New Tales coming to PS2, PSP, Wii and DS in Japan
 

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Excellent. I managed to get a hold of a PAL copy of Tales of Eternia, and just recently picked up Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology, both on the PSP of course.

I think I'll get Rebirth on the PS2 though, just to mix things up a bit.

I was a late bloomer to the Tales series, having not played them until Symphonia on the GameCube. But I've gone back and played most of them now.

Tales of Innocence

December 2007
Developer - Alpha Systems
Character Design - Inomata Mutsumi
Luka//Ruka - Akiko Kimura
Iria - Sasamoto Youko
Opening Movie - Production IG
Field - Full 3D
Battle System - Dimension Stride LMB
Opening Song - KOKIA

Tales of Symphonia: Knights of Rataosk


http://static.pici.se/pictures/xzFLcnBkC.jpg

Spring 2008 (April//May)
Takes place 2 years after Tales of Symphonia
Run into and play with the Symphonia cast
Raise monsters
Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System

Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut

January 2008
Leon Mode w/ backstory
Subcharacter Events
New Voice Sounds
New Dungeon Hints
New Difficulty Modes
New Carryover Features
Limited Edition comes w/ box, soundtrack, and booklet

Also announced at the press conference was the Nintendo DS becoming the new home for "New Tales of Games"

sweet tales of rebirth for psp! now I'll be able to import it since my ps2 is not moded

I understand why they take the DS for the new tales of, but I hope it will not be like the last one they did on DS. :\

More:


The story for Innocence centers on Luca, a resident of the peaceful capital city of Regnam. Luca, son of a merchant, has special powers, although he's not alone, as others like him have started appearing in the town of late. His personality is said to be a bit different from your standard RPG character; in fact, the game's producers feel his role is somewhat switched with that of the heroine, Iria.

The game's battle system will be a combination of past Tales systems. Innocence will use the Dimension Stride LMBS (Linear Motion Battle System), which is said to combine elements of the Flex Range LMBS from Abyss and the Aerial LMBS from the PS2 version of Destiny.


Moving on to the Wii Tales of Symphonia Knights of Ratatoskr, the Spring 2008 (Japanese release) title is, as mentioned in our initial update, a direct sequel to the GameCube and PS2 Tales of Symphonia, painting a new story three years after the events of that game. While story details are scarce, Bandai Namco did announce that the game's main character would be named Emil, and the heroine Malta. Lloyd and other characters from the original will also appear in the game.

Bandai Namco is working on some updates to the title for the Wii. Visually, the company claims that the graphics have been improved, with higher texture resolution. This is true of new dungeons and towns, and those that you might have visited in the original.

Gameplay is also seeing a few updates. The game will feature Wii-mote direct controls, allowing players to move around by pointing at sections of the map. While not strictly Wii related, the game will also include the ability to capture and breed monsters for use as allies in battle.


Finally, a few details on the PS2 and PSP remakes of older Tales titles. The PSP version of Tales of Rebirth will feature a few updates over the PS2 original, including wide screen support and a gallery mode. Tales of Destiny Directors Cut for the PS2 will include new events and battle difficulty settings, and will be compatible with your old save data. Both titles are due for Japanese release in early 2008.


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I will let IGN go with whatever they say, but I think the battle system for ToI is 3L-LMBS + A-LMBS and not FR-LMBS, since there are clear lines in the screen.

http://www2.ranobe.com/test/src/up11535.jpg

This is so awesome I had to post in two threads about it.

RPGs with the Wii Remote has me so incredibly skeptical. If developers are going to do this I really hope they offer classic controller alternative schemes.

Other than that and the total random chance of which titles will actually be released outside of Japan, everything is looking good.

just imagine doing sword rain beta by rapidly moving the wii remote and nunchuck forward and backward.... :P

I really, really wanted teh Tales of Symphonia 2 rumour to turn out to be Phantasia on the VC for lol. But oh well.

But seriously where is the story fucking going? The game ended, where can they take it?

Not many people have faith in Knights of Rataosrskjraorkjsr or whatever since the director of it is from Soul Calibur and not even a Tales game. Well, they can always produce another Legendia like they did last time.

