Outlawauron asked me to make one here.
It's not so much that I disliked Tales of Symphonia or that it's a bad game but rather that I keep hearing certain people talk about it like it was the greatest RPG ever when really... it's far far from it. If anything, it feels like an RPG for 10 year olds.
Rather than needlessly insulting the game every time someone mentions how great it is and spoiling the mood, I guess I'll just make a thread to discuss my problems with it with anyone who might care.
1) Lloyd is overpowered. The only thing that comes close to Lloyd power-wise in this game is Genis/Raine's Prism Stars attack. Lloyd is fast, combos hard, and deals crazy amounts of damage. Sure main characters are supposed to be good but he's ridiculous.
In no place does this shine more so than the arena. He quite possibly had the easiest time in the arena by himself as there was a two step plan to almost every victory. Step 1, jump over the enemy. Step 2, use Raining Tiger Blade. Then you win. You see, the enemy can't turn around before you recover from this move so you can continue to mash the special move button doing this over and over until the enemy is dead or you run out of juice (if you have regen-type items you're set).
Solve the problem of healing and Lloyd could probably solo the game easily. The ultimate party in this game would be Raine (for healing), Genis (for Prism Stars with Raine), and two Lloyds because there is no other party member who's pure unfettered power compares to Lloyd. In fact, if you could ditch the entire rest of the cast for another Lloyd... you'd probably be doing yourself a favor.
2) Lloyd is an idiot. I hate stupid main characters almost as much as I hate emo main characters. They both suck the fun out of the story and make me wonder why that person is the main character in the first place. In the old days, you had characters that didn't talk at all, they just kicked ass. The ones that did talk, like Maxim of Lufia 2, also kicked ass and when they talked people listened because intelligent things appeared in their text boxes.
The problem with Lloyd is not so much that you learn that he's not the brightest of the bunch really quickly. The problem with Lloyd is that the game never lets you forget that. Pretty much every side conversation between Lloyd, Genis, Raine, or Kratos serves to remind us that Lloyd is not too bright. It's almost as if Genis in particular has a buzzer that alerts him when Lloyd says or does something intelligent so that he can quickly make Lloyd feel stupid again which is pretty much what usually happens. If Lloyd amazingly says something smart, Genis (or sometimes Raine) is always quick to point out how good it is in such a way as though Lloyd were a dog that unexpectedly just did a trick.
I kind of see this whole struggle like a tug of war. On the one end is the plot which is desperately trying to portray Lloyd growing as a character and learning from his experiences. On the other end is the rest of the cast which immediately tugs back every time the plot has a chance of doing this. Needless to say that for someone who'd really like some character growth and development as part of the story, it gets frustrating.
3) Colette has the brains of a shrubbery. Colette is dense, really dense. Lloyd isn't smart, but you can practically hear the wind whistling from ear to ear through Colette's empty head. When Colette tries thinking, bad things happen. If there's a good conclusion and a bad conclusion you can draw from something, Colette will pick the bad one and then Lloyd needs to comfort her when she becomes angsty (stupid and emo, woo hoo!).
It's almost as if the game is telling us that Colette needs Lloyd to practically do her thinking for her. Sadly, being that this is Lloyd we're talking about... that doesn't quite work either. The result is that Colette needs to be babied by everyone. Things need to be explained simply to her and putting big ideas into her head can become disastrous fairly quickly (as the plot shows).
Why is this bad for me? I don't like babysitting RPG characters. It's not fun. It's frustrating to watch the characters make stunningly bad decisions that anyone with a bit of common sense could see through. Colette seems to be a master of that... if nothing else.
4) Ex-Spheres are practically useless. I don't understand why developers put worthless things into games. They waste my time, make me excited over nothing, and possibly waste my in-game money. Ex-Spheres are kind of like this. Yeah, they give you some neat abilities, but really... why bother? You don't need them to win any fights. There was never a time where I said, "Gee, that fight was so much easier thanks to my Ex-Spheres!" You know why? Because they never mattered.
In other games like Final Fantasy VII, we got Materia. You could summon a freaking dragon from the sky to blow up enemies. It was great. It let you do things that were awesome and using it correctly increased your characters' power levels exponentially. In Tales of Symphonia, the most useful Ex-Sphere ability I had was the one that let me run twice as fast in areas (thanks for no run button jerks). Yay. I'm sure Cloud would be so jealous of that one.
5) Cooking is useless. Now, there's a slim chance that cooking could be useful. However that slim chance involves not having Raine in your party which you will for most of the game. You see, since your special ability points recover after each battle and with each weapon hit... you essentially have infinite healing. So why go through the trouble of learning recipes, finding ingredients, and building your cooking skills when you could just have Raine use Nurse and restore everyone's HP to full instantly?
The answer is you don't. It's another set of worthless collectibles... like Ex-Spheres.
6) I saw it coming! The developers seem to think audience is full of idiots (much like the game's cast). Anything that would be an interesting plot twist is blatantly given away taking away any chance of surprising the player. On the other hand, things that you could guess almost immediately are of course kept secret for 10 hours of gameplay and then revealed as though you didn't realize that 10 hours ago.
As a good example of the former, let's take the battle with the people at the shrine who call themselves "Desians." Now, this could have been interesting later when the player realizes "Oh wait, those weren't real Desians so who were they?" Of course, that would be intelligent and require thinking on the player's part but we can't have that. The enemies let you know almost immediately that they're only pretending to be Desians. Great. So much for intrigue.
On the other end, we have Kratos. Oh wow, Lloyd has no real father and we just met this older, experienced mercenary who strangely seems bent on keeping Lloyd out of danger, wouldn't be it be interesting if he was Lloyd's real father? About 23 hours later... "Aw dammit."
This list is no where near complete but rather just those things that occurred to me while writing it. I'm sure there is plenty more. If anyone has played Tales of Symphonia and has their own complaints feel free to post them and I'll add them to the list too.
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