I went into Tales of Phantasia expecting the basics. Maybe a shorter, more barebones Tales adventure, with some clunky mechanics here, some rushed storytelling there — you know, typical shortcomings for a first entry in a series as storied as Tales. Oh man, how wrong I was. I’ve been a Tales fan since Symphonia, and all the series hallmarks I know and love are present in Phantasia, right from the get-go: a world powered by magitech with an alchemy-based mythology; action-based, fighting-game-style combat that feels much the same as in later games; an in-depth, lengthy quest to save the world, skits and side quests oozing with charm; even the Wonder Chef ... it all started here, proving that Wolf Team — who later became Namco Tales Studio — had a clear, inimitable vision. Hope you’re ready, folks, cuz I’ll be taking you on a journey through the full story as I examine this classic in detail. Spoilers await.
Tales of Phantasia opens on sword-fighting protagonist Cless Albane, or, as I’ll be calling him, Cress, since that sounds better to my American ears. He’s a young man from Toltus, out hunting with his childhood friend and your first party member, Chester, when their town is attacked. Everyone is killed, including Chester and Cress’s family both. Chester, too broken to know what to do with himself, decides to stick around while grieving. Cress, on the other hand, wants revenge and knows where to start: by finding his uncle in the neighboring town of Euclid. By the way, I’m playing the PlayStation remake, which looks closer to a faithful remaster of the original Super Famicom, a.k.a., SNES version, just with sharper visuals — aside from the field map, which gets a full 3D treatment here, bringing the experience more in line with Tales of Destiny and future PlayStation titles.
Anyway, Cress reaches Euclid sure enough but soon finds himself betrayed by his closest of kin, stripped of a pendant given to him by his late father, a famous swordsman, and thrown in jail. Only a few hours in and we’ve already reached that classic JRPG trope. Though, I suppose it hadn’t been used too much by 1995 when the SNES version came out, and significant plot points unfold here in what becomes one of the game’s low-key strongest scenes. Cress notices a corpse in his cell, which he later realizes is the mother of his fellow prisoner, and our next party member, Mint. She’s a young cleric who Cress spares the pain of the knowledge of her mother’s death, and she helps Cress escape even as he gets injured and passes out, only to awaken in the home of a soon to be new ally named Morrison.
See, Chester hadn’t spent the whole time mourning. Turns out Morrison met him in Toltus as he came to help bury the townsfolk, and even better, he seems to know both Cress and Mint’s parents — apparently more so than they ever did. How intriguing! He even asks Cress about his pendant, though he abruptly leaves for the nearby Catacombs when he hears it’s missing. Yeah, I thought this guy might know a little too much, but the series wasn’t ripe enough to explore the friendly, mysterious-stranger-turned-traitor angle yet. Instead, Morrison ends up sacrificing himself, but I’ll get to that in a sec. Our party, now with Chester back on board, races to the Catacombs themselves, wherein they come face to face with the game’s big bad, an ancient entity named Dhaos (pronounced “douse”), known as the Demon King. (He’s really an alien, but we’ll get to that later). Defeated and sealed away long ago, he’s recently been freed by a random follower of his who hoped to control Dhaos’s power in a genie-type situation. He ... was wrong, and got a swift death.
Anyhow, Dhaos is back, and he’s a problem. Chester attacks unsuccessfully and gets taken out, just as Morrison uses his magic to send Cress and Mint back in time. Did you know this game’s got time travel? ’Cause I sure didn’t. Unfortunately, Morrison’s not good enough at using magic to send himself back as well, as Dhaos taunts before killing him, too. Man, no wonder that Morrison guy knew so much — he wasn’t gonna be around long enough to matter! Perfect example of an overpowered character done right in terms of both gameplay and story. Too headstrong to join the party, so there’s no balance concerns, yet the story uses his strength in a key plot moment while also giving him a plausible exit that feels natural to the story. I love a well-executed meaningful sacrifice. In this case it’s a guy with a connection to the heroes’ parents who’s saved our bacon a few times and given us crucial knowledge ... that fits the bill. Chester’s death, meanwhile, fuels Cress and Mint’s quest to avenge him or possibly even save him, by traveling back to the now-future to stop Dhaos and heck, maybe save Morrison too. What a plot hook. This game’s barely gotten started, but by this point I was in.
Back to our intrepid heroes, well… they realize they’ve ended up in the era where Dhaos was in his prime — he’s been terrorizing the denizens of the past for as long as they can remember. They meet an elf named Lenios who practices Sorcery and says it’s the only way to stop Dhaos. This is different from Methodism, the game’s term for the magic-in-all-but-name techniques used by humans like Mint. Only those with the blood of elves can use Sorcery, or true magic, so our newly contracted party might need to make new allies, quick. In Cress’s era, elves are the stuff of legend, their magic having vanished from the world, so seeing this with their own eyes must be pretty shocking. As a side note, I’m a fan how quickly Lenios comes to believe Cress and Mint are from the future; he buys it almost right away—keeps the story moving without bogging things down with unnecessary melodrama. This kind of restraint in favor of snappier storytelling contributes to the game’s impressive pacing: I always wanted to keep playing but never got bored or felt like speeding through text.
During their early travels in the past, the party comes across a man in a remote cabin whose daughter is missing, so naturally they promise him they’ll search for her — remember this guy for later. Some romantic tension between our two leads arises around this point, and Phantasia keeps it up over time rather than immediately playing it for laughs as many games of the era would, and even today. I’m not looking for anything too sappy, but I wish JRPGs included a bit more flirtation in general, though maybe sanitized localizations are to blame. I swear, one of these days I’ll learn Japanese and investigate this stuff myself. There’s cute touches too, like Mint putting a blanket over Cress while he’s sleeping. Phantasia’s packed with such details; I can tell the artists and animators put a great of deal of care into telling a robust story instead of just stringing. There’s something moving in practically scene. In my book Tales consistently does this better than its competition and apparently always did, from the first game. There’s even an anime intro in PlayStation version — pretty uncommon back in ‘95.