Team Symphonia isn't even coming back to do a Symphonia game. What the hell?

I was honestly expecting something between Symphonia and Phantasia, but apparently they want to go 2 years after Symphonia.

Maybe Regal will have taken off his handcuffs.

Yeah like maybe a game featuring the first battle with Dhaos (keep in mind I haven't finished Phantasia so that might already be covered) or even go further into the past of the Aselia world and tell the story of Mithos ending the Great War.

There are still stories to be told in Aselia but I'm pretty sure Lloyd going around and releasing EXSpheres or whatever it was he was planning to do post game isn't one of them.

Whatever, I'm not interested in the game anymore, now that Namco are pumping out Tales games at a rate of one a year or faster it seems it's like their creativity has waned and dissapated.

yeah.. im hearing the ToS Wii isnt even a direct sequel.. its more like a side game.. oh well!

we'll see when it comes out... as long as it's as long as Symphonia and not as annoying as Tales of the Abyss... it'll be ok.

The only Tales related credits for that Teruaki Konishi person (the one in charge of ToS: KoR) are as co-producer for Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon 3 and as director for Tales of the Tempest...

Tales of Rebirth should turn out to be a solid port, whoever it is doing now. (The past PSP ports were done by different staffs each time: ToE by the original staff with two additional Namco staff, ToP by Team Destiny's Ryuichi Ishizawa and Mineloader Software, ToD2 by Alfa System.)

Tales Studio has the freedom to decide themselves what to do. However they do not have any influence on NBGI handling of the Tales brand. This is quite obvious as Tales Studio's blueprints for the series clashes with what NGBI puts out to the public and pushes on their Non-Tales Studio developers. (DS as the main platform ? yea, right...). As long as this stays that way don't expect any non-Tales Studio Tales game to feel equal to their output.

At any rate, Innocence will push Alfa System to their limits. It will be a true test of how far they can polish a battle system, gameplay, and story after shitting out three very uncreative - yet still solid - crossover titles. Don't get me wrong, Narikiri Dungeon 2, 3, and Radiant Mythology are all very playable games. However there is an innate flaw in each one that kills it for a lot of people (RM suffers from very bland dungeons, tedious quests, and some absurd battle changes). With each successive crossover game, Alfa System has become better at fixing the problems they had in previous ones. Thing is though, they still listen to what NBGI says a Tales game should be instead of Tales Studio themselves, so they are limiting the potential of the game.

As long as it doesn't turn out to be a TOSE level of quality (see -> Phantasia PSP) then it should be alright.

EDIT: ToI just got a lot more hopeful.

Youtube Link.

Tales of Innocence Trailer: http://www.dsfanboy.com/2007/07/23/l...cence-trailer/

You're about 12 hours too late with that, Maker.

Looking good, though. Looking really good.

I wonder how long ToI's story's gonna be, it's done by a different group, hopefully they can cram more words into that game than the 9-hour-piece-of-crap ToT had...

Yeah, I saw a video of some guy fighting the final boss of Tempest at just 10 hours. Most GBA RPGs had a lot more to them than that.

have any RPGs on the DS been long that weren't like... ports from older consoles?

Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time was about 20 hours. Lunar: Dragon Song (lol) was a good 20, 25 too. Possibly more.

Er, Pokemon, and Etrian Odyssey, and Magical Starsign... Much more to come in due time my friend. Developers have got to stop with the minigame abuse first.

This Tales news is super godly, and Innocence looks pretty hot too, but not as much as ASH = wo.OW

I'm with you there. At first I was asking the newbie questions of "when does Tales of Destiny take place in relation to ToS?" But I've gotten to every main Tales game except for Tales of Rebirth and ToT.

The news is kinda lukewarm for me. ToI has a male protagonist that I hate (they switched the roles of extrovert/introvert and others between the two genders), plus I don't think the 3 line system looks great at all, even with the aerial aspect.

ToS:KoR is essentially what the Narikiri Dungeons did to ToP. There's probably nothing to it that's notable, especially since it was what, given to a team similar in construct to ToL? I mean breeding monsters... jeez.

