when tales started feeling more tales. though the whole evasion mechanic where some enemies just super armor through your moves randomly still exists at this point, so it is impossible to get through this game without getting hit in the middle of your own artes as an enemy decides "it's my turn" by "evading" something you do and hitting you with an attack that has virtually no startup (or literally no startup in some cases). regardless, still fun. The English dub sounds endearingly cheesy and is one of my favorite parts of the game.

Copied from my Steam review:

very good small arena beat em up. like the original fairy bloom the best weapon you have is using enemies themselves as projectiles, as bouncing them off another enemy without letting them touch the ground increases its damage until it becomes the highest damaging attack in the game, and the small arena style levels combined with freesia's movement and specials serve to make combos not only a way of safely taking out enemies away from those on the ground, but to position an enemy and set them up for another consecutive bounce.

later on and in the harder difficulties the most dangerous things tend to be rogue projectiles flying from offscreen and potentially getting you trapped in a juggle (often to the death in the hardest difficlty), though to compensate freesia has extremely strong defensive tools, including a guard you can cancel into at almost any point, an invincible backdash (only to a point, if used in the air) that can be similarly canceled into, and some specials with either super armor or invincibility. but the best defensive tool in my opinion is freesia's movement and ability to be practically everywhere on the map, not allowing enemies to start launching projectiles in the first place. in addition, if one wants to play REALLY safe, among the pool of passive abilities freesia can take two of, there are abilities like health regen or defense.

become fairy.

9.5/10 shynie fight SUCKS.

this is a button mashing game for people who like mashing buttons. the design choices when it comes to combat are... disappointing on their own, but in the context of the tales of series? more than a little soul crushing, considering how good some of its predecessors are, and what it might mean for future games.
seriously. just look up how hitstun is calculated in this game. SERIOUSLY.

ngl I kinda just mashed through this and used quick step to avoid literally being oneshotted by spells since I was constantly underleveled

at the time I was like "this certainly is *a* game" until 70% of the way through the game I got fed up with enemies blocking me constantly then realized that the main character literally just has an unblockable "I win" button I could've been using the entire time.

the only thing I can say about this game is that you can get through it easily if the story interests you.
also I like magilou's design. more flat chested women please.

I find it funny the ps2 version is listed as the same game given how I ended up playing this
I went into this game SPECIFICALLY because I saw gameplay of tales of destiny 2 and thought, "wow that's rad, and tales of destiny 2 is on psx too? golly, guess I better start with the first since it has the same name!"
I actually ended up enjoying this more than I thought I would despite how similar it is to phantasia, which I'd dropped because the bleak art style kinda made me uncomfortable while playing it. anyway after beating this I went into "tales of destiny 2" for the psx and boy was I ever in for a surprise. even so, I ended up enjoying tales of eternia as well. (seriously though it's fucked up they called eternia destiny 2)