The past year has brought Yakuza, Bayonetta, Ni no Kuni II and many other Japanese series to PC for the first time. In light of that, it’s tempting to demand that every classic and everything new and exciting from Japan gets ported over from its original console home. There’s not
The past year has brought Yakuza, Bayonetta, Ni no Kuni II and many other Japanese series to PC for the first time. In light of that, it’s tempting to demand that every classic and everything new and exciting from Japan gets ported over from its original console home.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but anyone can ask for Personas 3-5. I’m here to advocate for the swathes of great, older Japanese games that would feel at home on PC, but which haven’t yet been canonised. Games which break the mould, and which aren’t filled with the usual JRPG tropes. I ve picked out eight that feel like less obvious choices, all of which deserve to find a new audience on PC.
Bandai Namco's "Tales" series began in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicom, PlayStation, and GBA, among other platforms, and was most recently seen a couple of years ago with Tales of Berseria . It's not finished yet: A PlayStation Lifestyle report says the company
Bandai Namco's "Tales" series began in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicom, PlayStation, and GBA, among other platforms, and was most recently seen a couple of years ago with Tales of Berseria. It's not finished yet: A PlayStation Lifestyle report says the company revealed at the Tales Of Festival 2018 in Japan that it is working on "the newest 'Tales of' game title for consoles."
Nothing else about the project was revealed but the Tokyo Game Show is a few months away and it's not unreasonable to speculate that it will be properly revealed there. Just before the start of that show, on September 16, Bandai will also hold a Tales of Vesperia 10th Anniversary Party, another fine opportunity to reveal (or at least tease a little bit more about) a new Tales game.
Specifying that it's "for consoles" is perhaps unfortunate, but at this very early stage it's fair to expect that it will come to PC as well. Recent 'Tales of' games including Symphonia, Berseria, Zestiria, and Vesperia have made their way to our platform (with sometimes mixed results), and Bandai Namco recently announced that the Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition will be coming to PC this winter.
Welcome back to Spawn Point , where we take an element from the world of gaming and explain what it is, why it’s worth your time and how you can dip your toes in and get involved. Last time, Brendan gave you a 101 course in Final Fantasy XII , a JRPG that recently got spruced up
Welcome back to Spawn Point, where we take an element from the world of gaming and explain what it is, why it’s worth your time and how you can dip your toes in and get involved. Last time, Brendan gave you a 101 course in Final Fantasy XII, a JRPG that recently got spruced up for PC twelve years after its original launch on PlayStation 2. This time, however, I’m going to be looking at JRPGs as a whole, discussing what they are and which ones you should try your hand at first if you’ve never played one before.
Two diametrically opposite games are currently enjoying free Steam weekends. The first is Sniper Elite 3 , Rebellion's stealthy, shooty game set in North Africa during World War 2. You can play it for nowt for the next day and a bit, and if you want to keep it after that, there's
Two diametrically opposite games are currently enjoying free Steam weekends. The first is Sniper Elite 3, Rebellion's stealthy, shooty game set in North Africa during World War 2. You can play it for nowt for the next day and a bit, and if you want to keep it after that, there's a hefty 80% discount. Tyler Wilde thought "70%" when he reviewed it back in 2014, and yes, he actually said "70%" (we have an algorithm at PC Gamer that converts our numerical utterances into procedurally generated text).
Anyhoo, there's yet another game free on Steam this weekend, and to my knowledge it doesn't feature any Nazis or indeed sniper rifles. It's Tales of Symphonia, Bandai Namco's (or Namco Bandai's, I can never remember) colourful JRPG. The game was recently remastered and punted onto Steam; we don't appear to have a review, but Daniella Lucas was rather fond of its sequel, Tales of Zestiria.
Again, you have just over a day left to have a go on Tales of Symphonia, and there's a 66% discount if you'd like to keep it.
