tales of symphonia (nintendo switch)

well, after 36 hours, i've finished tales of symphonia once again :) and despite the many flaws in the switch remastered edition, i honestly had a blast playing through it for the umpteenth time. no matter how many times i play through this game, it just brings me joy like no other. i've already rambled about why i love this game when i beat it for the first time in the ps3 collection, so super long junk thoughts below this time about the remastered edition, playing through the hard path for the first time ever, and wow still finding new sub-events after all these years:

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i cannot BELIEVE that this game, from the gamecube era!!!, runs so poorly on the switch. there was only one update downloaded when i first started playing it late february, but that didn't really do anything to improve the experience or performance of the game as far as i could tell. it becomes super noticeable when you first go to the triet desert (2 hours into the game!) and the game starts lagging, but it's even WORSE when you go into the ruins. it's super distracting and honestly annoying as you watch your field character running slowly as fuck. and sadly the lagging doesn't stop there, there was lag in other areas of the game, like in latheon gorge and the temple of lightning. like, it's honestly inexcusable to release a gamecube port with such poor performance and if i was a first-time player, it would be off-putting and make me think twice about playing through this game!

also, as i was going through vinheim, i put colette briefly in my party and i don't know what it was but as soon as i put her in there, the battle stage would start lagging too. i had lloyd/sheena/genis/raine beforehand without any noticeable issues, but i don't know what it was about adding colette that well, i just had to switch her back out after a couple of battles. some other battle scenes would also lag but that's the one i remember the most. does anyone know if the ps4 runs just as bad? cus when i played the ps3 edition, i had no problems like this at any point in the game, so it's just baffling at how bandai-namco messed up such a beloved game!!

what was also distracting was that the field enemies would be t-posing around from time to time. i first noticed it when i went to rodyle's ranch, and it became more constant in the last few levels in the game, especially derris-kharlan and vinheim. like c'mooooooonnnnn!

i also already talked about this, but the loading screens when entering and exiting the overworld (like during overworld battles) or even i think sometimes within the same dungeons/towns? it's.....frustrating when you consider that these loading screens were non-existant in the gcn/ps3 versions, but i mean....sadly, i got used to them after a while, so i stopped noticing them as much. :/

and lastly, what was annoying was that i couldn't even enjoy the beautiful staff credits ending theme because....the sound was like skipping as it was trying to play? i can't remember any other instances of the sound skipping or having blips, so it was just honestly baffling to notice it for the first time during such an impactful theme song -_-

but like i mentioned, despite all these annoyances through the game, i think i enjoyed this playthrough more than when i played it through the ps3 last year. and i think that's mostly due to having done the hard path for the first time ever! it was honestly so cool because it felt like a brand new experience: at some points i got lost as to where to go next, and it made me look forward to see how certain interactions/cutscenes would change with sheena in my party for the palmacosta section. seeing all those additional cutscenes with sheena and the luin kids, as well as her going around trying to look for a cure for pietro, really puts it in a better perspective just how much of a kind-hearted person she really is! also i mentioned it already but seeing luin before it gets destroyed and talking to the townspeople about their fear of desians has a WAY bigger impact when you come back to luin and seeing it all destroyed, and of course makes you better sympathize with sheena on wanting to rescue the townspeople. seriously the hard path makes the sylvarant arc make way more sense than by just going to palmacosta first before luin, but it helps that sheena is like my favorite character of the bunch lol.

and well, honestly if you want to get sheena as first in your list in flanoir, the hard path is the way to go. when i did my ps3 run, i did the normal route and even after choosing all the sheena-positive choices as well as doing ALL of her overworld skits, she was still behind colette and genis. but doing the hard path, she was already first in the affection list shortly after reaching tethe'alla. so i got to see her affection scene after the mana cannon ordeal without any issues. :)

i WILL say though that they don't call it the hard path for no reason. doing the tower of mana first before the balacruf mausoleum and thoda geyser was hard as fuck!! i got there as level 13-14, and the boss just kicked my ass. colette would keep saying "wow, looks REALLY strong!" to even the regular enemies, and honestly i had to grind to level 20 to even have a chance with the boss. so that was fun! it made the remaining seals super easy to do, even defeating dorr's fake daughter and magnius. so yeah, getting past the tower of mana is definitely the hard part, but once that's done, it's easy sailing to tethe'alla!

and last but not least, i STILL found new cutscenes that i had never seen before! i started doing this in the ps3 run but i didn't know that you had to get cutscenes for everyone in the party in tethe'alla regarding their choice of where they would want to live after "splitting" the worlds (i think i only saw the ones for sheena, zelos, presea, and regal, but not genis and raine, whoops!). i always thought it was weird how this wasn't something that wasn't discussed beforehand because i mean, the last pact is in sylvarant so even if there were tethe'allans that want to stay in tethe'alla, they in theory would be stuck in sylvarant after the pact! but turns out that after you visit all of the towns in tethe'alla, the entire party comes to a decision and decides that they want to help lloyd in sylvarant and stick with him no matter what. how damn sweet!! 😭

also got some new sub-events! i don't remember getting a "Free Pass" in the ps3 version, and if i did, i must have forgotten lol. but with the Free Pass you can get an additional cutscene in the altamira hotel's luxury suite with the person you picked in flanoir (i'm guessing, either that or your highest-affection character?), so that was cool to see! and also the additional cutscene where the luin townsfolk want to give the title of honorary mayor to one member of your choice (another chance to raise the affection of someone but the honorary mayor ends up being lloyd no matter what lol), and also we see that pietro, with his mission accomplished in luin, leaves the town to help more people around the world with sophia's help!! how damn cool is that?! what an amazing character pietro turned out to be! 🥰

WELL, enough talking about how much i freaking love this game. there were other things i wanted to talk about as i was playing through, such as botta's last words or my favorite main-story skit in the game, but i didn't wanna spam the tag lol. but well, if i find out that the ps4 version's performance doesn't suck ass, or if they ever release a patch for the switch version that fixes SOME of the performance issues, then i will have no choice but to play through this beautiful game yeeeeeetttt again. :)