Tales of Symphonia – Pathetic
After forming pacts with the Summons Spirits of Wind and Earth, acquiring the Horn of a Unicorn sleeping at the bottom of a lake, returning to my childhood home to obtain an Exsphere shard, and reviving the Linkite Tree – the nuts of which play a beautiful song when rattled by the wind that attracts the Summon Spirit Aska – I was finally face to face to face with the mythical two-headed bird, a combination of Moltres and Doduo. My party told Aska we summoned it so that we might form a pact with it.
“Have you formed a pact with the Summon Spirit Luna?” it asked me.
What? No. I’ve never even heard of Luna.
“I will not form a pact with you unless you form a pact with Luna as well.”
Colette, not seeming to be bothered by this assertion, says, “I guess we have no choice but to form a pact with Luna.”
“Then I will join Luna and wait for your arrival,” Aska says.
No one thinks to object to this. No one stands up and says, “No, that is fucking stupid, Aska. We will form a pact with Luna later, but since we SUMMONED you and you CAME, we will form a pact with you RIGHT NOW, because rewarding a series of fetch quests with yet another fetch quest is the kind of dramatic blue balls the likes of which I have never known in a video game.”
But no, Aska just flies away. Someone in my party guesses that we’ll have to defeat both Aska and Luna simultaneously, so we’d better be prepared.
So now I have to find Luna, and the game has given me zero clues about where the fuck Luna is. Even in the SYNOPSIS menu that lists all of the events of the game as they happen and what should happen next, there’s nothing indicating what direction I should go in. So I’m opening a god damn walkthrough.
This game is actually making me miss FF13. It was impossible to get lost in that game, and when something stupid happened there was usually at least one character that said something about it.
Okay, so the walkthrough says that I have to go to the Temple of Darkness in order to find out that the Temple of Darkness is too dark to go into. Hey, you fucking idiots, you formed a pact with the Summon Spirit of Fire. Why don’t you use a fucking TORCH?
But, no, we have to go to the Elemental Research Laboratory in Meltokio, a city from which our party is exiled so we have to slip in through the sewer dungeon as not to get caught. Strangely, when I reach the sewer entrance, it gives me the option to “quick jump” into the city rather than going through the dungeon again. How come that wasn’t an option when I had to revisit all of those dungeons to get the Summon Spirits? How come I can’t quick jump to the fun part of the game?
Symphonia uses the really good trope of the mentor that becomes the antagonist, but they fuck it up. Kratos, the bad guy who is probably secretly still good, was just going for a stroll through Meltokio when he ran into us, and we asked him what he’s up to, especially regarding his evil ploting. He said, “I don’t need to tell you that now. And also, stop forming pacts with Summon Spirits, there will be consequences that you cannot understand.” Hey, dude, why don’t you murder us instead of being a cryptic asshole?
“Be patient, Lloyd,” he says before leaving.
“What does that mean?” Lloyd asks. Man, I don’t know.
This game, like so many others, was made by a pack of artless losers whose greatest inspirations come from anime and other video games. Actually, it’s more likely that Tales Studio was inspired by video games that were inspired by other video games that were inspired by anime. What I’m saying is that they’re stupid babies.
“The blue candle should be of use to you,” says a researcher. “The holy candle that negates the darkness,” our healer Raine reflects thoughtfully. What the fuck, Raine? If you’re so smart, why didn’t you bring it up before? She’s always doing this. Also, a fucking candle doesn’t have to be “holy” in order to do what regular candles already do pretty well.
“Wait, we can’t help them,” say another researcher. “They got Kate in trouble. She’s going to be executed for helping these renegades.
“Oh, no!” Colette says. “We’ve got to help her.” “Yes,” Presea says. “I want to help her too.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Lloyd and I ask, hoping the answer is fucking forget about it and get on with our quest to save the god damn world.
“How about participating in the matches being held at the Coliseum?” the buff Regal suggests.
I actually lost it when that speech bubble popped up with those words in it. I was like, “Fuck this game. Cliche fucking piece of shit with inconsistent-ass characters twiddling their fucking thumbs and putting their hands on their hips and suddenly solving ancient mysteries that apparently no one with a modicum of intelligence bothered with before these guys rolled around.”
But then I thought, “Thank fucking god, maybe something exciting will happen now.” In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m not playing this game for the god damn story anymore, but for the combat system. At least, that’s what I thought. Lately the only time I change my strategy is to swap in Raine to heal my party during boss fights.
The Coliseum gave me a run for my money, though. I usually use my AI partner to distract extraneous enemies while I focus on one, but I can only use one character for these fights. I had to make a point of positioning myself just out of range of attack, but close enough to my target – a delicate balance. And healing items were banned from use.
But it doesn’t matter, because after the first fight we walk to the cells and free Kate. Then we’re all standing outside of the Coliseum and she’s like, “Thank you.” WHAT? Are the Pope and his knights fucking morons? There are nine wanted criminals, all with colorful hair, standing outside of a popular public venue and NOBODY IS ARRESTING THEM.
ANYWAY, Kate needs a place to hide now, I guess. She says, “Take me to Ozette. It’s where I was born.” I say, “Fuck you, idiot, we already saved you from demise, walk there yourself if you wanna go there so bad.” Then the game just teleports us there, where Kate tells us that she’s the Pope’s daughter.
For a second we see an interesting parallel here between Kate vying for approval as a researcher under the corrupted Pope and Colette’s ascension into the role of Chosen under the scheming Remiel, her angelic father. Unfortunately, we realize that because Colette pretty much says, “Hey, my relationship with my father is pretty much like your relationship with your father. Isn’t that funny?”
That’s not how story works, guys. It’s like the passage in Twilight I just read where Bella has an argument with her father and storms out the front door of the house, and then the book mentions that it’s the same door her mother left her father through years before. That’s not a symbol, that’s just an explanation. You can’t just say something and have it be meaningful because you said it is.
Regal: Opposites will always be at odds with each other. Sylvarant and Tethe’alla. Humans and elves. Heaven and Earth.
Raine: And those in the middle are sacrificed.
[…]
Lloyd: Yeah… Let’s get the blue candle so we can form a pact with Shadow.
Shut the fuck up with that nonsense. That’s what I wanted to do, but you guys just wanted to dick around. Was the Temple of Darkness too dark inside to see just so that I could discover this NPC’s backstory? Is that seriously what the Coliseum was made for, this one piddly sequence? That’s almost as bad as the resort town that has a casino where you can’t gamble. I spend more time in the lobbies of buildings talking to NPCs then I spent doing interesting things in interesting places.
And what the fuck happened to LUNA?
I swear, I’d quit this game if I knew I wasn’t so close to the end of it.
Actually, no. I can’t keep playing this. Now that I’ve said all of this, I can’t play it in good conscience. It’s over. I’m keeping the save data, I’m keeping the scant good memories I have left, but I’m done. I’ll read how it ends, because imagining it for myself will probably be more exciting than watching it.
And, y’know, I’ve never figured out what a “Symphonia” actually is.
Probably some bullshit.