Play Tales of Symphonia for FREE starting now through Sunday at 1PM Pacific Time. You can also pickup Tales of Symphonia at 66% off the regular price!* If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play Tales of Symphonia. If you don't have Steam, you can download
Play Tales of Symphonia for FREE starting now through Sunday at 1PM Pacific Time. You can also pickup Tales of Symphonia at 66% off the regular price!*
If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play Tales of Symphonia. If you don't have Steam, you can download it here.
Hello Tales of Symphonia fans! A new update is live and features a handful of key fixes. Please see the full list below and thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia! - Increased resolution options up to 4K - MSAA support - Improved character and object outlines - Fr
Hello Tales of Symphonia fans! A new update is live and features a handful of key fixes. Please see the full list below and thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia!
- Increased resolution options up to 4K - MSAA support - Improved character and object outlines - Frame rate smoothing - Post sharpening and gamma improvements - Improved mipmap implementation
Hello Tales of Symphonia fans! A new update is live and features a handful of key fixes. Please see the full list below and thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia! - Increased resolution options up to 4K - MSAA support - Improved character and object outlines - Fr
Hello Tales of Symphonia fans! A new update is live and features a handful of key fixes. Please see the full list below and thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia!
- Increased resolution options up to 4K - MSAA support - Improved character and object outlines - Frame rate smoothing - Post sharpening and gamma improvements - Improved mipmap implementation
Hello Tales of Symphonia players! A new update is live featuring a handful of fixes. See below for the full list. And thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia! Cheers, -Bandai Namco Community Team Remote Island Ranch did not allow players using Genis to successfully
Hello Tales of Symphonia players! A new update is live featuring a handful of fixes. See below for the full list. And thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia!
Cheers, -Bandai Namco Community Team
Remote Island Ranch did not allow players using Genis to successfully activate the sorcerers ring to change directions during the cart puzzle.
Fixed crash at Welgaia when receiving the Chipped Dagger.
Fixed game becoming unresponsive if game pad was unplugged during movement.
Audio will now save based on the last save slot loaded.
Sound Test should now be present on the main menu at all times if the last game a player loaded was NG+
Blurriness double checked to ensure there were no left over instances of FXAA. Post texture shaders were updated from linear, back to point.
Updated credits.
Various localization and corrupt text fixes throughout the game.
Hello Tales of Symphonia players! A new update is live featuring a handful of fixes. See below for the full list. And thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia! Cheers, -Bandai Namco Community Team Remote Island Ranch did not allow players using Genis to successfully
Hello Tales of Symphonia players! A new update is live featuring a handful of fixes. See below for the full list. And thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia!
Cheers, -Bandai Namco Community Team
Remote Island Ranch did not allow players using Genis to successfully activate the sorcerers ring to change directions during the cart puzzle.
Fixed crash at Welgaia when receiving the Chipped Dagger.
Fixed game becoming unresponsive if game pad was unplugged during movement.
Audio will now save based on the last save slot loaded.
Sound Test should now be present on the main menu at all times if the last game a player loaded was NG+
Blurriness double checked to ensure there were no left over instances of FXAA. Post texture shaders were updated from linear, back to point.
Updated credits.
Various localization and corrupt text fixes throughout the game.
Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (February 29th, 2016) We have a new update for Tales of Symphonia releasing today! (Available Now) See below for fixes and thank you to everyone for your support! Save / Load If you have a previous save game, the game will now default to selecting
Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (February 29th, 2016)
We have a new update for Tales of Symphonia releasing today! (Available Now) See below for fixes and thank you to everyone for your support!
Save / Load
If you have a previous save game, the game will now default to selecting the “Load” option on the main menu.
In the Load menu, your last saved slot should be selected.
PS3 Trigger Button Icons
The Katz minigame in Izlood should now be displaying the proper trigger buttons.
Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (February 29th, 2016) We have a new update for Tales of Symphonia releasing today! (Available Now) See below for fixes and thank you to everyone for your support! Save / Load If you have a previous save game, the game will now default to selecting
Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (February 29th, 2016)
We have a new update for Tales of Symphonia releasing today! (Available Now) See below for fixes and thank you to everyone for your support!
