Her stats were just terrible and many abilities were too conditional to be considered useful. However, despite all of the story significance she got, she was by far the absolute worst when it came to battles. Sheena was awesome and it was incredibly vindicating to see her overcome her fears of forming pacts and grow to be one of Lloyd's best friends. Her infatuation with archaeology schtick got old after the third time she did it but it wasn't that bad of an issue.
![tales of symphonia chronicles gameplay tales of symphonia chronicles gameplay](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PV6GJsUrsuE/maxresdefault.jpg)
Raine was your typical "mom of the group" in the sense that she often tried to be the voice of reason. it left me wondering what Lloyd saw in Genis. His growth feels randomly spurred and he ends up causing serious issues for the party because of withholding information. He was the typical "asshole" friend character who is a total hypocrite in his racial prejudice. I do wish she didn't get kidnapped like 4-5 times as she's the member of your party that is always disappearing at random intervals. I thought that the things the game did with her were great and she's one of my favorites of the cast. Colette was the ditzy hopeful girl who never could see the bad in anyone. He's forced to come to terms with a lot of difficult things and always finds a way to overcome them. Despite Lloyd being a bit of your stereotypical dunce with a heart of gold and the desire to change the world, I found that his growth was never overshadowed by that. Speaking of characters, they're almost all excellent. Tales of Symphonia deconstructs multiple tropes and clichés and tells a more character-driven story through them. Tales of Symphonia begins as your classic "chosen one" sort of story but eventually turns everything you expect it to be on its head and becomes something very unique. Man, it's been a while since I've played a game of this length but I'm really glad I did. while it is not bad in itself, the same few tracks are used for the whole game and most of the time, especially later in game, the music doesn't match the situation. The only good thing about it are the character design.
![tales of symphonia chronicles gameplay tales of symphonia chronicles gameplay](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U7T7om5sPxs/maxresdefault.jpg)
There's so much more shit I could say about this game. I've played and completed more than 170 RPG games and it is the only one which I am extremely in disagreement with the general consensus. There's so many shit in this game that I can't wrap my head around how much others like it. There's an escort dungeon with shadows that keep getting caught in walls. So if the second player's axis is perpendicular to the first player's axis, you can't move. The camera follows the first player and often times, the second player is caught in a dimensional limbo because in combat you can only move back or forth towards your target. The second half of the game seems halfbaked and looks empty, which, to me, would justify to high rating it gets. The game forces you to look shit up online to know what you are doing as you are not given the resources to experiment. They give you a system a bit like materias and they tell you to experiment with it, but even when exploring everything, you don't get enough to fill in your character slots and the "materias" get deleted when you remove them from the slot, forcing you to load.
![tales of symphonia chronicles gameplay tales of symphonia chronicles gameplay](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/J1xMfSPh4A0/hqdefault.jpg)
The plot makes no damn sense, with plot devices and macguffins appearing out of thin air to make the story progress. No body knows about a parrallel world and once you discover it, everybody talks about it like its common knowledge.
![tales of symphonia chronicles gameplay tales of symphonia chronicles gameplay](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/q07VdPDFLRs/maxresdefault.jpg)
One of the NPC for whom you break into a concentration camp to save, turns you back to you because she believes her captor when he says that you killed her grandmother and goes back to her jail cell. The story is moved multiple times by having a main character trip and fall on a computer revealing the way forward. The most overrated game I've ever played.