The pair are soon joined by Klaus, a young professor of magic, after asking for his help in the 100-years-ago version of Euclid. Fun fact, this game never got an English release until the Game Boy Advance version, way later in 2006. In the fan translation I’m using, this guy’s name is written as Klarth, but that’s absurd and overly literal — I dunno what the official GBA translation calls him, but I’m going with Klaus. He informs Cress and Mint about yet another type of magic, one humans can use, that’s distinct from Sorcery but equally powerful: Summoning. That means tracking down various spirits, defeating each in a test of strength, and forming pacts to bring them over to the heroes’ side. Tales fans will know this as the standard formula for a Tales game; I just had no idea it started with the very first entry. Shoot, Symphonia, the entry that made the series really take off in the West, includes damn near the same quest, with the same spirits and everything — Undine, Sylph, Gnome, Ifrit — they’re all here. Most of these are based on the Renaissance-era Paracelsian elementals, but the game throws in a ton of other mythological references that I’ll touch on later. Even Maxwell, god of the spirits in many other Tales games, makes a return — er, rather, this was his first appearance, but you know what I mean.
Symphonia’s actually a distant prequel to Phantasia, telling the story of how this game’s world formed, so you’ll hear lots of names and locations shared by both entries. The connections go even deeper; in fact in many ways Symphonia feels closer “Phantasia, but in 3D”. Not literally a remake, I’m talking kind of like how Ocarina of Time is pretty much a 3D version of A Link to the Past, or how Metroid Prime is basically just Super Metroid in three dimensions. But I’m getting ahead of myself — I’ll point out more parallels as I go. For now, you need to know that forming pacts with the spirits requires special rings, set with magical gemstones, created in collaboration by ancient elders of the elves and dwarves. Yeah, there’s dwarves in this world, too — again, like in Symphonia.
Here we’ve reached the real meat of the story, as the bulk of it takes places in this past era. While I won’t go through every plot point, I’ll provide a complete picture of the story while touching on important details and characters, starting with Sylph, the wind spirit whose test is the first the party passes — by beating him into submission. Sylph tells the party that exposure to toxic gas, otherwise known as miasma, emanating from the Demonic Realms is causing certain people around the world to go crazy. That’s, uh, quite the random revelation, but traveling all over the globe to seal up goofy gas leaks serves a good “first goal” to toughen the party up before Dhaos. Sylph bonds with Klaus, who as it turns out is the only member of the party who can perform these bonds, a choice that mirrors Colette’s role as the traditional “chosen one” in Symphonia’s story even though Lloyd is that game’s overall protagonist. Now that I think about it, most Tales games do this, putting you in the shoes of some random swordsman more often than not. Milla from Tales of Xillia stands out as a notable exception, but even that game also had June as a dual-protag option.
At Sylph’s behest, the party then visits the Forest of Spirit to talk the World Tree Yggdrasil — I told you this game’s a who’s who of Tales tropes — ones it codified, of course, but hallmarks of the series nonetheless. They meet Martel, goddess of the world tree, who tells them them that Yggdrasil is the source of all mana in the world, and that it’s in peril — something is stopping mana from flowing as freely as it should. Our party’s all, “Sure, lady that’s awful if true, but got any receipts?” They’re quickly convinced; however, ’cause Martel don’t take no shit. She warns if they don’t believe her now, they might change their tune when the world’s mana runs out. Thankfully Cress assuages her concerns, claiming he does believe her, since in the future there IS no magic, and he’s seen the World Tree all shriveled up and dying in his time. His reasoning makes sense given what the player knows about the world of Aselia so far, and it’s satisfying to get a concrete reason to trust someone claiming to be a goddess in a JRPG. That’s good storytelling. Not even Martel knows why the mana’s drying up, but she indicates it’s from something bigger than just people using magic, which does consume mana but not THIS much. She also reiterates that magic is will be essential in defeating Dhaos, so let’s check back later to see if the story delivers on this early promise.
I don’t want to go further without discussing the soundtrack. Music’s often among the most enjoyable aspects of a JRPG if you ask me, though as much as I adore Tales, music is not among this series strong suits. Most Tales games feature serviceable but forgettable soundtracks, songs that fit the moment but refuse to stick in my head. Phantasia, though. Phantasia’s something special. Simply put, it’s the best Tales soundtrack I’ve heard yet. I’m a big fan of Motoi Sakuraba, though I mostly prefer his earlier work, from the 90s and 00s. Well, that’s exactly what this is — an early Motoi Sakuraba classic that did not disappoint. In fact, this came out a year before the first Star Ocean game, which Sakuraba also composed, and it sounds like he might have used all his best ideas in this one. Score one for the Tales series! Also, he had help from composers Shinji Tamura and Ryota Furuya, who might have helped hammer my boy Sakuraba’s ideas into more melodic and appealing forms.
Phantasia is stacked with relaxing, hypnotic tracks that intoxicate with a key theme of warmth, especially in towns. All the flavorful scenes of fancy feel like part of a fluffy, cozy fairytale, a perfect match for the game’s sprite-like characters and cute, chibi spirits. Forest of Spirits, for example, combines a simple melody with classical flourishes that just scream “you’re in a sacred place”. The more dramatic and action-filled battle scenes carry that warmth into Sakuraba’s tried and true prog-rock inspired rips, obliterating the strict structures most of the soundtrack sticks to.
Other standout tracks I’d be remiss to not highlight include the Undine fight, Midgard’s theme, and Dhaos’s intro scene, but there’s tons more. As I’ve grown quite frond of saying, even if you’re gonna play the game, give the soundtrack a listen at least once. Er, from what I’ve heard of the GBA version, though, avoid that! It’s tinny, weak, and garbage-sounding. Stick with the CD quality of the PlayStation version.
The party decides to head to Moria Mines. It’s rumored they house ancient ruins of the Dwarves, but we’re only after the pact ring Klaus needs to bond with the moon spirit, Luna. The mines are in the Kingdom of Alvanista, wap up north on the other continent, so it’s off to the port of Venezia to catch a boat and begin our true adventure.
