- 8 Japanese games that deserve to find a new home on PC - 28 November 2018
The past year has brought Yakuza, Bayonetta, Ni no Kuni II and many other Japanese series to PC for the first time. In light of that, it’s tempting to demand that every classic and everything new and exciting from Japan gets ported over from its original console home. There’s nothing wrong with that, but anyone can ask for Personas 3-5. I’m here to advocate for the swathes of great, older Japanese games that would feel at home on PC, but which haven’t yet been canonised. Games which break the mould, and which aren’t filled with the usual JRPG tropes. I ve picked out eight that feel like less obvious choices, all of which deserve to find a new audience on PC. (more…)
- Bandai Namco is working on a new 'Tales' game - 18 June 2018
Bandai Namco's "Tales" series began in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicom, PlayStation, and GBA, among other platforms, and was most recently seen a couple of years ago with Tales of Berseria . It's not finished yet: A PlayStation Lifestyle report says the company revealed at the Tales Of Festival 2018 in Japan that it is working on "the newest 'Tales of' game title for consoles." Nothing else about the project was revealed but the Tokyo Game Show is a few months away and it's not unreasonable to speculate that it will be properly revealed there. Just before the start of that show, on September 16, Bandai will also hold a Tales of Vesperia 10th Anniversary Party , another fine opportunity to reveal (or at least tease a little bit more about) a new Tales game.  Specifying that it's "for consoles" is perhaps unfortunate, but at this very e…
- Spawn Point: The best JRPGs for total beginners - 16 February 2018
Welcome back to Spawn Point , where we take an element from the world of gaming and explain what it is, why it’s worth your time and how you can dip your toes in and get involved. Last time, Brendan gave you a 101 course in Final Fantasy XII , a JRPG that recently got spruced up for PC twelve years after its original launch on PlayStation 2. This time, however, I’m going to be looking at JRPGs as a whole, discussing what they are and which ones you should try your hand at first if you’ve never played one before. (more…)
- Sniper Elite 3 free to play on Steam this weekend - 8 October 2016
Two diametrically opposite games are currently enjoying free Steam weekends. The first is Sniper Elite 3 , Rebellion's stealthy, shooty game set in North Africa during World War 2. You can play it for nowt for the next day and a bit, and if you want to keep it after that, there's a hefty 80% discount. Tyler Wilde thought "70%" when he reviewed it back in 2014, and yes, he actually said "70%" (we have an algorithm at PC Gamer that converts our numerical utterances into procedurally generated text). Anyhoo, there's yet another game free on Steam this weekend, and to my knowledge it doesn't feature any Nazis or indeed sniper rifles. It's Tales of Symphonia, Bandai Namco's (or Namco Bandai's, I can never remember) colourful JRPG. The game was recently remastered and punted onto Steam ; we don't appear to have a review, but Daniella Lucas was rather fond of its sequel , Tales of Zestiria. Ag…
- Free Weekend - Tales of Symphonia - 7 October 2016
Play Tales of Symphonia for FREE starting now through Sunday at 1PM Pacific Time. You can also pickup Tales of Symphonia at 66% off the regular price!* If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play Tales of Symphonia. If you don't have Steam, you can download it here . *Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time
- Tales of Symphonia HD update and various fixes - Sept. 27th, 2016 - 27 September 2016
Hello Tales of Symphonia fans! A new update is live and features a handful of key fixes. Please see the full list below and thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia! - Increased resolution options up to 4K - MSAA support - Improved character and object outlines - Frame rate smoothing - Post sharpening and gamma improvements - Improved mipmap implementation Cheers, -Bandai Namco Community Team"
- Tales of Symphonia HD update and various fixes - Sept. 27th, 2016 - 27 September 2016
Hello Tales of Symphonia fans! A new update is live and features a handful of key fixes. Please see the full list below and thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia! - Increased resolution options up to 4K - MSAA support - Improved character and object outlines - Frame rate smoothing - Post sharpening and gamma improvements - Improved mipmap implementation Cheers, -Bandai Namco Community Team"
- Tales of Symphonia Patch Notes - April 27th, 2016 - 27 April 2016
Hello Tales of Symphonia players! A new update is live featuring a handful of fixes. See below for the full list. And thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia! Cheers, -Bandai Namco Community Team Remote Island Ranch did not allow players using Genis to successfully activate the sorcerers ring to change directions during the cart puzzle. Fixed crash at Welgaia when receiving the Chipped Dagger. Fixed game becoming unresponsive if game pad was unplugged during movement. Audio will now save based on the last save slot loaded. Sound Test should now be present on the main menu at all times if the last game a player loaded was NG+ Blurriness double checked to ensure there were no left over instances of FXAA. Post texture shaders were updated from linear, back to point. Updated credits. Various localization and corrupt text fixes throughout the game.
