Then I shall be keeper and teller of this Tale to those who are willing to listen...
Until Destiny's wheel turns once again...
In 1997 Japan, gaming landscape was graced with RPG of Destiny and only a year later would the phenomenon come to North American shores thus bringing the world to experience a Tales game for a first. It was however the second title in the series officially, created by Telenet Japan’s Wolf Team which would come to be known as Namco Tales Studio and develop most of the classic Tales titles we know and love today before coming to an end with their final game Tales of Xillia in 2011.
Simply put, Tales of Destiny beginning development right after Tales of Phantasia on SNES, would go on to retain and refine most of the concepts, art style and game design introduced in that title. Perhaps it is why it is not as fondly remembered today considering most other franchises’ larger titles were achieving impressive milestones with technology on the Play Station 1 or perhaps it was because the memory of Destiny original was clouded by the highly acclaimed Destiny remake. Simply put, it is often one would encounter ardent fans of the series who would recognise Destiny’s place in this series but not remember what it actually felt like playing.
In a flight of fancy and to re-experience the game; to once more experience the series roots and its soul of which something seems to have been lost in the latest title of the series, about two months ago, I picked up Tales of Destiny PS1 once more. After years since I last played this game, I’ll be honest and say it outright, I was afraid. For me, ‘Phantasia’ was one of the most fondly remembered titles in the series but I also could not forget some of the irritant archaic concepts it was straddled with in the original SNES version. Destiny often known to be one of the more traditionally focused stories in the series could have been a trip to boredom. However, I still wanted to remember and prepare myself for the Remake about which rumours have been going strong for a while that a localisation is on the way finally. Weather that comes to pass or not, I am glad a decent fan patch now exists that enables most to experience that game. Yet, for those who might want to know what playing this game in its original form feels like today and to see how the series evolves from the first game and to come to terms with my own personal feelings and satisfy many doubts and questions that have arisen in my mind about the series after arguing with various factions of its fanbase for a while; I believe I can confidently say that my latest play through has been quite an eye opening experience.
Perhaps it is hallmark of Phantasia’s brilliant design that very little actually changed at the core throughout the series till the complete revamp of many systems in the post classic era and even then many concepts and features of the classic title would remain till the recent title which lets go of the series’ character by abandoning them shamelessly in the name of evolution. For Destiny this design served as a beacon of brilliance which allowed it to shine among its peers on the PS1 era to be embraced and accepted by the world and guarantee more sequels to come. Of course, it would not be smooth sailing but eventually the series would find its hook on the global shores.
Yet if one would ask me, I’d say that it would be dismissive of praising Phantasia as the origin of series and forgetting the original Destiny’s contribution. In my eyes, Phantasia and Destiny despite being two different games with different stories are a dual compendium of title that together form the complete bible on which the basics of whole series stand today. It was indeed a startling moment to see how many recurring concepts and design choices of the series particularly in terms of certain plot tropes actually have their basis in Destiny. Given the development history and the philosophy and technology behind both titles it is sensible of course for a reviewer to come to this conclusion.
I am confident then in stating this that Destiny PS1 original is a game that can be fully enjoyed as a title even today and it truly stands strong and proud among the giants of this series despite the existence of the a highly acclaimed remake. Destiny packs a punch and there are many aspects of it that can, in retrospect, be highly impressive as we’ll find out.
Graphics & Art Presentation
In my opinion, for many, what stops them from diving into a retro title is often the sudden jump that would come in graphics and presentation when compared to any content they enjoy today. It’s fair too in a sense for even if art style trumps graphics 99 % of the time, these old games were made for very specific devices and everything about their art was tailored to that technology and so without some know-how of technical stuff regarding retro displays, the resulting image can be very horrible on the modern devices. Particularly for content in the play station 1 generation, the results can be much more brutal than even generations older than them. Destiny here however has an advantage.
Destiny is a 2D game and so its art is very consistent and with even a modestly powerful hardware, the game can look stunning with reasonable up-scaling and correct proportioning. There are moments in Destiny where my jaw simply drops considering how forward looking some of the ideas in it were. Sure, if you were to dig into the reviews of those times, there will be criticisms regarding the game having moments where it looks basic and yes that may be true to an extent but considering the whole package, in retrospect it truly feels generations ahead from most 2d RPGs of those days. It may be likely that by the time Destiny came out in the west, there were 2d games that were doing more perhaps but still it is today very impressive to see things one might not expect from that era and that attention to detail is something I appreciate a lot.