On the way, Cress, Mint, and Klaus come across the town of Hamel, only to find it’s been destroyed. Amidst the ruins, the party meets a girl named Rhea Scarlet, who begs for help getting vengeance on those who destroyed her town. Cress, having gone through the same exact thing back in Toltus, can’t help but agree. It’s a choice made easier given the perpetrator was a follower of Dhaos called Demeter, but things get messy after tracking him down at his mansion. There, Demeter claims he was an apprentice under Rhea’s parents; THIS Rhea is not the daughter of the Scarlets he knew; and that the real Rhea died in the fire he wrought on their village. He targeted her parents specifically because they were working on magitech, a potential threat to Dhaos, so he seems to be telling the truth. The party’s shocked at this, but since Demeter wants them all dead regardless, it’s a boss fight.
But wait, the mystery ain’t resolved. Well, once Demeter falls, Rhea suddenly and seemingly dies. That’s a shocker… poor girl. But then, a spirit leaves her body and she wakes right back up again. Whoa. As it turns out, this person is actually a girl named Arche, the daughter of the man Cress and Mint promised to help back when they first arrived in the past. She’s actually a half-elf who, when Rhea was killed, allowed her friend’s spirit to channel through her body, essentially controlling her. That’s why she called herself and acted like Rhea. Now that the Demeter problem’s taken care of, though, Arche is back to normal, with a completely differently personality — a lot more spunky and fun. Good thing, because she joins as the fourth permanent party member. Nice!
Her in-battle sprites show her flying around on a broom like a classic witch, giving me heavy Magilou vibes — man, this series hasn’t changed much, huh? That’s one of the things I love about it. Also, play Berseria if you haven’t — it’s great. And speaking of combat, what Phantasia delivers has a surprisingly similar feel to beloved entries that came out much later, such as Symphonia or Abyss, fast and fluid, impressive for a SNES game with this much going on at once. I know there’s plenty of fast-paced games on the system, but for some reason when I think SNES games, I think “slow” or “laggy” — you know, games like Secret of Mana or, where movement and combat feel a little off. So it’s always a pleasant surprise to play a SNES title that feels as good as Phantasia. Again, I am playing the PlayStation version, but from what I’ve seen of the original, combat mechanically works the same, for the most part, albeit with improved animations. Apparently there’s also a proto-mystic arte usable only by Cress, only available when he’s at low health, but I never ended up using it.
Tales of Phantasia lays down the foundation for the “Linear Motion Battle System” concept, as Namco calls it, that all subsequent games would build upon. Here, it works amazingly well, but unlike in future games there’s no fully manual control mode. I know, weird, right? But it’s like the semi-auto mode in later games, you still fully control your character, able to do slashes, jump thrusts, air attacks, and all that, except after each series of hits, Cress will automatically retreat a short distance, turning battles into a quasi-turn-based affair. This ain’t a big deal, though, since you can avoid this entirely with a bit of technique. If you press and keep holding the D-pad left or right after each “turn” you’ll cancel Cress’s retreat and be able to attack again almost immediately. I say Cress, cuz he’s the most fun character to control — more on that in a sec.
This kind of tech adds just a bit of skill that helped keep my attention through even the most basic battles, but even better, it’s the ultimate cheese technique. You can push an enemy to the edge of the screen, then stun-lock them by repeatedly advancing and initiating another attack instead of letting the auto-retreat do its thing. This works against nearly every enemy in the game, even most bosses, and is so broken I gotta wonder if the devs intended it. It’s so obvious to find that I’m sure they did, but man, it makes this already easy game a total cakewalk. That’s my only major complaint about the combat, at least on the PS1 version — it’s probably the easiest Tales title I’ve played overall, and it’s not like that’s a very high bar — or low bar, depending on how you look at it. I’m not asking for Dark Souls, but I’d prefer a bit more challenge or at the very least, some creative combat options, which Phantasia’s relatively basic systems compared to later games don’t allow much room for. If you’re worried this is one of those old school “Nintendo hard” games, like I’d assumed at one point, don’t be.
Unlike every subsequent Tales game — as far as I know — Cress is the only close-range attacker of the party here — everyone else uses magic or ranged attacks. For that reason I played as him the whole game, since he can make the most use of space on the battlefield to keep enemies away from your healers and summoners. Chester does have fast bow strikes, but like the mages he still needs to keep his distance, so I can’t imagine Phantasia being much fun when not controlling Cress. There’s not enough meat to the systems, no multi-character combos, chain attacks, or anything like that. You can issue basic movement commands to your allies or ask them to cast spells; that’s about it. And it’s enough — indeed, in the original SNES version, Cress was the only playable character, so I can’t blame the Tales devs for not expanding the combat more in what’s otherwise a fairly basic remake. Thankfully, once I got used to the controls, I had no problem moving Cress around quickly and never felt like the game was unfair or that I died to some B.S. out my control. Nice work, Wolf team.
Edge-of-screen cheese aside, Cress has the usual range of abilities the series would later call “artes” — you’ve got your Demon Fang, Tiger Blade, Sword Rain; most of the classics are here and then some. By far the most fun mechanic, though, is the combo techniques, which combine two lesser techniques you’ve already learned into one, only requiring a single command to dish out serious damage quickly. Even better, certain techniques transition smoothly into others without breaking your initiative, so half the fun is in figuring out the optimal combos for your play style. Damn, I didn’t realize Tales combat was so well-realized from the start, or how little it changed for over a decade — If I squint my eyes, I might as well be playing Legendia or Abyss, entries that came out way later.
