, only the shadow of the outline is visible. It’s funny how sometimes he appears walking around the field and then suddenly disappears. They didn’t forget this contour on the weapons, so it could be some kind of programming error. The other painful thing is that the upscaling was probably done with artificial intelligence, which is why there are a lot of graphical errors. For example, the textures and colors on the characters’ clothing are often blurred, so the original carefully designed models are practically ruined. They used to repair these with post-work, but they didn’t care about that either. When entering the menu, the writing is pixelated, and the images in the corners are displayed incorrectly. The Switch version was treated the best anyway. There, during the fight, the image does not break into shards of glass, but the impact comes after a blinding white screen. The other missing effect is when entering the menu and the characters’ dialogues. In this case, the background faded in the previous version, but it was on the screen all the time, but here everything is black. The other unpleasant thing is that the framerate constantly fluctuates, in some places it drops below 20 FPS, and the game often freezes and throws you into the main menu – since there is no quick save, it can be quite annoying (on other machines it is stable at 30 FPS and I have not encountered any freezes). What is present on all platforms is the long loading time. I tested it on Xbox Series X, and even there sometimes you have to wait 5-10 seconds to enter the world map – the original GC version was faster.

I don’t think the graphics have aged badly anyway, and I still enjoyed this light story 20 years later, but I can’t accept this gratuitous money grab at the moment. For those who want to play in the best quality, I can still recommend the original Gamecube version. There is the entire text book and it is also more playable due to the 60s picture update, and it is also free of graphic errors. This edition is now being sold at full price when it should not have passed any quality control. A lot of people are upset, which I can totally understand. Namco has now issued a press release promising that fixes will be made. Such was the case with Chrono Cross. There, a year after its release, a repair patch was released that fixed the errors. Something similar is expected here, and it might be worth looking at it again later.