For example, sprite shadows reacting to light position or the plethora of effects that can fill the screen or the number of sprites that can appear at once as shown in the following images.
Another impressive feature was sprites displaying actual weapon and shield change making it feel like a true RPG. It feels even more impressive considering how hard games were to develop in those days and how budget starved they used to be. To add to this, not only weapons changed based on type, but actually there is a sprite representation for each variation of the weapon, truly bringing the experience to life.
Destiny strikes real gold in the art department to seemingly look like a painting. Every live or static effect, every sprite and every background gels well together and really feels grounded in the art that it was based on. I find it hard to describe in words but there is this thing about all of them that sometimes make them feel like a carefully painted water colour world that doesn’t seem out of place for a single frame. Maybe some of these images may give a rough idea.
The sprites too are superbly detailed. The amount of work painstakingly put into even the minor sprites is very apparent. Each expression, facial and bodily feature can be traced easily and overall all of them are very vibrant and carefully crafted to feel different form one another so that there is immediate recognition between them. I guess that credit goes more to the original concept art designer Matsumi Inomata, now a long time series veteran, for giving the series a strong base to build on.
7/10
Story and Script
Destiny’s story might seem like a very standard affair in terms of JRPGs but first tell me what exactly is this:
Stupendously Amusing!
Whoever localised this game deserves an award for the dialogue. It is so randomly scattered and so immensely funny that I had my tummy hurting whenever I would stumble on one. As a matter of fact, this is a general tone of the dialogue at most points between Rutee and Stahn, our two main protagonists. Other characters pitch in their own humorous takes. This is why I love this series. They never shy from making their characters eccentric and funny. A character might look like the most generic JRPG character and he’d turn out to have twisted nut in the brain and a silver tongue in their dark pixelated black hole of anime mouth; an instant favourite. I feel even if the localisation at points would sound idiotic and very plain, it is the effort put into making it feel even more stupid that really makes this experience ageless. It was truly an instant refresher for my brain with dying dopamine firing neurons. Maybe that last quip was too ahead of your level, looks like Tales caught up to me. 😆
I can’t say much about the story since it is already a pretty standard affair and if anyone wants to experience it should be given the least amount of detail so that it still carries some semblance of freshness today. It is well crafted even if it is primarily about a village boy stumbling upon unforeseen circumstances (would someone explain to me why Stahn was there lol) and then going on to save the world. There is an evil guy or a bunch of jack assess and a certain someone you would never have expected to be an enemy (nah you’ll prolly know from the start that this prick is the big baddie). There is also everyone's (everyone in the innocent western hemisphere of the world) favourite theme "racism" (Shocked?😲, Don't be. Arise wasn't the first game, let alone first Tales game to talk about Racism or Slavery or Monarchy my dear new babies to the franchise😘). Oh! almost forgot, there are intelligent beings in the sky too, as well as a dead world with chambers of preserved bodies🙈 (How many things is Uber Breath of Fresh Air to video game RPG industry Arise matching with ancient, crippled and forgotten skeleton of Destiny now?) But really, it is a good story, a classic Tales story and I personally enjoyed it a lot. There was however this feeling at many moments that there was more to the drama or the game wanted to tell something more and things would weirdly move past at a very fast pace, almost a bewildering thing when compared to other JRPGs or even games in the series. I guess that feeling would be resolved with the definitive version which greatly expands the story and characters. This was also the first time in ages I was reminded of why skits are such an integral part of the series. Since Destiny had none, it would make me feel the jet flight of the plot even more jarringly. Skits really allow a breather room in between regular gameplay while expounding upon instant thoughts of the characters and help you connect with ruminations over their thought processes after every major event. Skits also often help tell you of the direction you were supposed to go and motivate you for it. Perhaps what this plot needed most to apply brakes to its wheels was ‘that’ integral part of the series. Destiny did have a ‘primordium’ of what would be the future skit system that would help you tell the direction you were supposed to go but international or North American version again got the cut. Honestly, Bandai Namco really needs to bring out a remastered complete or standard version of these games on modern platforms to unify the Tales library, the lack of which is something the fanbase is doomed to lament for long it seems. Learn from Square Enix and do pixel remasters Bamco! (Just not as messy as those releases. Don't be lazy.)