It IS annoying, however, that the action pauses whenever a party member uses a spell — later games fix this by keeping the action flowing while teammates fire off their Magma Rifts or Ice Tornadoes or whatnot. Klaus’s summons kick all kinds of ass, but they also require a delay, so major fights suffer from a lot of stop-and-go if you’re using him, technically taking less time in-game but far more in real time. You can shift the battle camera left or right a bit when paused to see if there’s any hidden enemies; it’s neat the Tales devs thought of this feature for their very first effort, but it’s ultimately not super useful. Finally, while I was always engaged, random encounters get tiresome. I definitely noticed the lack of chain attacks, mystic artes, or other mechanics requiring build-up after the first few dozen hours.
Returning to our story, let’s stay at Demeter’s mansion for a minute, where a bit of cool worldbuilding lies in optional books. Yep, Tales was doing lore books from the first games. Here, they hint at elves not needing human tools like lanterns or wells, ’cause they can conjure the four basic elements using magic instead. Sounds like a hint that the elves either formed a pact with the spirits to do these things or somehow can otherwise tap into a power unavailable to mere humans. Interesting. These books also mention that once the elves started breeding with humans, their half-elf offspring began using magic as a weapon, a tool of murder. To prevent this, the elves sealed away their most powerful spells. Smells an awful lot like foreshadowing to me.
At any rate, the party’s next stop is Alvanista, a major capital that lies at the crossroads of continents. So the party procures a ship and charts a course. On the way, a crewmate named Mayer informs you that Alvanista is already covertly under the control of Dhaos, including the prince himself, which is why Alvanista doesn’t openly oppose him, even though the kingdom of Midgard to the east does. Mayer’s on a journey to sell information to help take Dhaos down, so he becomes a fast ally, happy to have a fun night getting tipsy with our heroes at sea. There’s a cute scene here of Arche getting drunk on the boat with our heroes, but the mirth doesn’t last long. Unfortunately, while the party’s sleeping, Dhaos, in his unfathomable power, plays his telepathic Uno Reverse card, taking control of Mayer’s body to attack Cress, which ultimately resulting in Mayer’s death ’cause Cress is a total chad. Uh, that’s a bummer. Mayer, we hardly knew ye.
As Cress and co. approach Alvanista, you might get interrupted by a quick little cutscene where characters discuss the current goings-on, comment on each other’s quirks, or otherwise provide some fun or flavorful dialogue. Yup, I’m talking about skits, yet another feature that, impressively, was a core part of the series from day 1. Here they’re fairly rudimentary but serviceable, and while this is the the first time I’m mentioning them, they’re sprinkled throughout the adventure, offering a bit of character building at best, or more typically, a reminder of where you should head next, Dragon Quest party chat style. That, truly, is all this feature is — a ripoff of Dragon Quest’s party chats, but somehow, Tales better nails the execution with its character portraits and random asides that usually made me laugh. More props to Wolf team’s clear vision for what this series should be.
Here the game’s pacing shifts into high gear as the party concocts a plan to sneak into Alvanista castle to sever the connection between Prince Leiard and Dhaos. This succeeds, and from a book in the castle library, we learn the location of Gnome, one of the spirits Klaus must bond with. After much dungeon crawling, the party out-powers him, and Klaus manages to form the pact. At this point, the game opens up. The party’s free to explore the world they’ve discovered so far, chart new territory, and form pacts with the next three spirits in any order, at least, as far as I know. I won’t go through each quest in detail, but after getting Gnome, I went for Efreet, then Undine, until finally it was time to head to the Moria Mines in hopes of tracking down the pact ring for Luna, the moon spirit.
This mission focuses on Klaus, who ends up needing to summon all the spirits he’s bonded with so far to meet Maxwell himself, god among gods — or spirit among spirits, depending on what terminology you want to use — in the depths of Moria Mines. I’ll spare you the details once more, but after trekking through 10 freaking floors of fiendish foes, Klaus indeed meets the divine Maxwell himself, who dares the party to prove their worth before they can move on to the treasure room. Hah! Another boss battle, another god put in his place, thanks to Cress’s cheese technique. Once he’s defeated, in a fun twist not found in any subsequent Tales games I’m aware of, Maxwell lets Klaus form a pact with him so that he can be summoned in battle — and he’s strong as hell, way more powerful than any spirit he’s attained so far. Cool! But uh, what about Luna, the spirit we came here for? In another twist, instead of Luna’s pact ring, we instead find two broken pact rings. Disappointing, but at least we’ve got something to go on.
Now’s as good a time as any to talk about the Rune Bottle system, this game’s sole unique mechanic, at least of the Tales games I’ve played — I’m still missing the Destinies, Eternia, Innocence, and Arise. Anyhow, Rune Bottles are neat. You can find or buy them, and use one on certain items to transform them into other items. Usually, this is a straight upgrade for food, equipment, accessories, or healing items, such as changing an Orange Gel into a Pineapple Gel, which restores twice as much TP. Even more useful, you can turn a Melange Gel into a Miracle Gel for 60% HP and TP restoration. Fans of the series will be familiar with all of these, and might also agree that as the series progressed these items became rarer and more expensive. In Phantasia, they’re reasonably affordable and only require a bit of work. Though Rune Bottles are pricey at 3500 gald each, they’re also relatively common in chests and as drops from enemies, and even buying them outright is well worth it from the mid-game on. I found myself having 10 or so before noticing and would use them all at once to power up my gels and other items. Turning the various herbs into their Red herb versions, for example, is hilariously broken. Certain ones increase your maximum HP or TP by 10%, which is exactly as good it should sound to anyone who’s ever played an RPG. If you wait till near the end of the game to use these when your base stats are at their highest, they’ll pay off enormously — and also make an easy game even easier. I’m the kind of player who likes utterly breaking games, but your mileage may vary on that one.
Next up, our ensemble meets an ancestor of Morrison’s — remember him from Cress’s original timeline — the mage who died saving everyone from Dhaos? After hearing his descendent sent Cress and Mint back in time based on his own research, this “past Morrison” vows to invent the tech needed to send the duo back to their own time. That’s certainly handy. We’ll need to wait a while to find out if it works, though. In the mean time, it’s on to the hidden elf village, tucked away in a remote forest, to get help fixing the pact rings we found earlier. After trekking through a seemingly endless maze, and with the assistance of a dude named Brambard, the party manages to restore the two rings, which turn out to be the Moonstone and the Topaz. One ring breaking into two is a bit strange, but I’ll get back to these in a little while.
