Tales from the Symphony is one of the best entries in long-lasting Tales JRPG series, and one of the most exceptional games in the Nintendo GameCube’s short-lived and uneven library. Naturally, fans old and new alike were excited to see the cult classic remastered for Switch. Too bad, then, that the recent remaster is a sub-par port at best, prompting publisher Bandai Namco to apologize and promise a future patch.
“We have confirmed that there is an issue with gameplay in this version of the product that is currently for sale,” reads a rough translation of one tweet thread labeled “Apology and Information”. “We are currently investigating a fix.” Bandai Namco doesn’t go into detail about what issues it’s talking about or when the first update might arrive. kotaku reached out to comment.
Recognition takes place a week later Tales of Symphonia Remastered came out on Switch and PS4. The cute and colorful RPG tasks you with fulfilling an ancient prophecy and fighting the evil that grips a dying world – standard JRPG fare heightened by likeable characters and a fun hybrid combat system.
the fans were it’s already in an uproar about the fact that the new version would be capped at 30FPS instead of running at 60FPS like the original GameCube version, but the hands-on time confirmed other shortcomings as well, from long load times to some textures breaking under the new HD upscaling. Several gamers have been sharing their frustrations online, going so far as to compare screenshots directly to older HD versions available on PS3 and Steam:
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I spent a few hours with the Switch version last week, and while I’m enjoying playing it overall, the technical shortcomings and lack of new quality-of-life features leave a bad taste, especially for a $40 port of one. game for almost 20 years. Colors are bright and resolution is sharp, but the longer load times between random encounters really start to drag and the lack of any autosave feature is a real scratch. As RPG website points in his review, even small things are missing, like fades between scenes that now cut to black, or the blurred background when navigating the pause menu.
We’ve seen this before with 2022 remaster Chrono Cross. Although the game included new quality-of-life features like unlocking fast-forwarding from the start and letting you lower the difficulty, the HD effect was unpredictable and the frame rate actually performed worse than the original PS1 version. It wasn’t until jjust this week that the game finally got an update trying to improve its performance, targeting a ceiling of 60 FPS.
I hope it doesn’t take that long Tales of Symphonia Remastered to be corrected, although I’m not optimistic, it still won’t end up looking like a huge missed opportunity. If you’ve waited decades to get back to Lloyd and company’s fight against the Desians to bring peace and stability back to the land of Sylverant, I can tell you it hasn’t lost its charm. I just wish it had been transported through time with more care and fanfare.