Characters overall were pretty fun. As I
mentioned that earlier, almost all of them have their own unique traits and
they carry them into their humour. The writers were careful enough to really
make the story feel as if these characters grew with the tale’s progression and
I think at its basic that is good character development. Destiny succeeding
well at this aspect still makes it above many of the juvenile last decade jrpgs
which hardly get the basics of JRPG story telling right and fail to deliver the
heights the genre once did. Despite the absence of skits, the abundance of
story cut scenes crafted to show the various sides of these characters as well
as tease and reveal their own arcs throughout the long story really helped
flesh them out into their own individual moulds. Ill leave it to the fans to puzzle out how many story traditions to Tales series did Destiny introduce for the series cuz there are many.
8/10
Gameplay
Now I come to the good part, the one I have been yearning to talk about for a while in most detail. It is my opinion that for most games, it is the gameplay, no matter how bare-bones it may be is what makes them ‘games’ and gives them life. This is the part that is crucial to make a game survive as a really enjoyable experience even years later after release. There are many people who can relate to going into old games for the story and being primarily fans of the story content but leaving the experience in the middle because the gameplay experience turned out to be dull or tiring (looking at you Xenogears!).
In Destiny’s case, the gameplay is really solid. Look, it might be old but it is still very functional. I personally did not find any overt flaws here this time compared to SNES version of Phantasia where lack of targeting or getting stuck in a wall of enemies might turn out to be end game for you. As soon as you shift into the battle screen, you are in a two 2d fighting game style side scrolling screen and usually you’ll have enemies and your party, each on one side of the screen or to complicate things have the party sandwiched between two lines of enemies. From here you have to quickly use the art abilities you have along with regular attack and annihilate them. Tales of Destiny is very generous in making you "OP" very quickly. I remember grinding for hours in Phantasia, SNES version, but here you get enough abilities to quickly make through most dungeons and over world. The battle system is very addictive. You have to juggle between what attack you want to perform and the distance and timing between your enemies. As an example, if you want to do the basic attack, there are three options; either you can thrust in a straight line by running up to the enemy or you can press the up button and have the character run and then jump in the air to strike upwards or you can press down and have the melee characters run and jump upward before reaching the enemy to swing their weapon downward in a wide arc. It is all very interesting stuff since the speed and timing of your attack matters a lot in this case. Depending in which direction your enemy is moving, the attack can totally miss them if you didn’t time it correctly or when after attacking you have to run back, the enemy can recover and hit you and block your run and then go on to do a barrage of attacks depending on the enemy profile. A similar importance in direction, positioning and attacking plays in using your arte attacks as well. You can even get blocked midway through an attack if another enemy, for example a spell caster, who may make their move first since every attack from you or the enemy can break the animation and give a small second pause to the one getting hit by the attack. Party positioning too plays a very important role in this since for example if you were sandwiched between two lines of enemies and your mage was in the middle, you could target the most dangerous enemy on two sides of the line or the closest one to ward of their attack and before that quickly put the caster in casting the spell. As soon as you get your melee attack in, the caster would complete their ritual and the screen would pause to do the animation and you will get in loads of damage in the enemies.
Now I know this all might saw complicated or it may sound as a very simplistic battle system but honestly, you can only know by actually experiencing how it feels like to play to conclude if it’s for you because it is very enjoyable. You can see the basic roots of what today would be known as the classic Tales battle system from the 3d tales games present here.
Speaking of the RPG systems here then, they are anything but basic. You do have a dearth options to choose from and depending on what you want, the game can be challenging or a piece of cake. Essentially the ability to cast spells and learn important spells or certain arts are tied to these weapons called ‘Swordian’ which are essential to the plot. Only by equipping these swords does a character get the ability to cast spells. On these swordians, you can place various disks you will find throughout the game and these will grant various forms of buffs to your attack and defence as well as various spells as you will level up. For example a fire disk may provide fire element to your attack and increased fire defence. Now this will help you through a dungeon where enemies are primarily weak to fire attack but if you forget to take them off, you could end up keep healing enemies where fire enemies exist. Now you can choose to take off the swordian and if u fancy equip other weapons; an axe or spear or whatever and you will enjoy your experience with them as well. Each of the weapons offer a variation to your attack and battle strategy which makes each rewarding to use but you sacrifice the ability to learn the spells and use spells for that character. Personally, most characters are strong enough with the swordians and each having their own collection of spell abilities make them really over powered so you can choose what you want out of this action RPG.
