often beautiful, yet flawed. it drags in the middle and never recovers

I have to show appreciation for the depth of story that went into this one, along with the style of combat that would be super fun- especially once polished in later titles. But for SNES there was a boss fight or two in this game that was awful, with such small window for success at all. (Looking at you Dhaos and Gnome.) The food system also didn't make much sense. Great start to the Tales series but boy did it need improvement. Playstation's version did that, fixed the issues I mentioned.

This was a really nice SNES RPG with some really beautiful graphics for the system and a different battle system that did away with the Final Fantasy menus for a system blending numbers/stats and more traditional live-action fighting. Generic in some ways but interesting with a slightly more sympathetic villain who commits his admitted misdeeds in service of saving his own homeworld instead of for the evulz.