I played the GBA version of Phantasia (not a fan translation, it was an official localization) and enjoyed it far more than the Final Fantasy game I was playing at the time as the combat was much more interactive and the story just felt...better. It's probably still my favorite Tales game, though I am likely heavily biased considering it's also the first one I played. I even wrote a fanfic for it, and have always wanted to cosplay Arche at some point as she's my favorite character.
I'm also just going to copy this from wikipedia because it's pretty interesting:
Tales of Phantasia was developed by members of "Wolf Team", a studio originally created by Telenet Japan. The story was based on an unpublished Japanese novel called Tale Phantasia (テイルファンタジア Teiru Fantajia), written by the game's total programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda.[18] The world was primarily based around Norse mythology, science fiction elements were incorporated, and some names were taken from the works of Michael Moorcock and H. P. Lovecraft to accommodate fans of western fantasy fiction.[19][20] Many changes were made to Gotanda's original story, including the title, character names, and the omission of several proposed scenarios.[21] Due to poor experiences with their parent company, the team sought a different publisher for their title. After unsuccessfully pitching the project to Enix, they secured a publishing contract with Namco.[22]
tri-Ace, Inc. (株式会社トライエース Kabushiki Gaisha Toraiēsu) is a Japanese video game development company formed in March 1995 by former Telenet Japan employees Yoshiharu Gotanda (programmer, current tri-Ace President), Masaki Norimoto (game designer) and Joe Asanuma (director). The name is a play on words regarding the "three aces" who formed the company. Most of tri-Ace's games have been published by Square Enix (formerly Enix). The group exclusively makes role-playing video games, and is known for giving their games action-packed battle systems and deep skill systems. This trademark style began when the founders of tri-Ace originally worked for Telenet Japan's Wolfteam, and had created Tales of Phantasia. This game, published by Namco, is a precursor to tri-Ace's own Star Ocean games in several ways; e.g., an action battle system where the player controls one character and AI controls others in the party and special battle skills that the player can assign to different buttons. Besides the Star Ocean series, they also released Valkyrie Profile in 1999. Their 2010 release of Resonance of Fate, was taken to Sega publishing.
So that should elaborate on the former. As for the latter a sequel, Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon, was released for the Game Boy Color on November 10, 2000. It was the first game in the Narikiri Dungeon series. A remake of the sequel, Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X, was released on August 5, 2010 for the PlayStation Portable. Unfortunately they are both only available in Japan as far as I know. Though Tales of Symphoina (which is localized) is a VERY distant prequel to Tales of Phantasia, and some members of the Phantasia cast do appear in other Tales games such as Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology (also localized). Arche's route in Tales of Fandom 2 is translated on youtube as well if you want to watch that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRyp...7v9mQ17Bp420IKOriginally Posted by TouristOperator
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