The Tales series often doesn't get the same recognition as big-name JRPGs like Final Fantasy, and that's a shame. It's a consistently quality. Of all the tales told in Wolf Team and Namco’s long-running JRPG series, 2004’s Tales of Symphonia on the Nintendo GameCube is among the best.

A fine HD reissue of the classic early 2000s RPG - and its deeply disappointing sequel.

Typically, I don't get on with Japanese RPGs. I don't like the melodrama, the stilted writing, the often turn-based menu-battles - and I don't like that I seem to spend more time watching the game than playing it. I can't ever shake the feeling that my participation is incidental to the story that the writers want for me.

Almost 10 years ago, some friends sat me down and made me play what was probably the first JRPG outside of Pokémon that I actually enjoyed - Tales of Symphonia, now available in an HD reissue for PlayStation 3 which also includes its spin-off sequel Dawn of the New World. I've been struggling for years to explain why this game, above all of the Final Fantasies, Star Oceans and Lost Odysseys, shirked my hatred. Now I've come back to the twin worlds of Sylverant and Tethe'alla, finding a truly remarkable experience partially hidden by camp and wholly fuelled by layers of mutually-reinforcing design choices.

The story is one we've all heard before - there's some world-ending thing and a small group of chosen people must go on some epic quest to keep the world-ending thing from happening. And on the face of it, Tales of Symphonia is just like every other major JRPG. Most of the characters are kids, the number of belts on display is positively ridiculous and the melodrama dial has been set to 'High School Shakespeare production'.

But Symphonia manages something that few others of its genre can claim - it cleanly integrates an excellent co-op mode. Throughout the four dozen hours or so, you'll find and join up with nine different characters. The first four will join your party very quickly and together they represent the core cast. From that point on, you'll be able to play with up to three friends. With friends, battles are much smoother, cut-scenes less groan-inducing and grinding less tedious.

For most of the game, Player 1 is able to run around doing your typical RPG thing: gathering quests, hitting up shops and navigating the over-world. That is often punctuated by real-time battles, and it's here that the lion's share of the co-op play takes place. Each player controls one of the characters in the party. Everyone has a unique fighting style and combo system. Over time, they'll learn new attacks that can be chained together with the techniques of the others to stack up a combo multiplier and get bonus experience and currency.

With computer-controlled partners, micro-managing becomes essential, and even then it's impossible to get the absolute best high scores and therefore the best experience from bouts. After the first few hours, you'll also have access to the 'Unison Attack', allowing you to fire off one special technique from each character for one massive combo. These can be used to interrupt enemy spellcasting and help prevent your own party from receiving damage, and become pretty important during the big boss fights. So at its most basic level, Tales of Symphonia encourages you to grab some friends; it systemizes co-operative play.

Co-op works so remarkably well because, in my experience at least, it perfectly mirrors the actual quest. Among my friends, whoever was playing Raine, the healer, invariably developed the same motherly attitude; they'd tell me to be more careful and avoid charging into battle for fear of my safety. Not coincidentally, I was playing Lloyd, the headstrong protagonist. As you might expect, he's a damage-soaker - always running up to the frontlines and staying in the thick of things. Personalities match play styles which then transfer to the player. It's a strange phenomenon, but I've seen it happen every time I've played Symphonia. Even more telling is the fact that this play style helps reinforce a kind of group bonding throughout.

Scattered about the game are 'skits', or one-off discussions between some of the characters. In Rob Fahey's review of the GameCube release of Tales of Symphonia, he noted that the lack of voice acting in these skits left them feeling empty, but when I was playing with friends, we each acted out our character with a silly voice. They became something to look forward to and helped hammer home some of the drama. The juxtaposition of this goofiness with some of the more serious themes of the game - racism, childhood abandonment, international aid and misogyny - meant those tense moments paradoxically carried more weight. It might strike some as a tonal inconsistency, but - thanks also to Symphonia's unusual pacing - I found I was caught off-guard when the drama bombs started dropping, in spite of some excellent foreshadowing.

Indeed, Tales of Symphonia does a much better job of discussing real-world issues like racism than many ostensibly mature games like BioShock Infinite. Rather than sermonise, Symphonia shows you how discrimination affects people; how it can tear families apart, ignite the spirit of a partisan or galvanise people to pursue a life of social justice. More than once, you'll be forced to look through a child's eyes as they begin to realise that their world is unfair and then wrestle with those implications.

As the party struggles for a way to set their little piece of the universe to rights, even the best-laid plans often end in absolute disaster, subverting the idea that there is ever a simple solution to complex social problems. Symphonia doles out kernels of hope before crushing you with unrealized dreams and the products of naïve optimism, and yet it's not unpredictable; everything makes sense and every 'villain' has a reasonable motivation and a sensible goal to match. Symphonia never comes off as cheap, even as it subverts so many of its genre's staples.

Unfortunately, everything the first Tales of Symphonia gets right, its sequel Dawn of the New World gets horribly wrong. Co-operative play is, for the most part, limited to two players, the characters fall squarely into classic JRPG stereotypes and where Symphonia presents a mature perspective, Dawn of the New World is hilariously juvenile. Most of the voice cast has changed, the graphical style is different and even the overworld map has been reduced to a series of locations on a menu.

I can't think of any sequel that fell so far short of its predecessor; maybe Deus Ex and Invisible War. Surely no group talented enough to make Symphonia could produce Dawn of the New World? Indeed, the development team had largely changed, with only the composer and character artist reprising their roles, while most of Namco's Symphonia team was hard at work on Tales of Vesperia - another great entry in the franchise.