Brambard also lets the party know that in order to find Luna they should check the Tower of the Zodiac, where he heard a spirit resides. Upon the party’s return to the elven village, Arche gets captured. You see, half-elves exactly aren’t allowed in the village; in fact, it’s a strict rule with the penalty of death. What a relief it is when an elven woman steps in, offering herself to be killed in Arche’s place. Well that seems a bit extreme. Her plan doesn’t go through, though; the party gets exiled instead. During their walk of shame out of the village, Arche realizes that generous lady was her mother and cries out to see her one more time… but to no avail. Jesus, how heart-breaking. Here’s a girl who’s been separated from her parents for so long and barely missed out on a touching reunion. Damn. Maybe another time. Until then, the elven village is a no-go, so Arche and the rest of the group instead travel to the Zodiac Tower so Klaus can form a pact with Luna using our freshly obtained Moonstone. That goes off without a hitch, after which they regroup at the capital of Midgard, headquarters of the strongest rebel group who oppose Dhaos. These hardened soldiers are on the verge of starting a proper war, and their king is glad to have your party assist after hearing about how they rescued the Leiard, prince of Alvanista, from Dhaos’s clutches. The king’s adviser, Raizen, reveals that Midgard is working on Magitech of their own, a “poor man’s” way for humans to use the ancient power of Sorcery. Since we know that’s the only way to defeat Dhaos, this sounds like a promising lead.
Arche wonders why Dhaos hasn’t targeted Euclid or other prominent cities and why he didn’t actually attack Alvanista other than to mind-control Prince Leiard. Indeed, Midgard is the only major city he’s attacked directly. Cress points out that the town of Hamel was also destroyed, so the party tries to think of what connects Hamel, Midgard, and Rhea’s parents, who if you’ll remember, Dhaos also took out via Demeter. Arche decides to go confront her own father for more information, where, in an ahead-of-its-time touch, the game thankfully lets you warp straight to her house and back again without having to do the footwork yourself. Breath of Fire II this is not. (BOFII is filled with tedious backtracking.)
After some yadda-yadda, Klaus correctly guesses that the reason Arche’s mother abandoned her family and ran off to the elven village is because of a pact the elves made 10 years ago, a vow to withdraw from human contact for fear of thinning their bloodline and producing too many half-elves. Ruche, Arche’s mother, didn’t want to leave but had no real choice. We get a flashback showing this, and unlike most flashbacks in JRPGs, I got invested in this one since it involves a party character I care about, Arche, and was set up previously. I already wanted to know more about her mom, and I got just that. After having spent the last dozen or more hours getting to know Arche as a character, this is the first time we learn more about her family after initially promising her father we’d help find her. Compare that to a game like Final Fantasy VIII, which would constantly flash to antagonists I didn’t know and didn’t care about while unsuccessfully trying to make me sympathetic toward them. In Phantasia, I sympathized with Arche and the other characters naturally from how the story was told. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I think this game is brilliant. It’s got a lot that even modern JRPGs could learn from, and I ain’t nearly done yet.
Another elf insists to Arche’s father, who’s named Bart by the way, than humans must stop messing with magic, or else they’ll never see the elves again. Happy to ignore this advice, Bart tells the party that Rhea Scarlet and her parents used to live in Midgard and were involved in some secret project in the castle. Of course, the party puts two-and-two together and assume this is the Magitech weapon Midgard’s king told them about. So, it’s back to Midgard to check in on it. However, the party arrives at the castle just in time to witness a demon attack on a citizen. Thinking fast, “past” Morrison jumps in to save the man but tragically gets killed himself, after which the demon snatches his body and vanishes. That Morrison bloodline’s got a penchant for heroism, huh?
No time to mourn, though, for soon after, the party gets swept up into war. At the behest of Midgard’s king, our heroes take on an important guerilla role in the impending battle against Dhaos’s forces, who approach the castle. They’re to stop Dhaos’s army from crossing a key bridge before Midgard’s forces can rush out to their position. Uh, but wait, aren’t they in a fortified castle? Seems like holding out for a siege would be the smarter strategy, but I’m no battle expert, and there might have been some reason I missed. Note that Klaus is the one given command here — again, he’s really the main character, at least of the plot that takes place in the past, even though he’s not the overall protagonist. It’s good to see him take on even more responsibility in the story. In a super badass cutscene complete with voice acting, this plan of the king’s gets revealed over scenes of Dhaos’s army deploying, movie montage style.
The result is — victory for Midgard! Everyone regroups at the castle, only to learn Dhaos himself is on the way for a follow-up attack aerial assault, with dragons no less. Ah, shit. Suddenly at this point, Cress vanishes while Mint collapses. Cress reappears in a mysterious room where he meets a woman on a pegasus named Valkyrie. Though it’s not revealed to him directly, he’s been whisked off to Valhalla, so yeah, now the game’s bringing in the big guns of Norse mythology. So far we’ve gotten the obvious reference to the sacred tree of Yggdrasil, but otherwise the game’s leaned on the Paracelsian elementals more than anything. From here on out, that’s gonna change. Many JRPGs use Valhalla as a place for a warrior-like character to gain some powerful asset or key insight, and Phantasia’s no exception. Valkyrie insists Cress return a spear called Gungnir that he picked up off an earlier boss, since it belongs to Odin. She doesn’t give him much choice, but the details aren’t important, only Cress’s bargaining skills, as he eyes her pegasus in return, asking if it can fly. Well, I say pegasus, but in the PlayStation version the thing doesn’t even have wings. I’m not sure if it’s just a standard pegasus or if it’s supposed to be Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged flying horse from Norse myth — and from the cover of the original Japanese release — but the scene fades out before Valkyrie gives her response.
