Hello again, readers! It's me, Chris.
For the celebration of our new Gamium 2.0, I thought I'd do what every reviewer has to do sometime or another: Review the game they thought was the greatest game of all times. So, what game did I find to be the best? Well, if you read the title you'd know. But for those who didn't, it's "Tales of Symphonia" (ToS).

Most of you have played ToS by now, or at least I hope you have. It's fairly cheap, great to play if you have some friends who come over a lot (like I do), and many more things; some of which I'll discuss here.

Be aware... spoilers below!

For starters, it has a great story; kept me guessing the whole way through. It also gets you emotionally involved with the characters and makes you feel for them. I almost cried a few times, listening to Regal's and Presea's pasts. Though basically it's a "girl is the chosen one who goes to fulfill her destiny, and protective boy goes to keep her safe" story, it ends up that her destiny is a complete lie, and they must fight against the evil Lord Yggdrasill. Of course, everyone has seen this type of story arc many times, but the way the characters are developed in ToS is what really takes the gold. The balance between the dramatic/romantic parts involving the obvious lovers and the "world is evil and we young children must save it" is just right. And despite the models looking very young, they are in fact around marriage age, so the story is not as sappy as I thought it would be. Overall, it has a great story, and you need that to keep you interested, so you don't get bored and go off playing some cheap "shoot 'em up" game or Madden 1990 but with new graphics...

The battles are the cool part. You don't have turns like most RPGs (which I loved), AND (this is where the playing with friends part comes in) if you have 3 more controllers and 3 friends, you all can play together. It's a great way to kill some time and hang with your pals. Plus, knowing that you have actual players with you that pay attention to your heath and not some stupid AI that will run off without healing you feels great. Also, the ability to plan your attacks and know your teammates are going to stay focused on the battle is of great advantage.
Between our group, where Auto was Kratos/Zelos, David was Rain (and damn good at it), one of my other buds was Lloyd, and I was Genis (also known as the Magic Master), we had great teamwork going. David and I backing up Auto and Lloyd, and they could engage the enemies with their close range devastation attacks. I threw giant waves of hell, and David healed the whole time, while the other two were slicing through the enemy. We were unbeatable as a team! But as soon as one of us had to go and the AI kicked in, all hell broke loose. So please, for the love of God, get some buddies to play with you. No, I'm not saying the game sucks without friends, it's just a 100 times better.

Now, moving on to control functions. Outside the battles, controls are simple: you move the joystick and the character moves with it, easy stuff. It is the battle moves that gave me some trouble. Playing as the swordsman you can combo your attack, especially with Regel, who uses his feet instead. The amount of damage you can dish is incredible, but hard to combo sometimes. The biggest control problem is the camera. The game has the ability to have 4 people play at one time, but the in-battle camera treats it as if you have only one. The camera sticks to the main character, Lloyd, like a stalker, which causes trouble for the Magic wielders, who stay in the background and throw lightning bolts around the room. A simple full screen camera view would fix that.
Many people may think that the camera isn't a big issue, but they would be wrong. When you have a long story (two disks) to play through, a decent camera is a requirement. I think it took us 80 hours the first time, since we ran around everywhere and talked to everyone, and that camera angle got freaking annoying by the end of disk one. But I digress.

Overall, this game is by far the best ever! You MUST play this game in order to fully appreciate RPGs. If you have friends that like playing games with you, it's even more important that you do so.
Another reason I decided to write this review was because, if I remember correctly, they're coming out with a sequel for it. For anyone who buys it, I highly suggest to be familiar with the background information first. Watch the Animation for it, too, if you can understand Japanese that is. Anyways, I hope you'll look forward to some more reviews and you enjoy Gamium 2.0.

Chris *Da Wolf* Garvin