is an action role-playing video game developed by Wolf Team and published by Namco for the Super Famicom. Originally released only in Japan in December 1995, it is the first title in the Tales series. It was later ported to a number of other platforms, including a Japan-exclusive version for the PlayStation in December 1998 and a Game Boy Advance version published by Namco in Japan in August 2003 and later published by Nintendo in North America and Europe in March 2006, which marked the first time the game was officially available in English. A PlayStation Portable remaster known as Tales of Phantasia Full Voice Edition followed in September 2006, featuring full voice acting during story scenes, which was later included with further enhancements as part of Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X in June 2010. The game's producers have given it the characteristic genre name Legendary RPG beginning with the PlayStation version, with the Full Voice Edition given the moniker Legendary RPG Embellished with Voices. An unofficial fan translation of the original Super Famicom version was released on February 12, 2001 by Dejap.
The game takes place in a fantasy world of Aselia and follows Cress Albane, a highly-trained swordsman who is driven by vengeance after his hometown is destroyed. Seeking further answers, he finds out that this is none other than a scheme to free the war-mongering Dhaos, the game's main antagonist. To prevent further catastrophes, Cress is aided by the use of time travel to gather allies from the past who can help him put an end to Dhaos's rampage in his own time.
The game was written and programmed by Yoshiharu Gotanda, designed by Masaki Norimoto, and scored by Motoi Sakuraba, Shinji Tamura and Ryota Furuya. The character designs were created by manga artist Kōsuke Fujishima. A short anime series based on the game, called Tales of Phantasia: The Animation, was released in 2004.
Tales of Phantasia experienced several delays and development challenges prior to its release in 1995, near the end of the Super Famicom's lifespan. It attracted attention due to its graphics, its original battle system, and its use of voice acting. It is also the first and only Super Famicom game to include an original, vocalized theme song. It sold over 1.3 million units in Japan alone, making it the second bestselling game in the franchise in that region, and one of the bestselling games in the franchise as a whole.
Gameplay
Battle system
In the Linear Motion Battle System (LMBS), the fight is played out on a two-dimensional terrain that usually stretches wider than a single screen width, so the screen can scroll to the left and to the right, depending on where the characters and opponents are relatively located. LMBS contains a pause menu during battle that lets the player select a spell or item. As in some fighting games, it is possible to assign items or combination moves to specific buttons as shortcuts for quick actions.
As opposed to most other turn-based systems where the player controls the individual actions of every party member, in LMBS, the player only directly controls the main character in real-time. The other characters in the party can be set to passive mode (defend only), active mode and attack (computer-controlled), or the player can often force the characters to move or use a spell from the pause menu. For the titles that allow multiplayer, the other party characters can be controlled by other human players.
Plot Characters , the main character of Tales of Phantasia, is a 17-year-old swordsman from a small village who grew up with his best friend Chester. A natural warrior who learned the way of fighting from his father, he is otherwise an earnest and caring individual who develops romantic feelings for Mint. is a 17-year-old archer and Cress's hometown friend. Highly devoted to his friends and family, he has a one-track mind and a tendency to rush into situations without thinking of the consequences. is an 18-year-old priestess and daughter of a famous cleric. She commands powerful healing magic and possesses a strong sense of duty and courage that override her otherwise quiet and modest personality. is a 29-year-old man with a deep knowledge of spirits. With the aid of magical rings, he is able to summon spirits after defeating them. He lives with a woman named Mirald Rune, who helps him with research into magic and summoning. is a 17-year-old half-elf magician. She uses a broomstick both to fly and to wield as a weapon, and is characterized by a bright, airy personality that masks her years of discrimination due to her mixed heritage. is an 11-year-old ninja and the granddaughter of her village's chief. Originally a non-playable character in the Super Famicom version, Suzu became an optional playable character in the PlayStation version and onwards.
Story
The game begins as four heroes are locked in battle with a powerful sorcerer king named Dhaos. Before he can be defeated, Dhaos uses his magic to travel several years into the future, where he is immediately met by one of the four warriors' descendants and three companions, who seal him away with two magic pendants.???: Is the task appointed to my family throughout the generations fulfilled at last? Twelve years later, two young men named Cress and Chester return to their village to find it razed to the ground by a dark knight named Mars, whose army kills many of its inhabitants including Cress's parents and Chester's sister. While Chester stays behind to bury them, Cress leaves to meet his uncle Olson for help, who reveals that he is being forced to work for Mars before stealing his father's pendant and locking him in jail.Cress: Uncle, what's this!?/Olson: I'm sorry... We had no choice... If we refused, our city would suffer the same fate as Toltus. Please forgive me... Quickly escaping with the help of a dying woman in a nearby cell, he meets another prisoner, a young priestess named Mint, who reveals that the woman was her mother before the two leave through the dungeon's aqueducts.Mint: Um, thank you so much for freeing me. We should get out here as fast as we can. Yes, let's go!!! Please free my mother, too!!! She's in a cell over that way."