Save / Load
If you have a previous save game, the game will now default to selecting the “Load” option on the main menu.
In the Load menu, your last saved slot should be selected.
PS3 Trigger Button Icons
The Katz minigame in Izlood should now be displaying the proper trigger buttons.
While the game is a classic, Tales of Symphonia's recent PC port was nothing short of a disaster. Still, if you want to swallow your pride and buy the game anyway, there's now a tool you can use to improve the game's performance, thanks to modder Kaldaien . While it doesn't purpo
While the game is a classic, Tales of Symphonia's recent PC port was nothing short of a disaster. Still, if you want to swallow your pride and buy the game anyway, there's now a tool you can use to improve the game's performance, thanks to modder Kaldaien. While it doesn't purport to fix the game's shortcomings entirely, it definitely promises a better experience.
According to the fix's description, frame rate remains at 30fps but now there's no stutter. Meanwhile, "hitching on menu screens" and the interminable loading times have been removed, and there's support for fullscreen, borderless window mode, too. Multisample anti-aliasing is in, ReShade is now usable, and the game will no longer crash regularly on laptops with touchscreens. Sounds handy!
More about what the program fixes and how it can be downloaded and applied can be read on the Steam discussion page. I haven't tested the fix, so I can't guarantee that a) it'll work or b) that it won't break your game. Still, it seems like it's worked wonders for most people who have used it.
Hello everyone - Please see below for the latest patch notes. We definitely appreciate the feedback and are continuing to monitor these forums. Thank you for the support! Bug Fixes Controller Button Icons Addressed inconsistencies with legacy controller icons still showing up. Ac
Hello everyone - Please see below for the latest patch notes. We definitely appreciate the feedback and are continuing to monitor these forums. Thank you for the support!
Bug Fixes
Controller Button Icons
Addressed inconsistencies with legacy controller icons still showing up.
Achievements
“Zelos Harem Master” legacy typo fixed in all languages.
Mouse Support
Mouse Cursor icon hidden when in game
Localization
Menu Localization
Spanish & Italian switched in some menu options is now fixed.
Previously missing Save & Load menu options are now localized with their corresponding prompts
Exit Game menu option localization implemented
Text alignment polish on Exit Game prompts
Abbreviated some of the longer words in Keyboard Controls to avoid clipping with button textures.
Additional Notes
Some alignment and spacing issues still occur. Currently addressing.
We are also actively working on resolving the false-positive with AVG software. We'll keep you updated with any further progress here on the Community Hub.
Hello everyone - Please see below for the latest patch notes. We definitely appreciate the feedback and are continuing to monitor these forums. Thank you for the support! Bug Fixes Controller Button Icons Addressed inconsistencies with legacy controller icons still showing up. Ac
Hello everyone - Please see below for the latest patch notes. We definitely appreciate the feedback and are continuing to monitor these forums. Thank you for the support!
Bug Fixes
Controller Button Icons
Addressed inconsistencies with legacy controller icons still showing up.
Achievements
“Zelos Harem Master” legacy typo fixed in all languages.
Mouse Support
Mouse Cursor icon hidden when in game
Localization
Menu Localization
Spanish & Italian switched in some menu options is now fixed.
Previously missing Save & Load menu options are now localized with their corresponding prompts
Exit Game menu option localization implemented
Text alignment polish on Exit Game prompts
Abbreviated some of the longer words in Keyboard Controls to avoid clipping with button textures.
Additional Notes
Some alignment and spacing issues still occur. Currently addressing.
We are also actively working on resolving the false-positive with AVG software. We'll keep you updated with any further progress here on the Community Hub.
We thank you once again for your patience and understanding regarding the technical issues experienced with Tales of Symphonia. Our team was able to resolve the technical issues shown below. Bug Fixes Added VC++2013 redist to the installer config. Launching the game should allow
We thank you once again for your patience and understanding regarding the technical issues experienced with Tales of Symphonia. Our team was able to resolve the technical issues shown below.