- Tales of Symphonia Patch Notes - April 27th, 2016 - 27 April 2016
Hello Tales of Symphonia players! A new update is live featuring a handful of fixes. See below for the full list. And thank you again for your support of Tales of Symphonia! Cheers, -Bandai Namco Community Team Remote Island Ranch did not allow players using Genis to successfully activate the sorcerers ring to change directions during the cart puzzle. Fixed crash at Welgaia when receiving the Chipped Dagger. Fixed game becoming unresponsive if game pad was unplugged during movement. Audio will now save based on the last save slot loaded. Sound Test should now be present on the main menu at all times if the last game a player loaded was NG+ Blurriness double checked to ensure there were no left over instances of FXAA. Post texture shaders were updated from linear, back to point. Updated credits. Various localization and corrupt text fixes throughout the game.
- Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes - 1 March 2016
Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (February 29th, 2016) We have a new update for Tales of Symphonia releasing today! (Available Now) See below for fixes and thank you to everyone for your support! Save / Load If you have a previous save game, the game will now default to selecting the “Load” option on the main menu. In the Load menu, your last saved slot should be selected. PS3 Trigger Button Icons The Katz minigame in Izlood should now be displaying the proper trigger buttons. -Bandai Namco Community Team
- Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes - 1 March 2016
Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (February 29th, 2016) We have a new update for Tales of Symphonia releasing today! (Available Now) See below for fixes and thank you to everyone for your support! Save / Load If you have a previous save game, the game will now default to selecting the “Load” option on the main menu. In the Load menu, your last saved slot should be selected. PS3 Trigger Button Icons The Katz minigame in Izlood should now be displaying the proper trigger buttons. -Bandai Namco Community Team
- Tales of Symphonia port gets much needed improvements thanks to modders - 18 February 2016
While the game is a classic, Tales of Symphonia's recent PC port was nothing short of a disaster. Still, if you want to swallow your pride and buy the game anyway, there's now a tool you can use to improve the game's performance, thanks to modder Kaldaien . While it doesn't purport to fix the game's shortcomings entirely, it definitely promises a better experience. According to the fix's description, frame rate remains at 30fps but now there's no stutter. Meanwhile, "hitching on menu screens" and the interminable loading times have been removed, and there's support for fullscreen, borderless window mode, too. Multisample anti-aliasing is in, ReShade is now usable, and the game will no longer crash regularly on laptops with touchscreens. Sounds handy! More about what the program fixes and how it can be downloaded and applied can be read on the Steam discussion page . I haven't tested the…
- Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (2/5/2016) - 6 February 2016
Hello everyone - Please see below for the latest patch notes. We definitely appreciate the feedback and are continuing to monitor these forums. Thank you for the support! Bug Fixes Controller Button Icons Addressed inconsistencies with legacy controller icons still showing up. Achievements “Zelos Harem Master” legacy typo fixed in all languages. Mouse Support Mouse Cursor icon hidden when in game Localization Menu Localization Spanish & Italian switched in some menu options is now fixed. Previously missing Save & Load menu options are now localized with their corresponding prompts Exit Game menu option localization implemented Text alignment polish on Exit Game prompts Abbreviated some of the longer words in Keyboard Controls to avoid clipping with button textures. Additional Notes Some alignment and spacing issues still occur. Currently addressing. We are also actively working on resol…
- Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (2/5/2016) - 6 February 2016
Hello everyone - Please see below for the latest patch notes. We definitely appreciate the feedback and are continuing to monitor these forums. Thank you for the support! Bug Fixes Controller Button Icons Addressed inconsistencies with legacy controller icons still showing up. Achievements “Zelos Harem Master” legacy typo fixed in all languages. Mouse Support Mouse Cursor icon hidden when in game Localization Menu Localization Spanish & Italian switched in some menu options is now fixed. Previously missing Save & Load menu options are now localized with their corresponding prompts Exit Game menu option localization implemented Text alignment polish on Exit Game prompts Abbreviated some of the longer words in Keyboard Controls to avoid clipping with button textures. Additional Notes Some alignment and spacing issues still occur. Currently addressing. We are also actively working on resol…
- Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (2/2/2016) - 4 February 2016
We thank you once again for your patience and understanding regarding the technical issues experienced with Tales of Symphonia. Our team was able to resolve the technical issues shown below. Bug Fixes Added VC++2013 redist to the installer config. Launching the game should allow this to install properly. Log File Writing error The game will no longer attempt to write to the C: drive. Save & Customize Menu delay (Windows 7) The save and customize menu should no longer delay 10 – 40 seconds upon opening. Localization Implemented various localization fixes to the menu Relocated localization file No longer editable We will continue to remain diligent regarding technical issues and greatly appreciate your feedback.
- Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes (2/2/2016) - 4 February 2016
We thank you once again for your patience and understanding regarding the technical issues experienced with Tales of Symphonia. Our team was able to resolve the technical issues shown below. Bug Fixes Added VC++2013 redist to the installer config. Launching the game should allow this to install properly. Log File Writing error The game will no longer attempt to write to the C: drive. Save & Customize Menu delay (Windows 7) The save and customize menu should no longer delay 10 – 40 seconds upon opening. Localization Implemented various localization fixes to the menu Relocated localization file No longer editable We will continue to remain diligent regarding technical issues and greatly appreciate your feedback.
- Broken PC ports like Tales of Symphonia are unacceptable - 2 February 2016
Peter "Durante" Thoman is the creator of PC downsampling tool GeDoSaTo and the modder behind Dark Souls' DSfix. He has previously analyzed PC ports of Valkyria Chronicles , The Witcher 3 , Tales of Zestiria and more . Bandai-Namco, this is unacceptable. You too, Koei-Tecmo. Yesterday Bandai-Namco released Tales of Symphonia on Steam. It s a game with a history of bad porting: the PS3 release which this port is based on—in turn a port of the PS2 version—was in some ways still inferior to the Gamecube original. So no one truly expected anything more than a decently competent barebones affair, with the same assets, framerate limitations and features as the PS3 version. However, what we got rivals the very worst ports in the last decade of PC gaming , and more than that the surrounding circumstances leave little conclusion other than the responsible company (or companies) simply…
- Tales of Symphonia is now on Steam - 1 February 2016
Tales of Symphonia , the second single player game in the series to hit PC after last year's Tales of Zesteria , is now live on Steam . Originally released on GameCube in 2003, the PC version is based on a PS3 port released in 2014 so it should look pretty decent, though I've not had the chance to check it out. It's the most recent in a spate of previously unreleased JRPGs on Steam, which we've rounded up over here . The next Tales of... game to hit PC is likely to be Tales of Berseria, which has been confirmed for a Western launch on Steam, though publisher Bandai Namco hasn't indicated exactly when. Tales of Symphonia is considered a classic among veterans of the series. It's definitely responsible for establishing the series' reputation as one of the most cherished (and prolific) JRPG names, so even though it's relatively old, long-starved PC JRPG fans will probably want to snap it u…
- Pre-Purchase Now - Tales of Symphonia - 26 January 2016
Tales of Symphonia is Now Available for Pre-Purchase on Steam. THE EPIC BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL In a dying world, legend has it that a Chosen One will one day rise from amongst the people and the land will be reborn. The line between good and evil blurs in this epic adventure where the fate of two interlocked worlds hangs in the balance.
- Tales Of Symphonia Arriving On PC Next Week - 25 January 2016
Like a Englishwoman who spent an hour in bed this morning groaning but has been obnoxiously animated since a wee walk and a coffee, Bandai Namco are really getting into bringing games and series which once sat on consoles to PC. Their long-running ‘Tales of’ RPG series, for example. Tales of Zestiria launched on PC alongside the PlayStation 4 port last October, the upcoming Berseria is headed our way too, and they’re digging back into the past as well. Playing catch-up, they’ve announced that Tales of Symphonia will arrive on February 2nd. Better 12 years late than never. …