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There's not a lot to be said about Dawn of the New World. The protagonist is insufferable, the antagonist has the diction of a Saturday morning cartoon villain, and everyone else is so flat and poorly acted that they are unrelatable. This is really unfortunate, because the premise is interesting. Symphonia takes places on two parallel worlds that are slowly splitting apart. As part of their grand plan to fix it all, the team tries to force the two to join back together. Dawn of the New World takes place immediately after that and explores some of the very real challenges that kind of change would cause. Right at the game's dark opening, you see Lloyd cutting down innocent civilians and burning down a city. Unfortunately, those ideas are never fully explored; instead you're forced to follow a pair of stunningly dull characters as they wander around not doing much.

'Tales of Symphonia packs so much into such a relatively small space that, 10 years later, it warrants a nearly unqualified recommendation.'

Tales of Symphonia is one of my all-time favorites. Before writing this review, I got back in touch with the friends I played with almost a decade ago. To this day I remember our adventure. A few years later, during my freshman year of college, I ran through Vesperia with some friends and I haven't forgotten them either.

It seems a proper Tales game is - or can be - much more than what it pretends to be: a shared experience, something you bond over, an adventure with real people that just happens to take place in a digital world. Symphonia nails that perfectly and to it adds complex ideas, a great coming-of-age story for its main cast and redemption for the others. At 48 hours, it packs so much into such a relatively small space that, 10 years later, it warrants a nearly unqualified recommendation. The cel-shaded graphics of the original transfer to an HD display much better than most games of its vintage, and new costumes, cut-scenes and openings provide plenty of fan service.

Then, if you'd like to know how easy it can be to ruin an excellent work, you can cry yourself to sleep thinking of all the squandered potential in Dawn of the New World. But if you can bring yourself to ignore it, this is still a fine reissue of a great game.

9 /10

Let it be known that nostalgia is a cruel beast that can ruin some of your best moments in gaming. As someone who thrived off Japanese role-playing games, there were a few titles that stuck out to me as a child. Final Fantasy X, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, and Tales of Symphonia. As such, revisiting some of these titles without nostalgia goggles can result in despair. The Tales series is one that hasn’t evolved much over the years, making Tales of Symphonia Chronicles seem like a perfect place to revisit the pedigree franchise. All great memories must come to an end though, as Tales of Symphonia is an aged product that has no place in the modern gaming world. And unfortunately, this pertains to the sequel Tales of Symphonia: Dawn Of The New World as well.What is about to unfold is the ranting of a Tales fan looking back at a once powerful Gamecube exclusive.

Animal crossing switch. How will people know you’ve made it unless your house has all the latest tech?It’s one of those games where you can lose yourself in for hours or minutes at a time and come away feeling like you’ve accomplished something. And with such a fun, warm aesthetic, it’s a game that’s perfect for both kids and adults who want a break from shooting and looting. It’s the ultimate chill game, in other words.For reference, Animal Crossing: New Leaf on 3DS was awarded a 9.6.

For those who have never played a title in the series, this isn’t a bad place to start. Just know that Graces f and Xillia feel less dated in the modern generation. To all Tales veterans, you may want to stay away.

But I can’t deny that nostalgia will bring most of you here.Tales of Symphonia Chronicles isn’t a horrible game, but every facet of it has been improved in subsequent releases.Lloyd (the main protagonist) and his companions are likable enough but still borderline on generic in the JRPG genre. The plot once again demands the saving of the world. This isn’t to say that’s a bad thing, it’s just retread ground is all. The battle system in the collection, however, is just not the pinnacle it once was, especially after the advancements made by Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Graces f. Worst of all are the cel-shaded graphics. Acclaimed during their original release, the blocky polygon design’s age takes away from the once beautiful art style. It becomes pretty clear from the get-go the HD upscaling did not help the classic Gamecube title.

As for Dawn of the New World, it isn’t so fondly remembered, and rightly so. Ditching the cel-shading was a bad idea during its original release because it at least gave ToS an identity. Even worse, Dawn has a shorter and less memorable story. But not all is lost in this release.

Even if this is an older version of the battle engine, it still is fun for those looking to discover the Tales series.The battles in Tales of Symphonia games work a bit like a fighting title. After choosing your character, players can run up and down a 2D line to their enemy. Using specific button inputs, they can pull off special attacks (called Artes) and combos. Dawn Of The New World added a free run option, letting players move around without needing to be on a specific line. Tales games also feature co-op. Up to four players in Symphonia can team up and control one of the playable characters in battle. And for newcomers, that’s all you need.

The difficulty isn’t high and there is only a small learning curve.Also exclusive to the Tales franchise are character portraits. By clicking the select button you can watch the characters interact through portraits about the events that just transpired. While it’s great to have some extra dialogue to learn more about what’s going on, the lack of voice acting in these parts makes it a tedious action rather than an enjoyable one.Despite clear issues, there are some great parts of this release. Adding Japanese dubbing makes the characters much more likable, and the addition of new Mystic Artes gives much more content to an already jam-packed collection.There are clear issues with Tales of Symphonia. But if you’re willing to trust the novelty of nostalgia, than by all means try this collection out. It’s a great place for newcomers to discover a fantastic franchise. As for the fans, just don’t be surprised if your expectations don’t match the reality of the situation.

What once was a great title, now feels aged and better left in my memories than in my PlayStation 3 disc drive.