Ports are kind of okay for me, at least the PSP one, since it gives us a chance to play the game without modding anything (albeit in Japanese). The ToD "final mix" just seems like too much (and more than likely won't be hitting the US).

Well people may complain about the new Tales of Symphonia but the first one was a prequel to Tales of Phantasia who we all know wasn't written by the original writer of Phantasia (because he's the Star Ocean dude now...)

Some more images.

(Taken from TrueGaming obviously)

http://www.tg-media.net/famitsu/2007...050_marked.jpg
http://www.tg-media.net/famitsu/2007...048_marked.jpg
http://www.tg-media.net/famitsu/2007...049_marked.jpg
http://www.tg-media.net/famitsu/2007...051_marked.jpg
http://www.tg-media.net/famitsu/2007...052_marked.jpg

It looks like the battle portraits are being changed for the Rebirth port... and Innocence is still looking okay.

Symphonia : KoR looks like they are simply planning on recycling the old textures from the cities. Speaking of, the map for this game is almost exactly a match of Aselia.

ok I didn't even know that tales of symphonia was a prequel of tales of phantasia. Probably because I doN,t remember the story of Phantasia and I never finish it XD

which make me want to play it! can anyone tell me if there's an english patch of the psp version? (I saw that there was a patch for the game monster hunter freedom 2 jp version to translate it in english, so maybe there's one for this game)

if not can someone tell me which version is better between the original snes version and the GBA port? (I heard really bad thing about the GBA version)

There isn't one. Someone is working on the PSX one but he has been for years and is still nowhere near done so I wouldn't hold your breath for it.

The GBA one is closer to the PSX/PSP one (has Suzu playable and a slightly rewritten plot) but the battles have some irritating slowdown and the visuals are like a weird mix of the SNES and PSX games... It's a tossup really. The GBA one has a better battle system (since the original SNES one was very basic) but the slowdown sort of voids the improvements at times.

The GBA port's slowdown during battles is terrible, and is the main reason that I've barely played it at all. I haven't tried the SNES version for comparison, but on the GBA it feels like you're fighting in slow-motion most of the time.

I'm really hoping that the Tales of Rebirth PSP port will get a North American release. The clips I've seen of the original looked pretty spiffy, so it might be enough to finally force me to buy a PSP.

download the SNES version with dejaps patch... GBA Tales of Phantasia is slow as hell... and they neutered the story... replacing characters getting drunk with an all you can eat buffet and having them have heartburn instead of the hang over is ridiculous.... also the sex comments were edited out. it's no fun knowing the original... :(

Also the PS1 and PSP versions of Tales of Phantasia will never be released here because Nintendo has some kind of copyright on the translation of the game... therefore Namco would have to jump through hoops of fire to get those ports over here...

Nah, Namco just doesn't want to do it. Period. Same reason we will never get the TOD remake or Tales of Rebirth. They try and blame Sony for "not liking 2D games" but what they really mean is "they won't sell enough copies to be worth it so fuck you loyal Tales fanbase...!" ;)

And to be fair... Dejap took a few "liberties" of their own with the SNES translation patch. On several instances the GBA translation is actually closer to being correct, though the SNES one was a lot more amusing regardless.

If Namco really cared about profit that much then they wouldn't have bothered bringing over Abyss or Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology after what happened with Legendia.

For the most part their only interest is bringing over [new] games for the fans to enjoy. They even go out of their way to leave improper translations from old Tales of games in order to have a feeling of nostalgia for the old gamers.

But yes, if Hometek never announced they were going to pick up [x] before they did Radiant Mythology, then they probably never will do it. They've mentioned they will never go back to do old titles, just the titles that are coming out and seem to be enjoyable for fans.

That's true, but Tales of the Abyss had an appeal that was far greater than Tales of Legendia. Tales of the Abyss was developed by the Symphonia team, whereas Tales of Legendia was developed by Team Melfes. Unless if I'm mistaken, many of the current Tales fans became Tales fans after Tales of Symphonia came out (myself included). In addition, Tales of the Abyss was Namco Tales Studio's 10th anniversary game - if it didn't come to the US, I'd be surprised.