Shift to a frankly epic anime sequence where the Magitech weapon Midgard has been building is finally ready to go, and it ... works. Very well. Dhaos’s fearsome dragons get obliterated, their skin melting off in the coolest cutscene yet. Meanwhile, we’re shown the goddess Martel of the world tree mourning the great amount of mana sucked from the planet by the weapon, cuz uhh, thing ain’t powered on solar, yall. However, after using the Magitech cannon a second time, it stops working and the city seems toast. Suddenly, Cress reappears with the pegasus by his side to defeat the remains of Dhaos’s army and save the day. It’s an awfully convenient plot point — I would have appreciated getting more details, earlier on, about Odin or how any of this Valhalla stuff works, but at least they get some mention in earlier quests and here provide a satisfying ending to the most exciting scene yet.
Phantasia loves to showcase its characters and worldbuilding like this; practically every quest is peppered with short cutscenes that don’t detract from gameplay since you’re given ample uninterrupted time in dungeons, plus the writing’s consistently exciting, funny, or cute. The PlayStation version’s got more anime scenes than the Midgard stuff I just mentioned, including a fantastic intro sequence with vocals. The SNES version’s intro also uses vocals, to a much rougher result, but hey, I applaud the effort: most SNES games didn’t bother with voice samples.
No detail is spared; in what’s become a staple of the series, NPCs frequently have lots of new dialogue when you go back and revisit towns, even long after you last needed to visit for story reasons. I assume the game’s using story triggers for these, an idea every RPG uses for basic progression but one Tales greatly expands on. That’s another reason I love the series so much: each main entry makes for a more complete and well-realized world than most JRPGs due to all the little touches they include that others gloss over. It may feel too formulaic for some longtime fans now, but this must have been groundbreaking even in 1995. It’s like playing a PS2 JRPG that got time-warped 6 years back and downgraded to 2D.
And heck, the PS1 version isn’t even entirely 2D. As I mentioned, the field map gets a 3D treatment that certainly looks nice but ain’t worth getting too excited over since you don’t spend much time there. Lots of Tales games suffer from relatively empty, disappointing overworlds, and Phantasia’s no exception: better than most JRPGs; still not as interesting as I would like. Otherwise the presentation is very Final Fantasy, down to the how the menus look and work, and how you can save at any time on the overworld, but only at certain save points in towns and dungeons. That’s fine by me; it works; and boy did the Tales team stick with it for years after.
Back in Midgard, it’s time to plot an assault of our own, on Dhaos’s castle. (Oh, and Mint is fine, no strange journey for her — she just passed out.) We get yet another well-presented table-setting scene, with everyone crowded around a map in a way that’s very classic fantasy. Then it’s off to face Dhaos. Not to rush through the grand climax, here, but the real climax just happened. After the party party defeats him in battle, he gets away before they can finish him off. Time to regroup once again at Midgard, where we learn of the lost city of Thor, which might just have the power to send up back to the present. Ah, so the Norse references seem reserved for the cosmic-scale worldbuilding, stuff that deals with other planes of reality, or powers that warp spacetime, like time magic or how Yggdrasil regulates the world’s mana. Speaking of which, Mint figures they might have no way of returning to this past era once they do go back to their own time, so they should try to help the Yggdrasil tree here first. They need the power of magic to defeat Dhaos, after all, and magic relies on mana, so they must ensure the tree’s survival.
Luckily, this sounds a lot harder than it actually is. In the mystical White Forest, a short and somewhat annoying maze of a dungeon, the party meets a unicorn that looks like the pegasus from earlier — in the PS1 version, anyway — but is in fact its own creature. It’s dying, but since it recognizes Mint’s purity of heart, it instead transforms into a horn she can use to restore the world tree. Uh, alright, that was kind of random; thank you, magical spirit unicorn. Townsfolk nearby did mention rumors of a horned while white that only meets with pure maidens, but no other explanation is given. Not exactly Phantasia’s strongest storytelling moment, but it does provide Mint another “win” in terms of the plot while staying on theme for her character as a nurturer and healer. That’s how you tell a story, folks — it doesn’t need to be fancy; it only needs to hit home. Plus, gameplay-wise it makes sense: this isn’t an overly long game, and having another small dungeon here gives the player more time to grind skills and levels before heading back to the present. I hate when games rush you along so much that they leave you with no time to experiment with new tools added to your combat kit before they become outdated — I’m looking at you, FFIV. When it comes to Phantasia, that kind of progress comes in the form of new summons for Klaus, unlocked by bonding spirits, new sword techniques for Cress, reached by level up or taught by NPCs, and various spells for Arche and Mint via leveling or learned from spellbooks found over the course of the adventure.
Unlike many subsequent Tales entries, no one in Phantasia’s cast goes underused, aided by the fact there’s only six total party members, as well as the simple presentation and relative lack of content, back up by flawless pacing. Key word, “relative”: there’s more than enough to do in the game; if anything, it’s modern JRPGs that are stacked with too much bloat. I spent a good 40 hours on this one, which felt perfect, filling several of my nights with addictive tales of the power of friendship set to Motoi Sakuraba’s warm slap bass. Ahhh, Tales, never change.
After healing the world tree itself with the unicorn horn, Martel appears once again to thank us but says the low mana problem still hasn’t been fixed. Something’s preventing it from flowing properly. Out of ideas and ready to go home, however, the party makes the difficult choice to proceed to the sunken city of Thor, basically this world’s version of Atlantis, to use its ancient tech to finally go back to Cress’s “home” time to taken Dhaos down once and for all. This works, of course — it’s a JRPG — and they zap themselves back (or rather, forward in time) with barely enough room to save Morrison in a freaking cool scene. Once he’s safe it’s another fight against Dhaos, this one feeling like a proper final boss battle, after which we get the standard “happy ending scene” where everyone says goodbye to Klaus and Arche as they get ready to return to their own time, in the past. OK, Phantasia, that’s a little less impactful of an ending than I’d hoped for, but I suppose it’s not too bad, for 1995 … nah, I’m playing — obviously this ain’t the true ending.