Bug Fixes
Added VC++2013 redist to the installer config.
Launching the game should allow this to install properly.
Log File Writing error
The game will no longer attempt to write to the C: drive.
Save & Customize Menu delay (Windows 7)
The save and customize menu should no longer delay 10 – 40 seconds upon opening.
Localization
Implemented various localization fixes to the menu
Relocated localization file
No longer editable
We will continue to remain diligent regarding technical issues and greatly appreciate your feedback.
We thank you once again for your patience and understanding regarding the technical issues experienced with Tales of Symphonia. Our team was able to resolve the technical issues shown below. Bug Fixes Added VC++2013 redist to the installer config. Launching the game should allow
We thank you once again for your patience and understanding regarding the technical issues experienced with Tales of Symphonia. Our team was able to resolve the technical issues shown below.
Bug Fixes
Added VC++2013 redist to the installer config.
Launching the game should allow this to install properly.
Log File Writing error
The game will no longer attempt to write to the C: drive.
Save & Customize Menu delay (Windows 7)
The save and customize menu should no longer delay 10 – 40 seconds upon opening.
Localization
Implemented various localization fixes to the menu
Relocated localization file
No longer editable
We will continue to remain diligent regarding technical issues and greatly appreciate your feedback.
An artistic representation of Symphonia's locked 720p resolution. Peter "Durante" Thoman is the creator of PC downsampling tool GeDoSaTo and the modder behind Dark Souls' DSfix. He has previously analyzed PC ports of Valkyria Chronicles , The Witcher 3 , Tales of Zestiria and mor
An artistic representation of Symphonia's locked 720p resolution.
Peter "Durante" Thoman is the creator of PC downsampling tool GeDoSaTo and the modder behind Dark Souls' DSfix. He has previously analyzed PC ports of Valkyria Chronicles, The Witcher 3, Tales of Zestiria and more.
Bandai-Namco, this is unacceptable. You too, Koei-Tecmo.
Yesterday Bandai-Namco released Tales of Symphonia on Steam. It s a game with a history of bad porting: the PS3 release which this port is based on—in turn a port of the PS2 version—was in some ways still inferior to the Gamecube original. So no one truly expected anything more than a decently competent barebones affair, with the same assets, framerate limitations and features as the PS3 version. However, what we got rivals the very worst ports in the last decade of PC gaming, and more than that the surrounding circumstances leave little conclusion other than the responsible company (or companies) simply caring little about the quality of their products.
I don t enjoy writing negative articles, but sometimes it has to be done. In this one, I ll explain all the things wrong with Tales of Symphonia on PC, and more than that, how these facts clearly point to an underlying system of priorities for creating this version of the game which simply makes no sense. No technical sense. No sense from the point of view of the customers. Note that there is one positive takeway from this: at least the resolution issues were easy enough to fix. I did it in less than three hours.
In any case, I want to refrain from descending into hyperbole or painting with too broad a brush—something I often observe when these topics are discussed. So first, let s start with some perspective.
Valkyria Chronicles, a great port of a great game made by 3 people
The state of Japanese ports: it s actually not bad!
It should be clear to even the most reticent doubter at this point that Japanese publishers have started to realize that in most cases, not porting their games to PC is leaving money on the table. Many of them either started out releasing quality ports, or at least continuously increased both the quality of their ports and their support. Small companies like Idea Factory International manage to port and support their niche games without issues, and with all the basic amenities expected on the platform. Sega s selection of games to port might not be to everyone s taste, but all their ports are technically solid, and sometimes they include gems like Valkyria Chronicles. Capcom inarguably took far too long to port Dragon s Dogma, but when they did they delivered an excellent result with great performance, variable framerate and resolution support, extended options, and at a fair price.
Even Square-Enix, after some problematic initial attempts, is making progress, and both FFT-0 and Lightning Returns show some respectable efforts on PC, even though there is still room for improvement. NISA s PC version of Disgaea is happening about 5 years later than it should have, but you can already tell that at least some care and effort is being put into it.
