Hobby #2: Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon 2 & 3

Thing with this one is, if you live outside of Japan (which I do), there’s about a 95% chance that you missed these wonderful gems. They’re for GBA, and just like, say, Tales of Phantasia for the SNES, were never translated. Oh well, guess that’s why we have patches!

Exploring the dungeons in ND 3

The Narikiri Dungeon series are usually plentiful when it comes to characters. I’m not so sure about the very first one (never played it, probably will sometime though), but they always a huge amount of characters from other games, and most importantly, the costumes!!! Costumes in these game are basically the “classes” for your characters, and your two main ones can be anything from a swordsman/woman to a mage to a handy archer to a chef… there’s many, MANY different costumes in both games. And the boy and the girl are barely different expect for their looks. On the subject of looks, in ND 2, the “elements” of the certain costume are mostly there for a) cosmetic reasons and b) to make the roster look bigger. Aside from having slightly different skills (keyword: SLIGHTLY) and being weak/vulnerable to certain elements, there’s not much difference between each element of the costumes. The elements are removed in ND3, but in their place are awsome new classes, more skills and spells and TONS of cameo characters (and costumes for them!) from the other Tales series games! The battle system in both of these is almost the exact same same thing that you saw in Tales of Phantasia (IF you saw it). Basically, (A) sometimes along with holding the D-pad does physical attacks, and the (B) button along with the D-pad does special attacks or spells.

You may think mashing (A) repeatedly will win you the battle, and while that is some

The female Hail Knight attacks!

times the case, usually you have to strategically use skills and jumping and guarding (oops, forgot, guard with [L]) and such to win, say, boss battles. Overall the system is great and timeless, and is, IMO, even better in ToS and the new PSP TotW versions. In case you were wondering, the story of the game is like most of the stories of Tales games, and by that, I mean rather unoriginal and overall meh (but nothing is as bad as Tales of Symphonia’s story and voice acting. Nothing.). C’mon people, if you play the Tales series for their story, then switch to something like Kingdom Hearts. Final verdict: I love the Tales series :3

Pros:

Highly customizable characters

Addictive Tales gameplay

Discovering new costumes is always great

The cameo characters are very playable and true to the games they come from

Addictive Tales gameplay

Cons:

If you can’t read japanese and just have to know what the characters are saying, most of the time you’re out of luck

Elemental costumes are just roster fillers, though some are moderately useful and different like the Holy Knight

I liked the Quest format in ND 2 better than the mission one in ND 3

Overall score: 9/10 – Just slightly lacking in staying true to the Series’ roots, especially in ND 3, what with the missions and all, but overall fantastic games