Destiny PSX and Destiny PS2 are hardly alike, particularly in battle system and graphics. A lot of people dislike Destiny and love Destiny R. I mean, yeah, the crux of the story would still be there, but if it were brought over today, it'd have what's considered one of the best battle systems in the series (rather than one of the worst), nicely blended 2-D and 3-D graphics, intact skits, and a much better localization all going for it.brightshield wrote:You may have a point with Rebirth, but not so much Destiny. Even though I love Destiny, it had it's shot in the states and got poor sales and only a 76/100 review average. The PS2 remake would most likely score around the same as the vast majority of remakes score around the same or lower. That would already turn away a lot of general RPG fans, as people tend to view games in the 7 range as average.
The original Phantasia was created by Wolfteam, which broke up due to a lot of conflict over the final product. Many of the members of Wolfteam later went on to create the Star Ocean series. The original Destiny and Eternia were simply done by Namco Tales Studio in general (or whatever they were called at that point), but by the time Destiny 2 rolled around, two distinct teams began to form, one being Team Destiny and the other Team Symphonia. I don't think Destiny 2 was actually credited as Team Destiny, but it had most of the staff that would become Team Destiny. At any rate, Destiny produced Rebirth, Destiny Remake, Hearts, and Graces. Symphonia produced Symphonia, Abyss, and Vesperia. Team Melfes, an internal team from Namco not actually part of Namco Tales Studio, worked on Legendia and nothing else. Alfa Systems, another non-Namco Tales Studio developer, works on most of the modern escorts, including the Radiant Mythologies and VS. They also did Innocence. GiMPS did Tempest and was never really heard from again. Dawn of the New World was actually produced internally by Namco Tales Studio like most motherships, but it retained only key staff from the original game (scenario writers, etc.) and employed a lot of new labor for the actual creation process.brightshield wrote:By the way, which games did each team make?
That's a pointless argument. Everyone has different favorites. I'm not a major fan of Final Fantasy, but I still have an opinion on which I like best. Whether or not "fanboys" are more vocal about their opinions is beside the point. Anyone is biased based on his or her personal predilections regardless of attachment to the series. That's not going to change the poll results. It's like you're arguing that you have to not play the games and not form an opinion on them in order to get an accurate read of general opinion, which is silly because then there'd be no data to gather.brightshield wrote:They're still fanboys dude. I don't take fanboys seriously, even when discussing their favorite series. They still use extreme bias to put their favorite game on top. Just look back at my FF6 vs. FF7 example where they bashed Sephiroth, while severely over hyping Kefka. Going with hardcore fanboys is never a good idea.
The producer and I believe some of the key writers were the same for both Symphonia and Dawn. If anything was "retconned", they meant to do it. Plus, all of the retconning I recall was done to make it so that Symphonia actually makes sense within the Aselian universe. Symphonia produced gaping plotholes when you tried to relate it back to Phantasia, so Dawn actually fixed most of those. If anything, it was covering up for Symphonia's shoddy treatment of continuity.brightshield wrote:The story and characters are highly flawed though. Not to mention that the game ret-cons some things(which is the sign of a poor writer).
And, for the quadrillionth time, the story and characters being flawed is only your opinion of the characters, etc. They don't have any inherent problems. You just don't like their personalities, which is fine. Just say that you disliked them rather than calling them fundamentally flawed.
Yes, it's possible for one to be objectively better, but what's wrong with Dawn's story? You bring up the example of Eternal Sonata, but none of the issues there have anything to do with Dawn. The story isn't filler, and there's nothing objectively bad about it unless you're just sitting there not clicking with the characters or the theme.brightshield wrote:I also don't agree with your view that how good a story is, comes down to preference. Take Eternal Sonata for example. I started replaying the game on the PS3. I'm liking it A LOt now. I fricking love Crescendo, Jazz, Frederick, Viola, and Serenade. However, the plot is still pure garbage. It does make more sense now with the new scenes, but it's still 95% filler. Having 95% of the plot not even matter is an objective flaw, no matter how you look at it. I'm starting to love the game now, but even I would give it low marks in story. Not that any of the Tales games go to that extreme(Abyss drags on for an extremely long time though), but you get my point. It is possible for one story to be objectively better than another.
And I'm really not trying to argue that Dawn is better here. I'm just saying that there's no intrinsic problem with it that would prevent someone from liking it more.
I really wish you'd actually make a statement about what's wrong with it instead of constantly deferring to review scores that mean pretty much nothing.brightshield wrote:Yeah, like 6/10 passable...
Tales escorts almost always use a point-and-click map, so I still don't see how it's an immediate indicator of laziness, particularly when I'd prefer they omit it considering we've already gone through the tedium of exploring the Aselian overworld in two separate games.brightshield wrote:Grandia and Shadow Hearts are great and they use these things. It came across as lazy in Symphonia 2 though, as the Tales series uses a world map. The story was also just an obvious add on, and would have worked better as a stand alone game rather than a direct sequel. It wasn't planned out, and ruined the integrity of Symphonia's story with it's obvious ret-cons...
And again, any major retcons are because Symphonia ruined the integrity of Aselia first.