Until just recently, I d have happily included Bandai-Namco in this list of success stories. They are porting more and more of their franchises, and their same-day release of Zestiria was easily the best version of the game, even before modding improved it further. This makes yesterday s release all the more of a baffling disaster, but more on that later. First, let s talk about Koei-Tecmo.
Dragon s Dogma vs. Toukiden Kiwami (source: SteamSpy)
Koei-Tecmo, this is why you fail
Before talking about Koei-Tecmo I want to make one thing crystal clear about the success stories pointed out in the previous section, and that is that good ports generally succeed on Steam:
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;birth 1, a very niche game, is sitting comfortably above 200 000 owners according to SteamSpy.
Dragon s Dogma was released less than 2 weeks ago, and sold its current 220k without any deep discounts.
Valkyria Chronicles (a strategy RPG from 2008!) has now reached a staggering 600k+ owners.
All of these are certain to have made back the investment on their quality ports many times over.
Koei-Tecmo has also ported a lot of games to PC recently, and they increasingly linger in the low 5 digits in terms of owners, according to SteamSpy s numbers. And one reason for that should be blindingly obvious. It s not that they are bad games, it s that Koei-Tecmo has not, even after many releases, invested even the modicum of effort required to support the very basics expected of 3D games on PC. This of course includes features such as arbitrary rendering resolution—that is, when they don t simply port a last-generation console version rather than the most recent one. And that s of course before getting into their tendency to release late, bad ports at ridiculous prices. (Note on SteamSpy figures: its creator says the tool can t accurately gauge data like playtime from games with fewer than 30,000 owners, but the number of owners should be within the margin of error).
I m actually saddened by Koei-Tecmo s seeming inability to grasp the relationship between how they treat the PC platform and the sales of its games. A few years back they bought Gust, one of the very few developers which I care about without any PC presence left at this point. The really sad thing is that this course would be truly easy to correct. If you cannot do a remotely adequate job in-house, then just hire one of the many companies who specialize in this kind of project, and who can provide you with a good port at a fair price.
Actually, if you want to port Atelier and not fail just drop me an email!
A crop of Tales of Symphonia outputting 4k, showing off its locked internal resolution.
Tales of no QA
Now, after gaining some more perspective on the overall state of things, let s focus on the port which actually prompted this article. Tales of Symphonia was ported with a locked framerate and lacking support for mouse/keyboard controls—both of these are hardly praiseworthy, but to some degree expected and even acceptable considering the surrounding circumstances of the project.
What isn t acceptable is locking the rendering resolution of your 3D game. We ve been over this, but just to reiterate: supporting arbitrary rendering resolution, unlike arbitrary framerate, basically never requires a significant re-engineering effort. If it is not done, it s a sure sign of either lack of understanding of the platform, or a severe lack of budget or care when porting.
However, even a locked framerate, resolution, and bad support for standard PC controls is not enough to truly qualify as one of the very worst ports in the past decade of PC gaming. Those three points basically apply to Dark Souls 1—however, From Software had the decency to deliver a mostly bug-free and apparently well-tested product which worked well enough within its limitations. This is not the case with Tales of Symphonia.
In addition to all the faults already listed, the port as released comes with some incomplete or entirely broken localizations, crashes frequently on alt-tabbing or otherwise resetting its DirectX context, and has loading times which are completely beyond the pale when you consider that this was originally a Gamecube game and hasn t changed much since then, asset-wise. In fact, these issues are so severe that points which would seem significant for another port, such as limited save slots and inconsistently updated button icons, can almost be disregarded in the discussion.
The level of quality assurance apparent in this port
sec514.tmp
I d argue that even the mellowest individual could be forgiven for becoming agitated about the level of quality assurance (or rather lack thereof) implied by all the issues pointed out in the previous section. However, even all of that would not have been enough to prompt me to write an article such as this.