Tales of the World: RM is on the PSP, which is quite devoid of good action RPG titles in the US, so bringing it here was probably a good idea. Besides, look at the other three PSP ports, Tales of Phantasia: FVE, Tales of Destiny 2, and Tales of Eternia. None of them made it to the US and only one made it to Europe, so I think it's more of an interest in money and profit.

Of course, we also have to look at the changes Namco went through when it became Bandai Namco. Bandai usually has a more lax policy regarding localization, so that may have affected the decision to bring ToA and ToW:RM over to the US. After all, Tales of Legendia has Namco's original logo, whereas Tales of the Abyss has the Bandai Namco logo.

Was Tales of Destiny PS2 ever announced for a US release?

Nope. It never will be either. You can quote me on that.

I pretty much agree with everything else you said at any rate. I'm still going to have to go with profit being the major focus here for them when it comes to this series. It rarely ever churns them out much $$$ to begin with so they usually rely on another company (Nintendo or Sony) to help them release the games if they really want them out.

Case in point Tales of Symphonia and Phantasia had Nintendo fanning them wads of bills to release the games over here. Abyss was an anniversary game and was likely to come over regardless.

The localization producer has mentioned there are no plans to bring it over.

Actually I'm not too sure on the profit thing. Bandai Namco surely wants money, but Namco Hometek doesn't care since they don't get to do much anyway. Main Bandai Namco and Hometek function really differently. Bandai Namco always cuts corners when it comes to their US releases of anything, while Hometek wants to go all out to make it the best enjoyable game possible.

Let's take Radiant Mythology as an example. Hometek wanted to do a full translation from the ground up. Bandai Namco did not wish to waste resources on something that wouldn't sell to their satisfactions. So, BN went to 8-4 localization to have them translate a page or two from various pieces of the game, then used their translations as a base for the whole game itself.

Then again, BN doesn't listen to what 8-4 translated anyway. During the work on Radiant Mythology there was something that stood out a great deal, and it was the inconsistency of voices and the like. Then again, BN forbade 8-4 from touching any items, techs, or battle dialogue. That is their domain, we should stick to just the story text and menus.

It's kind of funny that the first thing done on any Tales game is for BN to go out and get all the voices recorded with their studio of choice, before Hometek, or any other American person has actually had a chance to work on the game. When it comes time to translate the dialogue there are a few inconsistencies with what we arrived and with what the voices are going to be saying. When pointed out to Bandai Namco, they respond with.

"Well we can't change it now, the voices have already been recorded! Simply adjust the translation to what they say."

It was annoying for our work to just have to be discarded so easily because they wanted to do the voices first, and so everything had to revolve around the voice and not to going for an accurate translation.

Although I'm sure if Namco Hometek was working on the game entirely themselves, they probably would have done the voice work at a later date.

EDIT: Although I guess I should clarify what I meant originally by profits. As far as profits go, yes Bandai Namco is going to be out to earn a profit above all else. In the end everything goes to them first so they want to make the biggest profits they can make. The main goal of any business is to make a profit of course. However, if you look at the American branch -- Namco Hometek --, they care less about the profit and more about pleasing the fans. Their mindset (from chatting with Peter anyway) is that if they can please their current fans, then maybe they will go out and get their friends to buy the game, who will in turn introduce it to their friends.

Sort of like a pyramid scheme of gaming. Less focus on making a big profit at the start and more of getting people reeled in. The more possible consumers you have, the more big mother Bandai Namco will be pleased with you. The better Bandai Namco is pleased with you, the higher chances to bring more games to the US and start the process again.

Then again, the last thing Hometek had full control over was Abyss, and Bandai Namco pretty much said "Never again" after that, since the game came out with more bugs than what it came in with. More of a quality thing there.

Tales of the Abyss wasn't as good as Symphonia but it certainly wasn't bad... definitely worthy of not being mentioned in the same line as Tales of Legendia...

