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Rating: 
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Tales of Symphonia is Awsome! I have it and I like it alot. The battles can be a little boring though. But I like the charachters and the secret techs. But there's alittle bit of saying the D and B word.
Rating: 
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Combining truly shocking degrees of innovation, quality, and fun, an accurate paean to this game could go on for pages and pages. Suffice it to say it's safely one of the five best video games ever made in any measure, whether accoladed for being ahead of its time, well-executed and extra-special in all the fine details, most playable, most fun, or most memorable.
The multiplayer aspect is a very significant part of the game's profound enjoyability and yumminess. Tales of Symphonia is simply a must-have, a killer app whether you're oldschool like me or newschool like my friend- we enjoyed it so much together. Probably best of all is the potential for recurring jokes, undefined scandal (why is there so much tension between Sheena and Zelos? heh heh heh), and the biggest aspect of an epic journey that every other video game (and even traditional RPG) misses completely: the experience of travelling together, sharing their lives, and the contribution of each well-developed character to the experience of the others.
I also liked the music a lot more than other reviewers apparently. There's probably no better single game to own. I'm amazed this wasn't a Silicon Knights project.
Rating: -
I rented this game once with a friend without even knowing what it was, and was surprised that we kept going back to rent it every time we were together until I finally got it for Christmas, a week or two later. This game is awesome (or at least to me it is)! I didn't expect it to be as good as it was when I took it off the shelf. It has great, fast paced gameplay, an engaging storyline with lots of secrets (though some people don't like the storyline), and amusing, believable characters! As mentioned, some people don't like the storyline in Tales of Symphonia, this is mainly because it has some cheesy moments... Personally, I just found these moments and lines amusing. The storyline does have lots of emotion and depth though, and I was always kept on the edge of my seat because of all the hidden secrets. The story does of one issue though - pacing. The story moves very slowly, and it takes forever before anything is revealed. In the beginning the plot seems pretty typical, Collete the Chosen has to awaken all the elemental seals in the land of Sylvarant to bring regeneration to the world. But as you progress it gets a lot more complicated than that (you are only going after the seals for about a little less than half the game)! And you realize that nothing is as it seems. The characters are great, they are a little more like "normal" people than most RPG heroes, and they all have flaws and good points. There are 9 playable characters in this game (though ultimately you can only have 8 in your party, your group depends on story events), I will now introduce them, be aware that there's some MILD SPOILERS, but I tried to introduce them with the least amount of spoilers possible. Lloyd is the main protagonist - he accompanies Collete on her journey of regeneration, and is also trying to avenge his mother's death and the terrible accident he is partially responsible for in his home town of Iselia. He isn't particularly bright, and can be a little rash, but always tries to do the right thing. Genis is one of Lloyd's best friends, also from Iselia. He is a whiz kid, and an elven magic user. He's a little head strong. Collete is the Chosen, who must release the seals. She is clumsy, gentle, and well, immature, but has a strong sense of responsibility and is very caring. There is also Kratos, who is a mysterious mercenary hired to protect Collete - but it seems he made be hiding something (or lots of things...). Raine's the elven school teacher in Iselia, and Genis' older sister. She has an interest in archeology, and is good at healing magic. Sheena is an assassin hired to kill Collete the Chosen, though her motives for this are unknown at the beginning. Sheena truly cares about people, but takes guff from no one! She is also trained in the art of Summoning. Zelos is cocky and flirtatious (putting it lightly...), but there might be more to him than that... He is a Chosen, like Collete. Presea has a lack of emotion because of an experiment conducted on her. She struggles to find herself again. Regal is kinda the odd one out (he's my least favorite character, anyway), he is a convict that is surprising aristocratic for being one, can't say much else without spoilers. The gameplay has basic RPG elements (talking to people, navigating world maps, solving puzzles in dungeons, etc.), with a fun real-time battle system. The battles always feel crisp, and you can play as any one of the characters I just mentioned. You can pick 3 others to accompany you into battle. You can attack normally, do powerful techs and magic, and unison attacks. You can also set strategies for the computer controlled character in battle to follow, or order them to do certain techs. Some characters are good at melee fighting, some are healers (Raine mainly), and some are mages (Genis mainly). Up to four players can take control of the characters in battle, so your friends can fight along with you! You gain experience, gald, and grade (or lose grade) when you complete a battle. Gald is the currency, and you can also buy certain things with grade (including cool bonuses if you play the game a second time), and you level up with exp. The game also has a title system (where you unlock and chose "titles" to change certain stats, sometimes costumes change too), and a cooking system (used for healing). And also has the element of "affection", where you answer questions as Lloyd to either get your fellow party members to like or dislike you - this slightly effects the story. The game is challenging without being overly frustrating (though if you really spend time leveling up it becomes pretty easy, and the final boss is disappointing). It also has tons of fun side-quests to do BEFORE beating the game (one annoying thing is after you beat the game you must restart, do all side-quests first!). Whew! This is probably my longest review ever... Well, time for a pros and cons summary:
PROS:
Fun and frantic battle system
Likable characters with lots of personality
Plot has lots of secrets
About right amount of challenge throughout most of the game
Lots of side-quests, and you can buy bonuses 2nd time round
Multiple paths through the story
Good multi-player in battles
CONS:
Plot has bad pacing
Has some cheesy moments
Can be a little hard to figure where to go next sometimes
Final boss is WAY to easy
Don't have a chance to do side-quests after finishing, before restarting
OVERALL: I love this game - personally it's one of my very favorites! It may not be for everybody, but I think a lot of people would really like it. I recommend at least renting it (baring in mind the beginning is rather slow).