After rendezvousing with Chester, the party meets Trinicus D. Morrison, one of the four heroes who sealed Dhaos away years ago, who reveals that their parents were once his comrades and is shocked to discover that Cress and Mint's pendants were stolen.Cress: The black-armored man stole it when I was captured. Why is that pendant so important?/Morrison: This is terrible... It may already be too late. May the gods help us... Following him to a nearby mausoleum, the group encounters Mars just as he uses the pendants to break the seal on Dhaos's tomb, setting him free. As Mars is killed by the dark sorcerer after asking for his power, Trinicus laments that no force in this time can possibly stop Dhaos, and uses his magic to send Cress and Mint back through time to seek out a means to do so while Chester stays behind to cover their escape.Morrison: He can't be slain by weapons. I'm going to use my divine power to send you to another place. There, you must learn how to slay him. There's no other way. The two arrive one hundred years in the past to a time before Dhaos was initially sealed, where the villain is currently waging a war with his demon armies against the human kingdoms. Learning that only magic can harm him, they seek the aid of a young mage named Arche Klein, and summoner named Claus F. Lester, who accompany them to Dhaos's castle. After a fierce showdown, Dhaos escapes once again, and the party makes their way to an ancient city called Thor that houses a functional time machine to return to the future.Claus: Allow me to explain in layman's terms... Apparently an ancient kingdom sank to the bottom of the sea. It was called...Thor. They used incredible technology to actually travel through time.
Arriving just moments after they first left, Cress and his companions join Chester in his fight against Dhaos and seemingly defeat him for good. They are approached by a traveler named Harrisson from 50 years in the future, however, who tells them that Dhaos is now ravaging the world in his time.Harrisson: I've traveled back in time 50 years by the order of the King of Alvanista./Claus: "Really? From the future!?/Harrisson: Several years have already passed since Dhaos appeared in our time. The world is on the verge of utter destruction... and you people are our only hope. Using the Thor machine once again, the team arrives in the new period where they meet a ninja named Suzu who accompanies them (except in the original release). After meeting with a group of elves, Cress obtains the legendary Eternal Sword, the only thing that can stop Dhaos from moving through time, and travel to his invisible fortress for the final confrontation. After finally defeating him, the party learns from a tree spirit named Martel that he is a visitor from a dying planet called Derris-Kharlan, whose world was slowly withering due to the death of its world tree, the source of all mana and lifeblood of everything in it. Attempting to obtain a seed from this planet's world tree, Yggdrasil, Dhaos instead found that its power was fading as well due to the humans' constant misuse of mana-based technology, and decided to wipe them out to save it.Martel: He needed the Mana Seed to save his own world. It is said the Seed is born from mana that has amassed in the Great Tree Yggdrasil... The technology from magitech was powerful enough to suck up all the mana... Letting it continue would cause the Great Tree to wither and die. This is how the war between human users of magitech and Dhaos began... As the party members realize that by saving their world they have doomed his, Martel takes pity on their plight and sends a mana seed into space in an attempt to rejuvenate Derris-Kharlan's tree as Cress and his team return to their proper times.Martel: O blessed Earth, blessed Universe and blessed Gods! May thy merciful spirit grace this imperfect soul with thy power... I beseech thee! Deliver a Mana Seed unto this world!
Development Tales of Phantasia was developed by members of "Wolf Team", a studio originally created by Telenet Japan. The story was based on an unpublished Japanese novel called , written by the game's total programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda. The world was primarily based around Norse mythology, science fiction elements were incorporated, and some names were taken from the works of Michael Moorcock and H. P. Lovecraft to accommodate fans of western fantasy fiction. Many changes were made to Gotanda's original story, including the title, character names, and the omission of several proposed scenarios. Due to poor experiences with their parent company, the team sought a different publisher for their title. After unsuccessfully pitching the project to Enix, they secured a publishing contract with Namco. The game includes voice clips during battles and certain story points as well as the opening theme song sequence, which necessitated the use of a high-capacity 48-megabit game cartridge. To help fit the voice acting into the game, the team used a sound system dubbed the Flexible Voice Drive, which enabled full recording of both the dialogue and theme song. The use of voice acting was a noted talking point leading up to the game's release. The redone character designs and artwork was handled by manga artist Kōsuke Fujishima. The Linear Motion Battle System, which would become a mainstay of the series, was inspired by fighting games, which had become popular at the time. During the later stages of development, there were internal conflicts, leading to a large number of development staff leaving Wolf Team and establishing independent development company tri-Ace.
Later versions