Wee, the "new" screens of ToR are merely ToR PS2 beta ones cropped to fit the PSP resolution, which is a very poor way to handle things. I want to know if it still looks as well as before on Sony's handheld...

Also, ToL is everything but a bad game, it just has different qualities than other Tales games and thus different flaws as well - but most people dislike it because they can't handle that.

Radiant Mythology seems to be selling rather well by the way... For a PSP niche RPG at least.

I wholly agree with ToL being a good game. I enjoyed Tales of Legendia since it focused more on character development and plotline than most other Tales games. No other Tales game, let alone any RPG I've ever played, questioned what an "ending" truly was. Nor did any other RPG ever have a full cast of memorable characters that truly stuck to my mind.

Of course, it is personal opinion, but ToL felt more believable, primarily because the characters weren't always in agreement and each had personal motivations (for the most part). It's different from most Tales series games, aside from possibly Tales of the Abyss.

Good that RM is selling nicely, was going to pick it up tomorrow.

Tales of Legendia is one of the worst RPGs I've played in a long time. I made it up to Chloe's character quest chapter before I just couldn't take it anymore, though I do intend to eventually go back to finish it. Senel and Shirley were both incredibly annoying, Stella's name made the only truly dramatic scene of the game hilarious, the character quest chapters felt like a cheap way out of developing anyone aside from Senel and Shirley during the main quest, and the jumping in battle was a complete joke. Of course, I still could've stood all that if every character wasn't dumber than a pile of bricks.

I didn't care for the plot past chapter 4 either. It might've been good if they'd started to expand on other people during the main quest, or at least added new dungeons for the character quests. Still, I have to give it some credit. Despite how frustrated I felt throughout playing ToL, for some reason it kept me playing.

I'm not tempted to just download Tales of Legendia to see how bad it truly is...

You'd be disappointed anyway because it isn't that bad. It's pretty much just a dead average game along the lines of Radiata Stories or Stella Deus. They all have something decent about them but are too poorly executed in some way (Radiata Stories has a far too basic battle system for example) to ever really be anything 'extraordinary'.

tales of legendia is bad like really bad, they like totally butchered the gameplay and made any caster that is not an healer totally useless, the characters are more annoying than anything else. I just dislike that all the battle expect the boss (and even them) doesn't last more than 5sec which really isn't good. (the load time before and after the battle is sometime longer then the fight itself and no I'm not playing on easy) oh and let's talk about the artes that are weaker than a single punch so now all you do is smash the x button like crazy and the fight is done in 5sec...

really it's that bad for me. I know that this game wasn't made by the same team (because the others were busy on Tales of the Abyss) and I just hope that this team will never touch another tales game ever again...

I disagree that healing eres are the only useful spells, actually. Grune's spells/crystal eres are typically pretty handy since most of them hold the enemy in place while hitting repeatedly. Will and Norma's attack and stat boosting spells are fairly useless though, and they rarely try to heal on their own. They almost never heal the people who actually need it.

The team split up.

The head of the Legendia team is in charge of the Symphonia game's battle system though.

He might drag the old team back together, then again he might not. He might bring back his Soul Calibur styled battle system, then again he might not.

Won't know until more information gets revealed later on in time.

I have mixed feelings about Tales of Legendia, I don't think it's nearly as good as all the other Tales games, but it isn't all bad. But back to the topic on the new games coming out. Can anyone tell me which games ARE and AREN'T coming out to the U.S. for sure (remakes of the older games included) because I wanna know which I'm going to have to get imports or patches for and which I can wait to buy on store shelves.

None have been announced for the US and the release dates are pretty vague for Japan, even. Need to wait longer.

well you can already forget any port or remake... but since tales of symphonia was a good success here, maybe we'll get the sequel.

and I think we can probably expect the new tales of Innocence on DS(but we didn't get tales of the tempest on DS too so I don't know)

I know I'm not alone on this, but I'd love to see more than just those two come over here. I guess I'm going to have to keep my eyes on any new information that gets released. If Tales of Innocense comes to the states though, that would be just the push I need to get a DS. Thanks for the info though you two.