Flawed in so many ways and filled with irritating AAA bloat, but I have literally been physically unable to get it out of my head for nearly a year.

One day I'll write something more substantive about this strange, stupid, smart, weird game. For now, I'll just say that I was 110% convinced I would hate this and it ended up being a game that sometimes, a year on, I'll just sit and think about for an hour. It's magical when that happens.

I truly miss that steel sky.

You know how FE combat is pretty bad when it’s just “bunch of blue units against bunch of red units” because you can aggro the red units one by one with a tank, clean house with the other blues, move the tank up one space, spam end turn until it’s over, and that’s why FE thrives when map design, enemy compositions, chests and valuables, recruitable NPCs you don’t want to kill with a counterattack, turn limits, enemy AI, map objectives and win conditions run directly counter to that?
What if we removed all of that and made a merge units mechanic that doubles your stats in a game with low level DnD campaign tier numbers that further benefits the spam end turn strat?

You know how FE has three plots they recycle every few games? What if we put all of them in at once, having the astoundingly high number of around NINE chapters each to start, develop and conclude?

At least they finally nailed menu management, cartridge blast processing technology makes animations a joy to watch and skip both, and whoever came up with the idea of having battle tracks being map themes with added instruments that switch in and out instantly deserves a Grammy

This game needs seperate pages. The Playstation version of this game is really different from the SFC version and is more like a remake. That being said, the Arche profile picture will now give his opinion on Tales of Phantasia ooo. Surprise I actually don't really love it.

I understand the SNES was a console very limited in tech, but on PSX there was really no excuse for spell pause. For anyone who's unaware, in all versions except the Japanese exclusive PSP remake of Tales of Phantasia, the game will pause to play a spell's animation. Problem, for most of the game you have three spell casters. While one doesn't always pause the game this makes the game ungodly slow and honestly really detracts from the whole "one of the first action RPGs" point. The combat is already really basic and simple, but the constant pausing just drags the game down a ton. Top this off with some maze-like dungeons and an overly high encounter rate and this should be a game I hate.

Do I though? Eh. Not really. This might be my Tales fanboy speaking but this game is filled with tons of charm and it's nice seeing where the series came from. The combat is decently fun sometimes especially when you turn off spells on party members, the story isn't really that good but it definitely has its highlights and it at least kept my attention the full way through, and while the cast is nothing special, half of them are at least somewhat memorable and Arche is still one of the best characters to come out of the series.

This game really bordered on a 5/10 from me and honestly that's probably what I should give it, but I don't know man I'd just feel bad doing that to a game with as much historical signifigance and charm as this one. This game is at least somewhat enjoyable, just please take breaks and if you don't wanna finish it... Don't.