A person who used to love JRPGs but now has little patience for bad design, shoddy localization, dumb plots, and timewasting gameplay plays through classic JRPGs (again or for the first time) and sees if they're worth a damn, or just terrible.
[Holds Up] This one is excellent, and far more competent and unique than the previous games in the series.
[Folds Up] Great combat, literally everything else is horribly, horribly anodyne and inept. Awful characters, shallow and stupid worldbuilding, and a story that's more or less like watching paint dry. Don't bother with this one unless you really really want more 2D Tales combat and you're fine with being bored when you're not doing it.
[Holds Up] I liked this one back in the day, but to my surprise it's still a magnificent game. Amazing game from the era when Square was making everyone else doing JRPGs look like rank amateurs.
[Folds Up] I cannot understand why people like this game. It's dull as dirt, the characters are paper-thin idiot children, the plot and world make no sense except as a mechanism to propel the game forward. Combat is fine but not as good as previous 2D titles and not as good as later 3D titles.
The dullest and most tiresome JRPG I've played as an adult. Nothing about it is interesting or exciting or even remotely clever.
[Holds Up] The first Tales game in the series that's worth a damn - this game (partially because it has a fantastic localization) is head and shoulders above the previous titles.
For the first time we get a compelling cast that mostly act like human beings, a sense of style and clever design that the previous games lacked, a plot that remains interesting for most of the runtime, etc etc.
Like all Tales games it falls apart towards the end in terms of pacing and narrative logic, but unlike the previous games in the series it builds up a ton of goodwill and interest before that point which makes it worth seeing through.
Enjoyed all 50 hours of this, really. And that's rare for me.
[Folds Up] A solid and unique combat system, but the characters and writing are sub-Power Rangers bad. Finished it, but didn't enjoy it much - every other aspect of the game drags down your enjoyment of the combat system.
[Holds Up] Finally got to play this on a real Saturn - and it's exceptional. Like a window into what JRPGs could have evolved into in the late 90s if their fans had let them.
It's mercifully short (20-25 hours) but packs that time with a solid JRPG plot that hits all the typical notes, a marvelous aesthetic, solid pacing, and little to no filler.
PDS is what you get if you use the bones of the JRPG genre, layer great world-building and art on that, and leave out all the fat JRPGs are prone to.
MORE SHORT AND SWEET JRPGS!