Rating: 
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The quick summary of Symphonia is that you'll play the role of Lloyd Irving, a teenaged boy with a cloudy past, who stumbles (along with several friends, naturally) into the adventure of a lifetime, culminating in the rescue of not one, but two endangered worlds. It seems that Lloyd's lifelong friend, Colette, is at the center of a once-every-generation pilgrimage that leads to the mysterious salvation of the world, and that everyone but Lloyd realizes that this journey will not end well for Colette. Basically, it's the plot of Final Fantasy X with more of a homogenized, Saturday morning cartoon flair, and less hideous flying monsters named "Sin." I had a really hard time enjoying the progression of the story, as not only was the writing a bit suspect and the characters largely unlikable, but the pacing was jerky and off-putting. After a handful of hours of treading water and building toward an ongoing climax, just as things would begin to get interesting, the story would slam on the brakes and go right back to treading water again. If the writing was feeling particularly exotic, maybe you'd gain or lose a party member in the process.
Perhaps most accountable for the slow death of the story was the inclusion of far, far too much unnecessary dialog, without any sort of payoff to validate its existence. This is a game that would have benefitted tremendously had it been basically halved in length. The plot isn't without its intricacies and shining moments, but they're so few and far between that they lose a lot of their impact amid the tedious, back and forth discussions and repeatedly dull, fetch-and-return styled missions. Conversations almost always go on well beyond the point of good reason, even in key situations. It's understandable to have a silly, one-sided conversation with an unimportant character on the outskirts of a city somewhere... such dialog is the bread and butter of RPGs as a whole. Where such meanderings are less acceptable and more damaging, however, are in the key scenes after crucial battles or big plot twists.
About two thirds of the conversations in Symphonia are delivered via written text, while the more important chats are spoken by a cast of voice actors... it's a fairly good way to indicate to the player that they need to pay special attention to what's going on, because what's being discussed is going to affect the way the game plays out from that point forward. Yet even these spoken scenes are usually marred by poor writing and unnecessary asides that only serve to elongate the experience. I spent fifty two hours shoveling through about twenty hours' worth of really interesting material.
Assuming you can look past the majority of the story, however, the actual practice of playing the game is an extremely enjoyable ride, with plenty of innovation to go alongside the more universally applied elements. All fights occur in real-time, and more resemble a limited Final Fight-style beat-em-up than a standard, turn-based RPG. You're limited to four party members in the field at one time, and will be routinely facing off with as many as six enemies at once. At first glance, the system looks to be nothing more than button mashing and a little luck, but as you become more familiar with your special attacks, working in conjunction with your teammates and shifting your strategy to fit each battle, the actual depth and flexibility of the system becomes much more evident. To tell the truth, I was far from a fan of this battle system until roughly the ten hour mark, when that tiny switch flicked in the back of my brain and I finally understood the intricacies of a fight in the world of Symphonia. The in-game instructions aren't exactly helpful in explaining the full potential of its own mechanics, which leaves you to sort things out on your own... and actually, I preferred it that way. It's much more rewarding when you develop a particularly successful strategy and apply it than it would have been, had you merely followed instructions and begun to paint by number.