Other things staple to the series's RPG systems are also present such as the primordium of cooking feature, "The food bag". A dearth of items to heal, remove status effects or unlock surprise items, grant various stat boosts and these can all be found in abundance throughout the game. There arrangement does make the whole inventory a bit cluttered but it is not that big of an issue. You also get an item later on, which unlocks the setting for battle counter to be displayed and it becomes even more fun to start raising that counter to the max level possible as there was a exp bonus attached to it as well as ego satisfaction.😂
The dungeons themselves are fairly basic for most part but then many will have their own quirky puzzles to figure out and unlock the way forward. In between these you will have secrets to uncover and treasure chests to open all the while fighting a number of random battles. Random encounter rate is decent for most part until it gets into certain dungeons late game where it just goes crazy (giving me those strong SNES Phantasia random encounter nightmares😨). Thankfully you do get abundance of a certain item that does actually work to alleviate that issue. Almost before all boss fights, you get a complicated riddle like puzzle to solve, like going through the correct pattern of doors to open the main door otherwise be stuck in a loop. They aren’t exactly hard to figure out or bulldoze through but sometimes they do not make sense and you can get stuck for minutes unless you check a walk-through. (Hint: Remember the zodiac order my friends (wink😜)).
Anyhow the good thing is that the game stops all random
encounters in such rooms and that is a boon because today I would have honestly
chucked the remote on the wall and tore my hair down while raging like Rutee
does at Stahn at the absurdity of the dilemma.😅
Overall, it’s a solid gameplay experience despite some minor flaws and irritations that come with the old school experience. The hallmark for that is that I stuck with the game for at least fifty hours, half of through which I was just doing these battles. The loop doesn’t get old.
8/10
Soundtrack and OST:
Motoi Sakuraba did a good job, enough said.
Honestly! Is there anything more to be said?
Well, it’s a good enough soundtrack. It’s not something with bangers like in Falcom games or something with memorable melodies like in Final Fantasy but it is still very enjoyable. As I said, I was stuck in dungeon loops of this game for at least half a century of hours and believe me if the music wasn’t good, I might not have lasted. Not being memorable doesn’t really hurt it. I think there were one or two really good tracks in the over world and battle themes.
The opening movie instrumental that they replaced the original track with clearly had a lot of hard work put into it. It was suspenseful and grand. The great thing is that it never really grew old and was as great as the original song in that aspect.
That said, the song Yume de Aruyouni by the J-PoP band “Deen” is incredible. It is one of my favourites from this series and there is a certain mystique about the general quality of music, the instruments used that really give it a magical feel. The vocals are amazing and easily hummable. This is one song that always stays in my mind for days and lifts my spirits everytime I feel depressed and transports me into another realm. Really incredible work from Deen and I would be interested in listening to more of their songs if they have this kind of magical charge to them.
7.5/10
Final Words
<Sigh>
Is there anything more to say?
I think it is apparent now that I really like Destiny ‘the ancient PS1 version’ and there is a lot of charm to it that takes me back to my era of childhood. It was a really golden time compared to the darkness and responsibility of youth and I feel Destiny helped me go through that journey again in a way. Cannot wait to play the definitive version finally when I get the time from all my duties; that too is one responsibility of mine as an old fan of the series. Besides that was the primary purpose I replayed this again after years so that I could compare the differences between the two stories and see how much that Leon scenario enhances the Tale. That and the fact that I wanted a dose of classic stuff after getting burned by the crappiness of the latest game Arise. But honestly, without fouling the mood with that discussion, I would again say to everyone to really play this game again because it is worth it in this form as well and you are guaranteed to have a good experience.
8/10
TOTAL SCORE
(7+8+8+7.5+8)/5
7.7
never forget the great advice
😝
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