Tales Of Symphonia Is The Most "Successful" Series Entry In The West, Says Producer

I don't think Symphonia is like some amazing, brilliant JRPG (even an inferior GBA port of Phantasia I felt was a lot stronger) but it was a really good game that was desperately needed on the GCN, which had next to no RPGs at all. Also the soundtrack is brilliant.

I would love to see a 3DS port of Tales of Symphonia. Tales of Vesperia is my personal favourite of the series, but Symphonia was my first taste of the series and has a special place in my heart.

Can't wait for Xillia in August

I haven't played a 'Tales of' game since Symphonia. They haven't become the new Final Fantasy, have they?

I really did enjoy playing through Symphonia (I was an idiot and sold it along with Skies of Arcadia), and I rank it as one of the best games for the Gamecube.

@edhe Nah, it's not become Final Fantasy in terms of sales but the core series is kept very much the same for the fans. Unlike FF which has become a complete mess.

This was SUCH a good game. My favorite of the series and one of the many gems on the Cube.

i really hope the wii u gets some great rpgs like these.

Vesperia should have been more popular. It's just the problem that it was on the Xbox 360.
Vesperia is probably the best, or at least largest and most polished entry in the series, with Abyss not far behind. Abyss's main problem was that it was never released in Europe until the 3DS, and I bet the 3DS version didn't sell much, huh? It's kind of the exact same issue with Eternia, only being released on the PSP here.
Symphonia was the first game to reach all three markets, and it being on Nintendo's Cube definitely had some factor to play in its success.

@EarthboundBenjy It's a shame that the PS3 version of Vesperia never saw a Western release. If that game was multiplatform it may well have outsold Symphonia.

Symphonia was a great game, but I think my personal favourite in the series has to be Tales of the Abyss. I bought it for the 3DS last fall and loved it. Great story, great battle system, and memoriable characters. It was 55 hours well spent

Xillia will surpass it in a couple months. ;D

Not a surprise though. ToS is what introduced many people to the Tales series. A fun game no doubt, but the sequel was absolute garbage.

I've given all the mothership games a try aside from the two Xillia games, and Vesperia was easily my most fun and satisfying experience with any of the games from this series.

Tales of Symphonia!! One of my favorites of the series with Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Eternia and Tales of the Abyss!!

It's also a shame that some of the best games don't get translated in the first place. I've been playing Tales of Destiny PS2 version, and it's just a shame that no-one in this country can really get to play it. Same with games like Tales of Rebirth and Tales of Innocence and of course the PS3 Vesperia. But then, the astoundingly rubbish games in the series like Legendia, the first Radiant Mythology and ToS:Ratatosk DO get translated. So what does that mean?

Since Symphonia was the first to be released in all regions, it was the first to be the most successful. Why can't Namco realise this and just release all games everywhere?

I loved Phantasia to death, except I couldn't find a copy of any of the future games. I'd always wanted to get vested into the Tales series, but I can never seem to find them

Going through all the Tales games released here so far. The only one that doesn't interest me at all is Abyss. I'd say that's a good track record.

The game has a nice artwork, especially the anime cut scenes. But I always thought the story is kinda confusing and hard to follow. Maybe I need to play it again some time.

I have never played a Tales of game, always wanted to but never got around to it. I'd love to be able to play Tales of Vesperia, I really wish they'd port it to the Wii U. So disappointing that they didn't bring it to PS3 outside of Japan, I ain't buying a 360 for Vesperia (though I may do at some point down the line, once my backlog clears a lot). I also plan to play Symphonia & its Wii sequel one day.

Really, Nintendo did even support big on their sites some really obscure games, and they still do.
They reach out for than people think, it's devs that bail out, it's not Nintendo that's missing something.
Namco has to admit the Sony isn't really talking about the Tales of on their systems, when Nintendo at least giving a banner and a microsite for an almost straight port like Tales of the Abyss on the 3DS.

I've been planning on getting this, but I haven't yet. :/

I say he shouldn't hold back. There aren't many RPGs on the WiiU yet, so Tales would get a lot of attention.

By far the best Tales game. And Kratos was the best anti-hero ever in any game.

Symphonia is the only I played. Playing it together with my brother, I thought it was brilliant!

Tales of Symphonia is/was a great game. I watched the first OVA last week and had to jump back in to the GCN game. Great great game. I don't have time anymore to "get absorbed in" RPG's, but I remember it very fondly.

It's too late to port Xillia to the Wii U as a standalone, but Xillia 2 should be on there (and maybe include Xillia on the Xillia 2 disc?). All subsequent entries should also be on the Wii U. Support Nintendo's new home console Baba-san!

I'm still the only person I know who enjoyed the sequel to Tales of Symphonia on the Wii.

