Even to this day, the SNES era is often seen as the “golden age” of RPGs; Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Earthbound, Super Mario RPG, and Terranigma are just a handful of the system’s many titles. Amid that cornucopia, one unassuming cult classic has quietly proven to be one of the era’s most influential RPGs, not just changing the genre but launching one of the most successful and enduring role-playing franchises ever made. Tales of Phantasia bucked many of the day’s expectations and norms, and it flourished because of it.
Released 30 years ago today on the Super Famicom, Tales of Phantasia was developed by Wolf Team, which had made obscure action games like Arcus Odyssey and Granada. Phantasia is the title that put the studio on the map, and set it up for a split down the line. Wolf Team would turn into Namco Tales Studio, while some of its team members would leave to form Tri-Ace, the studio behind Star Ocean. Both series are well-known for their action combat systems, and all of that has its roots in Tales of Phantasia.
Phantasia’s quaint art style belies its often dark story.
While the Tales series has several defining ideas, it’s best known for its strong, action-packed combat, and its fascinating subversions of RPG tropes. Phantasia’s narrative is simplistic compared to later games, but you can see the seeds of that subversion being laid.
Phantasia opens with four legendary heroes battling the wicked sorcerer Dhaos, who manages to cast a spell that propels him forward in time before his defeat. The game then jumps ahead a decade to the main protagonist, a young man named Cress Albane, who lives in the quiet town of Toltus. While hunting with his best friend Chester, the two hear alarm bells and return to the village to find it burned to the ground, with Cress’ parents slaughtered in their training dojo.
Phantasia’s biggest strength is that it makes its party members feel grounded and complex.
It’s a dark opening that strays from the era’s often light-hearted stories, and it soon gets more complex. Cress heads to the city of Euclid for refuge, but is arrested by its leaders, who plan to turn him over to the group that attacked Toltusto to protect themselves. Through a twist of fate, a dying woman in a nearby cell helps Cress escape. Broken and beaten down, Cless has to navigate the world and learn why his family’s legacy made them targets.
It’s hard to overstate how oppressive Phantasia’s opening hours feel, especially when juxtaposed against its bright and colorful world. That’s a dichotomy that would become essential to the identity of Tales games, and sets the stakes high for Cress right off the bat. This is complemented by a dynamic cast of party members who bond through shared grief.
No one is there just to accompany Cress; they all play an integral role in the story. Extra characterization is added through the Skit system, which offers optional conversations that focus on life’s little moments. These make the characters feel more grounded, and would become a series staple.
Phantasia’s combat is simple compared to later entries, but was revolutionary at the time.
Phantasia broke norms elsewhere too, and even more revolutionary than the story was its Linear Motion Battle System. Battles in Phantasia are real-time, and take place on a 2D plane where you and your enemies run back and forth. Each character has a wildly different style, and their own special moves called artes, which can be linked together into a variety of combos. By ditching turn-based combat, Phantasia felt like a fusion of fighting games and action-RPGs unlike anything else seen in 1995.
This combat system was so successful that it served as the basis for over a dozen other games in the series. Phantasia created a revolutionary formula that would be built on for 30 years to come — its real-time combat, complex party members, and subversion of tropes would appear, in one degree or another, in nearly every other Tales game. It’s rare to see a series that nails its formula right out of the gate, and unlike so many other franchise-starters, Phantasia has aged like a fine wine.