Suddenly, a whole bunch of meteors strike the land. Then, a dude calling himself Harrison appears out of nowhere, says he’s from the future, and that Dhaos has reappeared 50 years from now. Oh yeah, we’ve still got one meaty final act left, so it’s off to the future version of Cress’s hometown Toltus, now known as Miguel for a neat reason that I’ll skim over to save at least one surprise for anyone still watching who hasn’t played this game. I see you. I do the same thing. Nothing like watching a full retrospective of the Xenosaga series when I’ve yet to play any of the Xenosaga games or even Xenogears.
But where was I? The party, now with an injured Chester in tow, heads to future Euclid to meet with the future king, and alright, I’ll stop prefixing everything with “future”. You get the point. The king bids they go to Alvanista to get more info and donates a significant amount of gald to their cause. How cool is that? Most of the time in RPGs, you’ve gotta work for every piece of gold that clinks in your pouch, even when running errands for royalty. Hello, Dragon Quest? Why doesn’t the king of Aliahan toss poor Erdrick some change for a decent sword? Talk about counterproductive.
A soldier in Euclid castle mentions the legend of Ishtar, which tells of a quest to rescue Ishtar, a goddess, from the Demon Druaga. The legendary hero Gilgamesh and Shrine Maiden Ki took down the demon with great courage, and the soldier claims nine items from that legend actually exist — it’s an armor set, complete with a staff, shields, and sword of light. Yep, this is a JRPG, alright. Around then, Chester’s healed up enough from Dhaos’s attack to provide his archery services once more, and over the next few hours of gameplay he gets various training scenes that finally flesh out his backstory. Not quite as much as the other characters got, but he already had plenty of in-story development early on, so it’s enough. These little quests also level him up significantly, saving you lots of grinding. Now that’s a feature ahead of its time.
There’s still more spirits out there to bond with, so next up is Volt’s Cave, a tricky dungeon filled with warps back to the entrance that act more like hazards than anything, since I never had a reason to use them. Klaus makes the pact, then the party links back up with Harrison, the dude that called them to the future in the first place. He’s been working with a scientist on flying machines that require Volt’s power. This translation calls them Rhea-birds, though if you’ve played Symphonia, you might recognize them as an early predecessor to that game’s Rheairds. I believe the GBA version of Phantasia calls them Rheairds, too, but they’re not literally the same machines. Funnily enough, Arche doesn’t get one since Volt does her one better by upgrading her broom to fly just as fast. (I won’t question how the physics of that work if you don’t, hah.)
Now the full world lies ready to be explored, since everywhere is accessible by these trusty bird machines, a feature we’re seeing less and less in modern JRPGs. How cool would it be if you could jump into a Rheaird at any time in, say, Tales of Berseria? I get that it’s impractical given modern game design, but I’d like to see it, even as just an endgame feature like it is here. I love being able to zip around a previously daunting world map.
Alvanista’s king informs everyone of three great artifacts associated with the lost continents of the world — Odin, Thor, and Fenrir. These artifacts together form a sword that can control time and prevent Dhaos from escaping through time, which is apparently how he got here, and better, we already got the one from Thor. Great, we’ve got a plan, though there’s no rush as Dhaos has no reason to time jump again unless he’s in danger — that’s never explicitly stated, but it makes sense as an explanation for the “time isn’t a factor” trope used by most games.
Plenty of optional content opens up at this point, as well, making Phantasia one of the few SNES JRPGs I’m aware of with numerous actual, notable sidequests — they even come with decent rewards. You can help a couple get together as you repeatedly encounter them during your travels, give Mint piano lessons, find collectibles and the strongest gear, unlock titles — which do nothing in this game, sadly — upgrade Chester’s bow, and even recruit a whole new party member, who I’ll cover in a bit ’cause of course I didn’t skip her. These kind of complex quests involving more than a few boxes of dialogue became standard for the genre in the PS1 era but as I said, I haven’t seen much of it on the SNES, and as far as I’m aware, all of this stuff is in the SNES version. (If I’m wrong about that, please let me know.)
None of these quests take up too much your time, though; there’s not too many of them; and most become available after you can travel quickly via Rheaird. Imagine that — a balanced JRPG where I want to go for 100% instead of feeling obligated. That’s another example of the Phantasia’s spot-on pacing. Which reminds me, there’s even long gaps in gameplay with no new weapons or equipment to buy, letting the adventure keep flowing. How un-Dragon Quest — yet, it works well.
Anyhow, I won’t go through all the locations and quests available in this future era — there’s a whole town that gets destroyed, for example — but of particular note is the hidden Ninja Village, which takes a bit of legwork and careful exploration to even reach. (I’m sure you can see the parallel here with Sheena from Symphonia and her ninja village.) Therein the party meets Suzu, a young ninja girl whose parents were captured and put under mind control by Dhaos, along with many other ninjas. Talk about a familiar M.O.; this dude absolutely loves controlling minds, like any villain would. Naturally, the party promises to help, and later on at the end of a tournament in Euclid, Cress discovers Suzu’s parents are the final contestants he has to battle. Suzu shows up to help, but fate refuses to smile on the poor girl, as her parents manage to break free of the possession just long enough to off themselves. I guess better dead than under Dhaos’s control. After finding Suzu again back in her village, in the PS1 and GBA versions, she’ll join the party, so hey, at least we got a party member out of that whole ordeal. Suzu gets the least amount of development of anyone after this, but hey, she’s optional and I enjoyed her little vignette here. In combat, though, I generally stuck with the characters I was familiar with and had been building up the whole game.
All that’s left before taking on Dhaos is to gather the lost fire and ice swords from the Fire Cavern and Ice Cavern, then have Klaus bond with Origin, the spirit of creation, who combines them into the legendary Eternal Sword. At last, a way to put a leash on Dhaos’s power! Origin suggests we don’t know enough about Dhaos and should consider where he comes from and what his true goals are, but once again the party doesn’t seem to care much for advice from an ancient spirit. They’re off to the eternally twilight town of Early (or “Arlee” in this translation), an exceptionally beautiful place with a neat real-time lighting effect.