It's a little more structured than ToS was, because it's guiding us through a direct story, but there's a lot of good character evolution, and there are DOZENS of sidequests - they're just hidden away somewhat since the game moves in chapters. The best way to enjoy the game is to do a normal playthrough the first time, then Grade Shop for the second playthrough and THEN do the sidequests (also because several of them, like the destroyed Balacruf Mausoleum, can only be played on the second playthrough).

ToS really stood out with it's awesome plot, something other Tales games couldn't really do. But the gameplay hasn't aged very well. The linear fighting style requires more patience, but other than that, it's rather restrictive, especially compared to Graces.

I had love every Tales game since Phantasia through Symphonia, Abyss on 3DS was also good too. Hopefully Namco Tales Studio wise up and bring a new Tales for Wii U, last gen was kinda meh to me as all the original Tales games (Vesperia, Graces, Xillia) were hog to the PS3 which to me seem less interesting as all plays nothing different from one another.

Huh, so why'd ya abandon Nintendo for Sony, eh Bamco? Did Nintendo not support Graces?

@Kaze_Memaryu

My only issue with the fighting style was the camera. If I was playing as Genis,there would be times when my character was completely off the screen :/

I dunno, I rented tales of the abyss on 3DS and wasn't too impressed with it.... that was my first and only tales game, and abyss just left me feeling meh about the series, I'll give symphonia a shot if they release it on Wii U.

I rented this game many years ago and couldn't finish it in the 5 days that I had it rented. I definitely want to buy this game once I get the chance. I loved Tales of Vesperia and I can't see why I wouldn't love this one either.

@Benjamin I am actually considering getting that game in the future. I thought it looked promising from the videos I have seen.

Tales of Symphonia is one of my favorite games of all time, although I am well aware of its many flaws, the largest if which is the game heavily falls victim to "Guide Dang It", much of the game you would never understand without reading a guide, and tons of stuff you can permanently miss because you didn't backtrack to a place you would have no reason to go or have to do something which is never even hinted. Also, if you set jumping to control freely it could be heavily abused on the AI, of course you can choose the default controls and not do this.

Maybe Namco wants to know why Tales games sell poorly outside of Japan, I think it's because they keep screwing over the localization, cutting costs at ever corner with stuff like voiceless skits, no original voices with subtitiles, replacing the music, and taking ridiculously long with the localization despite all this (Xilla came out 2 years ago in Japan). This isn't the 90's where information control was easy, people have the internet now, they KNOW when they are being screwed over. If you show your customers clear disrespect they won't purchase your product, and they might just pirate it if they really want to play it. You have to sell your product to the customer, you can't just force people to take whatever crap you want to give them as if it was their only choice.

@MANIAC911 I know... multiplayer is really close to unbearable T_T

If Tales of Symphonia is on it, I will buy it there.

i want Tales of Symphonia 3 for Wii U.

I never played a tales game before, but I still know about Lloyd, he was a special guest charater in soul calibur legends and was a charater in a fan made game called super smash flash which is like super smash bros.

Well, i've only played three of the games, Tales Of Vesperia being my favourite,
then Tales of the Abyss,
then Tales of Symphonia....
but it's a littl unfair as ToV is the 10th game in the series, Abyss the 8th, and symphonia the 5th, so the games kind of got worse as I was going backwards.

@koopakid I think I'd have to second this. I haven't touched Symphonia in all fairness since it came out, but recently lucked into a cheap copy of it and intend to hit it eventually again when I can get the time and then I'd know for sure. I just don't remember the story writing being as good on ToS vs the TotA on 3DS.

@Longforgotten

Me too man.. me and my brother spent over 80 hours on this game. We loved it.. Loved the store, graphics, fighting and characters. Awesome stuff

I bought the Wii Tales of whatever.. but for some reason it didn't hold my interest. I don't know what it was but I didn't like the monster feature.

I love Tales of Symphonia so much, it's my favourite game ever! I love Tales of the Abyss too which is my second favourite game ever and although, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World isn't close to the quality of those games (it is an escort title so I wouldn't expect it to be), it is far better than most say it is and I love that game too. I intend on getting some of the Japan only Tales of games on Nintendo consoles as a few of them either have a fan translation or there is one in progress for them.

@Kaze_Memaryu Are you the guy working on the English patch for Tales of Graces Wii? If so, thank you for the work you're doing and I look forward to being able to play it.

no, it's successful because it's the only one that's been released for a nintendo console. get better at localizing and cross platforming please

@FonistofCruxis Yep, that's me, though it's coming to a halt (read the topic for details).

@Marioman64 Tales of Phantasia (GBA), Tales of Symphonia 2 (Wii) and Tales of the Abyss (3DS) would like to have a word with you.

@Benjamin And you can't even level up the cast of Symphonia, who are the strongest characters in the game by far.

Nope, the original Tales of Symphonia is definitely the best Tales game-possibly the best RPG- ever.