Extra - Review
This is my somewhat objective review on Tales of Destiny. Can't say any of you will agree with me, but you're not the one running this website.
Story and Plot
Tales of Destiny certainly has an interesting premise. Stahn Aileron, a boy who grew up in the country and one that possesses a thirst for adventure, comes across just that... in the form of a talking sword named Dymlos. Shortly after encountering Dymlos, he meets another who is called a Swordian Master, Rutee and her talking sword Atwight. Three more individuals with Swordians are gathered along with a few others, in order to stop forces at work who are attempting to revive an ancient war between the skies and the earth.
The story of Tales of Destiny in of itself isn't bad at all. However, the script was obviously rewritten from the ground up for the Playstation 2 remake for a reason; while not the PSX release's greatest weakness, the script seems rather lacking in character interaction. While biased, Philia receives few lines compared to even some of the Swordians in major events, and the English release is hampered even more because of the exclusion of the skits which the Tales series has become so well known for.
The pacing is quite well done, however, with two halves of the main story as many other Tales have taken a cue from (Phantasia's pacing between three period was rather poorly done, and Vesperia's pacing between three arcs was done rather well, and etc etc etc). It's just that there isn't very much meat, all things compared with current standards, and even back in the 90's PSX RPGs had much more developed stories and characters. It wouldn't be an exagerration to say that Tales of Destiny wouldn't be too out of place among SNES RPGs.
Gameplay and Graphics
These are Tales of Destiny's biggest weaknesses, all things considered, and would be why they would had to have been completely revamped in the remake. Considering that Wolf Team lost several key members after the completion of Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Destiny isn't that much of a departure from Tales of Phantasia. However, Tales of Destiny wasn't a wasted effort, as the jump between Tales of Destiny to Tales of Eternia was a huge leap, and even the leap between Tales of Eternia and Tales of Symphonia.
The enemy encounter rate was a nightmare, becoming more annoying than challenging. Among other things, fetch quests were necessary though they did little to expand characterization or plot. And the entire Lens thing to Gald seemed unnecessary to begin with. They didn't try too many new things, and the things they did, in my opinion, flopped a bit.
Sound and Music
If you've read my other reviews, you already know what I think about Motoi Sakuraba. If you haven't, I find his music, standing alone, to be boring. It doesn't detract from the experience, but it certainly doesn't stand out on its own.
As for sound, there have been some rather lazy localization techniques in the past (such as Capcom refusing to localize a "scan"-type spell from Breath of Fire IV simply because they refused to translate all of the text associated with it nor the end credits in that game), but Namco completely left alone the Japanese voices for battle. Most people are fine with this since they like seiyuu, but this also shows laziness on Namco's part because the spell names don't even match up with the voices (for example, one of Philia's spells is localized as "Dissolve" but you can clearly hear her say "Extension" when its cast).
Overall
Tales of Destiny isn't my favorite Tales title, but I don't regret playing it. It's a testament to how Wolf Team recovered after having several key members leave after Tales of Phantasia, enough to create the third most popular RPG series in Japan after Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, which is a tremendous achievement in itself. The Tales series has been through ups and downs, and its current installments continue to be wonderful works of gaming art. Now, if Bandai Namco America really truly wished to celebrate the Tales series 10th anniversary over here, localizing the Tales of Destiny remake, a remake of the game that started it all over here, would just be perfect.