In the opening paragraph, I talked about the underlying system of priorities evident in this porting effort. It s now time to finally come back to this point, and the very reason to be outraged rather than merely disappointed at this port.
Basically, all of these issues could be explained by someone in Bandai Namco management deciding that this project has to be completed on a budget equal to one executive lunch. Companies often make budget decisions which are beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, so I could live with that.
Yet, there is one additional fact that tells us even this scenario—terrible as it is— does not suffice to capture the full extent of incompetence or apathy at play here. Because apparently, the budget was sufficiently large to license the VMProtect anti-tamper system. Which, by the way, generates randomly named executable files for each run, providing the headline for this section. Not only is this system apparently completely ineffectual—with a cracked version of the game appearing in mere hours—it also actively hampers efforts of modders (should any even show up after such blatant disregard for the platform) trying to fix what is broken with this release.
So let s recapitulate. Namco-Bandai cannot afford even the very minimal changes required to support arbitrary resolutions or superficially QA their product, but they can afford a completely ineffective DRM system. An ineffective DRM system for a game which people, if they were so inclined, have been able to pirate freely for over a decade.
That is apparently the quality of the decision making processes within this company. Their fans—and PC gamers—deserve better.
Postmortem: fixing stuff
After finishing up the initial draft of this article, I got curious and decided to see how long it would take me to defeat the resolution lock for this game. The answer was 14 minutes. Fixing some issues with videos and the menu system, as well as making the resolution fully configurable, supporting downsampling, getting it into a state ready to be released (which included some workarounds for the silly game DRM taking up precious minutes) and actually releasing the fix took another hour or two in total. Obviously, this fix is pre-alpha quality at this point, but hey, at least you don t need to pay me for it.
Tales of Symphonia , the second single player game in the series to hit PC after last year's Tales of Zesteria , is now live on Steam . Originally released on GameCube in 2003, the PC version is based on a PS3 port released in 2014 so it should look pretty decent, though I've not
Tales of Symphonia, the second single player game in the series to hit PC after last year's Tales of Zesteria, is now live on Steam. Originally released on GameCube in 2003, the PC version is based on a PS3 port released in 2014 so it should look pretty decent, though I've not had the chance to check it out.
It's the most recent in a spate of previously unreleased JRPGs on Steam, which we've rounded up over here. The next Tales of... game to hit PC is likely to be Tales of Berseria, which has been confirmed for a Western launch on Steam, though publisher Bandai Namco hasn't indicated exactly when.
Tales of Symphonia is considered a classic among veterans of the series. It's definitely responsible for establishing the series' reputation as one of the most cherished (and prolific) JRPG names, so even though it's relatively old, long-starved PC JRPG fans will probably want to snap it up.
Tales of Symphonia is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam. THE EPIC BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL In a dying world, legend has it that a Chosen One will one day rise from amongst the people and the land will be reborn. The line between good and evil blurs in this epic adventure where t
Tales of Symphonia is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam.
THE EPIC BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL
In a dying world, legend has it that a Chosen One will one day rise from amongst the people and the land will be reborn. The line between good and evil blurs in this epic adventure where the fate of two interlocked worlds hangs in the balance.
Like a Englishwoman who spent an hour in bed this morning groaning but has been obnoxiously animated since a wee walk and a coffee, Bandai Namco are really getting into bringing games and series which once sat on consoles to PC. Their long-running ‘Tales of’ RPG series, for examp
Like a Englishwoman who spent an hour in bed this morning groaning but has been obnoxiously animated since a wee walk and a coffee, Bandai Namco are really getting into bringing games and series which once sat on consoles to PC. Their long-running ‘Tales of’ RPG series, for example. Tales of Zestiria launched on PC alongside the PlayStation 4 port last October, the upcoming Berseria is headed our way too, and they’re digging back into the past as well. Playing catch-up, they’ve announced that Tales of Symphonia [Steam page] will arrive on February 2nd. Better 12 years late than never.
