Tales of Destiny

About Tales of Destiny

Tales of Destiny (1997) is the second main Tales game, Wolf Team's PlayStation action RPG about a stowaway who finds a talking sword, and for years the best-selling Tales game in Japan.

Tales of Destiny in Depth

Battles use an enhanced version of Tales of Phantasia's Linear Motion Battle System, fought in real time on a 2D plane, playing more like a side-scrolling action game than a turn-based RPG. Melee and ranged attacks happen instantly, while spells need a chanting time that grows with their complexity, and when a spell goes off, the battle pauses for its animation. Special attacks hit harder or more often but cost technical points, and stringing together multi-hit combos earns extra experience. The player directly controls one character, with the rest run by AI following set strategies and formations, and can switch characters or order spells and specials for anyone through an in-battle menu. Spells and techniques can be assigned to button and direction combinations beforehand.

Long ago a comet darkened the world, and the Aetherians used Lens energy from its core to build cities in the sky, leaving the Erthers on the surface and dominating them with the superweapon Belcrant. Dissident Aetherian scientists helped the surface people forge sentient swords called Swordians, which won the Aeth'er Wars. Thousands of years later, country boy Stahn Aileron stows away on the flying ship Draconis, finds a "junk" sword that speaks to him as the Swordian Dymlos, and is drawn into a struggle over a giant Lens called the Eye of Atamoni.

Making Tales of Destiny

Many of Tales of Phantasia's staff at Telenet Japan's Wolf Team made the game, including composers Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura, with new character designer Mutsumi Inomata. Shown at the Tokyo Game Show in September 1997, it was released in Japan that December and in North America in September 1998. Famitsu gave it a Silver Award, and it sold over 450,000 copies in Japan by the end of 1997, earning a Gold Prize from Sony for passing 500,000; it reached about 1,139,000 worldwide by December 2007, the best-selling single-platform Tales game at the time.

Western reviews averaged 73% on GameRankings. IGN called it "highly recommended, as long as you're a fan of the classic Super NES", and RPGFan called its battles "a blast to play", while GameSpot gave it 4.9, criticising a "stale and exceedingly slow-moving story" and graphics that looked like an SNES game. A PlayStation 2 remake followed in Japan in 2006 and a Director's Cut in 2008.