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| Kaepora 385th Post
 
Silver Customer
  
    
|  "Re(3):Tales of Symphonia"
, posted Sat 14 Aug 12:32
quote:
Has anyone tried out the multiplayer feature yet? From what I understand you can have other players control your allies in battle. I was wondering how well this feature is implemented, since it's a big selling point for me.
I was a little disappointed by the multiplayer, but probably because I was expecting more out of it. Yes, your up-to-three other party members can be controlled by other people, but the only time multiplayer comes up is during battles. ToS is still an RPG designed around the single-player aspect, so the other people won't have anything to do during town exploration, cutscenes/dialog, or other story development parts.
The camera stays focused on Player 1 (and the creature they are tageting) the entire time. It doesn't take any extra care to zoom out so the other players are visible, so it is common for people to be lost offscreen. It isn't really much of a problem if you use distance attacks (magic and such), but other melee fighters will have a tough time at it since they're fighting blind while offscreen.
Overall, it's a single-player RPG with the extra bonus of letting someone else do something during fights. It is by no means as multiplayer-friendly as Diablo II, FF Crystal Chronicles, or Phantasy Star Online. It does the job though, and it is certainly better than not having the option. In my eyes, the people who will enjoy ToS multiplayer most are the ones who would also be content with watching someone else go through the game alone.
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| Kaepora 386th Post
Silver Customer
| "Re(4):Re(10):Tales of Symphonia" , posted Sun 15 Aug 21:51
I know for sure that FFV, VI, and IX would allow you to set a character under either Player 1's or 2's control. Unfortunately, you could only have one character's menu open (and thus only command one character) at a time regardless of how many humans were in control.
I think I came off as sounding a bit harsh on Symphonia on the whole when I only meant to talk about the multiplayer. I do think the battle system is neat and that the game itself is most likely quite fun, good, and deserving of the praise it's getting everywhere else.
However, my experience with the game gives me the impression that multiplayer is almost an afterthought put in because the battle engine would accomodate it without a major overhaul, not the "four-player multiplayer RPG" that I was expecting. In the time my friends and I played, we weren't able to get the camera to work the way we wanted and had to learn to work around the camera behavior instead.
This was the first Tales game I've played (I haven't played the other games in the series), so I didn't know what to expect. The most I had heard prior to playing it was that the game had multiplayer without any further details, and I went into the game expecting something different.
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Blister
"Re(8):Tales of Symphonia" 