Phantasia’s full of pretty stuff to gawk at, by the way. From the town of Venezia’s birds lazily flying over the shimmering, reflective water (which doesn’t reflect the birds, but we don’t need to talk about that), to the detailed characters sprite and spell animation work; there’s almost always something moving on-screen at any given time, and it’s a joy to experience. I haven’t played much of the SNES version, which does look noticeably worse albeit still dang good, so I won’t compliment these 1998 visuals too much, but they play a big part in creating the dreamlike hold this game took on me.
Another highlight around now is an optional concert you can hear at the Adventurer’s Guild in future Alvanista if you found a special ticket earlier. It’s a full-on original J-Pop song by Yo-Mi, a.k.a. real-life singer Yumi Yoshida, who also does the game’s main theme song. I believe this is only in the PS1 version; can’t imagine how this would sound on SNES hardware, but Phantasia’s got a ton more little moments like this, in both versions, that make it feel like the developers put extra care into every detail — that’s the stuff that makes a legendary RPG.
Once any optional exploration, questing, skits, and grinding is complete, Cress and friends are finally ready to confront Dhaos and take him down for real. Just one problem: no one knows where he’s at. Rumors told by Early’s citizens of a castle that occasionally appears in the distance pique the party’s interest for obvious reasons, so they check that location only to find ... nothing. No castle. They figure it must exist somewhere out of time and only appears when monsters move between the castle and this future era. Not a problem when you’ve got the Eternal Sword, which Cress uses to pull Dhaos’s Castle from wherever the hell it was into their world. Yep, it’s final dungeon time.
Our six brave warriors — or five if Suzu was skipped — ascend Dhaos’s castle, a stone monstrosity with huge towers and upper rooms reminiscent of cathedrals. Dhaos greets the gang with a less-than-typical villain monologue, claiming his goal also involves saving Yggdrasil and that the party wouldn’t understand. Turns out he’s an alien who wants to perform some kind of ritual called the Great Harvest to save his home planet, Derris-Kharlan. (Now that’s a name Symphonia fans will certainly recognize.)
After taking him down in an underwhelming final boss fight, the ending provides some clarity. The Great Harvest is essentially a process where the world tree stores up mana to create a mana seed, which Dhaos could have used to restore Derris-Kharlan and its own world tree, which got destroyed. However, the humans’ use of Magitech had been depleting Yggdrasil’s mana too fast for his plan to ever work, so Dhaos decided to wipe out humanity in order to save his own people. Otherwise Yggdrasil would die, and both planets would be toast. That’s … pretty understandable. Still evil, but understandable considering he’s been all alone on Aselia for ages, desperately trying to find a way to save his kind. You might recall Origin DID warn the party to think about Dhaos’s motivation, but it’s too late now. Derris-Kharlan is toast.
As the ending scenes commence, the Aselians decide the power of Magitech isn’t worth the harm it causes their world tree and decide against using it going forward. Mint also sets up a magical barrier around Yggdrasil that prevents mana from leaking out. Then, as the tree gradually stores up mana, it will eventually trigger the Great Harvest and give birth to a mana seed — but not for centuries. By then it’ll be too late to save Dhaos’s homeworld, but this act of compassion by Mint will at least honor his memory. Damn. That means the world of Aselia is only able to prosper at the expense of Derris-Kharlan, a bitter pill the protagonists must choke down. They do, and feel sorrow over the outcome, while recognizing they did everything they could — a classic JRPG theme.
After parting ways with Suzu, a denizen of the future, and further heartfelt goodbyes, the party members all return to their home time periods by the power of the handy Eternal Sword. Klaus promises to seal it away once he makes it back, and that’s that for the main story. The scene then flashes to Arche approaching the Elven Village she hasn’t been allowed to enter for the whole game, then fades to black. No need to show her reunite with Mom; the audience can do the rest of the work, and this also leaves the vague possibility that perhaps something might still keep this family apart. A little ambiguity to show that humans are, well, human, and that “happily ever after” can have its thorns goes a long way.
In the final scene, Martel, goddess of the world tree, takes great pity on the party’s plight and their sorrow over failing to save Derris-Kharlan. She brings Dhaos’s body to Yggdrasil, says a prayer, and begins the Great Harvest there and now. Dhaos’s body becomes the Mana Seed itself, which Martel uses to restore Derris-Kharlan after all. Super cool, though I won’t question why she couldn’t have done this in the first place. Gods are a bitch, eh? All in all, this is one bittersweet, moving ending. It explores the bad guy’s motivations without redeeming him, humanizing him despite his alien nature, while at the last minute also delivers the “happily ever after” most JRPG fans look forward to. But it doesn’t reset or undo the scenes that came before: it ain’t like Cress, Mint, and the others will ever find out about Martel’s gift; nothing’s changed in regard to the internal conflicts these characters will carry for the rest of their lives.
Tales of Phantasia is a stunning game that held me captivated, truly an all-time classic and among the very best of the Tales series — THIS is what RPGs are all about. I’d rank it above Symphonia, maybe even above Abyss, leaving only Graces and Berseria topping it.
Tales is my favorite classic JRPG series, no doubt. I used to say that with a lot less credibility, having never played the first three mainline games, but now that I’ve at least knocked out the number 1, I’m confident in that take. From all I’ve heard, the next entry, Tales of Destiny, is supposed to be even better, which seem like a tall order, but you can bet I’ll be getting to that one soon. You really can’t go wrong with PS1 JRPGs.
Whew, that was a long one, yall. Let me know if you enjoyed this kind of retrospective. It’s more in-depth than anything I’ve done before and I had a lot of fun making it. If you’d like to see more of these deep-dive retrospectives in the future, let me know. Thanks for reading, and expect more editions of JRPG journey soon—I’ve got several months to catch up on!