The controller setup works well with the way the battle system functions, and never gets in the way, even when things are at their most frenzied. Successfully using the GameCube's controller is usually just a matter of how effectively the "A" button is mapped, since it's basically the sole point of focus on the hardware, with every other button and even the analog stick playing a secondary role. Fortunately, Symphonia handles the button in question admirably. In a battle, it's your driving force, working in conjunction with the direction you happen to be pressing on the analog stick to begin one of your basic attacks. While enduring one of the game's lengthy speaking segments, it both increases the speed at which the text appears and acknowledges that you've finished reading that passage and are now physically and emotionally prepared to enjoy the next sentence fragment. It's the only button you absolutely, positively have to have. The rest of the buttons are laid out, basically, declining in button size as they also decline in order of importance. The "B" button activates both your special attacks and your magic, depending on the type of character you're controlling. The "Y" button brings up whichever menu is appropriate at the moment, the trigger buttons momentarily pause the action while you choose a primary target, and the tiny "Z" button initiates incidental conversations at seemingly random points around the map. Because if there's one thing this game needed, it was more incidental conversation.
One area in which the controls run into a snag is in the world map, where roaming around the land can quickly become a headache-inducing experience. The camera angles chosen for this view are typically an overhead perspective, following the player from behind and perhaps zoomed in just a little bit too close for comfort. Should the camera nudge anything above ground level, such as a cliff or small building, however, it'll shift to a godawful view, directly over your party. It'll also kindly zoom in beyond the point of any comprehension, so that you're basically seeing your lead character's scalp and a few feet in either direction around him. Naturally, this makes navigating the map extremely difficult, and usually requires some maneuvering to get back into something resembling a workable view. Inside dungeons and during battle, no such issues are evident.
The visuals are one area in which this title really excels. Although most characters are rendered via cel shading, which is a technique I'm starting to see overused more and more, they never look forced or unnatural. Set against the beautiful, painterly appearance of the entirety of the game's backdrops and surrounding textures, the shading gives the impression of a big budget, animated motion picture. It's a truly lovely combination, and gives the title a style and look all its own. The character designs are provided by Kosuke Fukishima, well known for his work with the "Oh My Goddess!" and "You're Under Arrest" animated series, and is truly a shining point for the title. The world is filled with a unique visual flair, which is both represented and enhanced by the characters' appearances and their choice in clothing (aside from Lloyd, who wears a jacket that he may as well have lifted from Vash the Stampede himself). The enemies are universally outstanding, and rarely fall to the RPG trend of merely recoloring a design and unleashing it as an entirely different villain. My only real complaint lies with the notable lack of cutscenes during dramatic moments, and that's more a personal preference than anything else. From start to finish, there are three animated cutscenes in this title, and none run for longer than a minute and a half. That makes the giant shot of just such a scene right on the back of the case a bit misleading, and there were surely some moments that would have benefitted tremendously from a little additional visual flair. Instead, 99% of the game is live-rendered, and while this is an example of one of the GameCube's better looking titles, I really would've preferred to see a little bit more than cel shaded polygons after a big fight from time to time.
The audio has its ups and its downs, honestly. Some of the voice acting is really top notch, such as the brooding, secretive speech of Kratos and the unintentionally snooty tone of Raine, but for every character with a quality voice, there exist two or three that are absolutely wretched. Most of the summon monsters have irritating voices, and the leading duo of Lloyd and Colette are so super-nice and cheery, I want to take after them with a rusty butcher knife and a bag of salt. The music, as well, goes beyond the point of no return with the inspiration gathered from colorful nature of the graphics, and is almost entirely forgettable. If I weren't such a stickler for listening to every last moment of spoken dialog in a game, I'd have more than likely played this from start to finish with the television muted and my iPod providing the audio input.
Simply, if you're a GameCube owner and you're jonesin' for an RPG, this will fill your need adequately. The battle system is outstanding, if you've got the patience to figure it out via trial and error, and the visuals are worth a look or two, because they use the Cube's hardware fairly well. If you're also the owner of a PS2 and / or an Xbox, I've got to say there are far better titles out there in the genre. The story stinks, the characters need some serious work, and there is a LOT. OF. NEEDLESS. CONVERSATION. I'd call the entire package above average, but it's not really anything I'm going to recommend my friends go out of their way to try out.
Rating: 
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This was an okay game but the characters talk WAY too long. It's like "let us play the frickin' game already!" I think the battles look awful. They could have done so much better. When I bought it a few months ago, I played it for a few hours, and haven't picked it up since.
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