Tales of Phantasia -- Final Opinion.

I have finally completed Tales of Phantasia. I ended up at level eighty-two and had a total time of fifty-three hours and twenty-seven minutes. I found the hidden character who is designed to tie the game closer to Tales of Symphonia. I completed the hidden bonus dungeon. The last battle has a new round to it that is again designed to further tie the game closer to Tales of Symphonia. The game tells a good story with likable archetype 16-bit era characters. It uses a good level of graphics given the era. It's not as generally pretty as Final Fantasy 6, but it's a more complex art design. The battle engine is fun. It comes off as very complex for the era. There is a lot of depth to the tactics needed to win a few of the battles. The dungeon design is unforgiving and tough. The dungeons are laced with puzzles that will keep you in the dungeons longer than you'd probably like.  The music is good quality and the composition is strong. There aren't as many memorable tracks as say Final Fantasy 6 or Chrono Trigger, but they work well enough. The voices are a nice gimmick, but they never really rise above a gimmick. The quest is long and will keep you considerably busy even without going for the extra content. The ties to Tales of Symphonia are good and help make the story cool. Although Tales of Phantasia came first, I would suggest playing Tales of Symphonia first. I'm going to give Tales of Phantasia an 8.0.