Come closer, children. I have a story to tell you. It was the distant year of 2003 when Namco released Tales of Symphonia, the fifth installment of its series of JRPGs, for the brand new Nintendo Gamecube at that time.
The game became one of the most beloved in the console’s library, and continues to be considered one of the most beloved Tales Of among fans of the series and even the casual audience. Such was the success that the following year a version with extra content was released for the PlayStation 2, including lots of extra content.
Then Namco somehow lost the source code for the Gamecube version.
This means that all subsequent versions of Tales of Symphony from that moment they were based on the lower version of PlayStation 2, which includes the versions of PS3, Steam, and the one that concerns us today: Tales of Symphonia Remastered.
LOWERING THE ROD
We have seen quite a bit of debate in recent times about what exactly constitutes a remaster, due to the disparity in quality that can be seen between different examples. While some remasters are basically ports with some quality improvements and graphic tweaks, others could easily pass for full remakes. Just weeks ago the same Switch saw the release of Metroid Prime Remastered (review here), where we were able to appreciate a superb modernization work, resulting in a game that could pass as a new release of 2023.
Tales of Symphonia Remastered does none of this. Honestly calling this version a remaster wouldn’t even be generous, it’s downright insulting. We are talking about what is surely the worst version of Symphonia available on any platform, carrying all the problems of previous versions while introducing problems of its own to every corner of the experience.
For starters, a product of code based on the PS2 version, the framerate is locked to 30 fps, an instant downgrade from the Gamecube version that ran at 60 twenty years ago on hardware magnitudes weaker. This had already happened in all subsequent ports, but Remastered also has violent framerate drops exclusive to this version at times.
An early desert area, for example, tanked fps to numbers you could count on your fingers whenever there was a blowing sand effect on the screen. The less embarrassing.
The overall image appears to have lost its color and looks much more washed out than previous versions, losing much of the original’s charm. Character models were barely touched up and many simply received a texture upscaling by appalling AI, which at times seems to have misunderstood what they were supposed to recreate. This treatment, apart from being ugly, is inconsistent: the weapon models, for example, have a thick black line around them that originally also had the characters. For some reason they decided to leave it alone in that case, or they forgot to take it out. Either way it just adds to the whole thing looking amateurish and incomplete.
This texture scaling was also applied to the settings -which are now full of unrecognizable patches where there used to be stone or vegetation- and even to the menus and fonts. It all has a very amateurish pixelated look, with some letters in particular even showing artifacts where the AI did anything and there was clearly zero human retouching or oversight. There’s minimal effort and there’s literally *zero* effort.
But it’s not the only thing they broke, no sir. Loading times on Switch are very long, taking almost 10 seconds to return to the world map every time we leave a town or finish a fight. The combat transitions were messed up as well, with the traditional broken glass effect replaced by a completely white screen. Even the sound of glass is heard but nothing happens. unintelligible. There are black screens everywhere, replacing the much more natural fade ins of previous versions.
And speaking of that: Symphonia Remastered it ruined all the menus and the classic skits of the series introducing black screens that weren’t there before. Instead of seeing the game running in the darkened background, skits now take place in a black void disconnected from the action. This issue, along with the missing transitions, is not only unique to this new version but only occurs on the Switch version apparently. Looking at images of the game running on other platforms, some of the missing effects seem to work. Not perfect, because obviously they’re broken in some way, but at least they’re there. So playing on Switch you’re getting the worst version of the worst version of the game. Good job Bandai Namco.
And all this is even more incomprehensible because the Switch has already had another Tales Of for several years that looks and runs much better in everything: Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition. That one also had some visual compromises (like 30 fps outside of combat), but managed to maintain near-total visual parity with the rest of the builds. And all without stamping a lying “remaster” label on it. If only Symphonia Remastered It would have received half the care of that one, we would be talking about an excellent conversion, but it was not like that and in its current state it is easy and even advisable to skip this version. Maybe it will improve in the future with patches but first, there is no guarantee and second, it should not have been released in these conditions in the first place. A shame really.