Tales of Phantasia

When young swordsman Cress Albane finds his home village destroyed and his parents killed, Cress sets off on an adventure to find those responsible. In his efforts to uncover those behind this evil deed, Cress soon finds himself on a mission that will take him back and forth through time.

Tales of Phantasia is a real-time action RPG and the first game in the long-running Tales franchise. One of the bigger games on the Super Famicom, coming in at 48 megabits, Phantasia was an unusually sophisticated Super Famicom game thanks in part to Hiroya Hatsushiba’s “Flexible Voice Driver,” which allowed extensive (for the time) voice acting and a fully voiced opening theme, Yoshida Yukari’s “Yume wa Owaranai,” on a home console. Famed manga artist Kōsuke Fujishima’s character designs would further cement the series’ anime aesthetic. Aside from this, it was also the progenitor of the Linear Motion Battle System and much of the series’ staples.

This rerelease for the original PlayStation runs on an enhanced engine which grants improved graphics, offers multiple gameplay enhancements and refinements, re-drawn character sprites and backgrounds, and a fully 3D-rendered world map. In addition, the voice-acted face chats (skits) were included, and this version gave birth to many new features still seen in modern Tales sequels today, such as cooking, and titles.