When Bandai Namco mentioned that Tales of Symphonia was making its way over to the PC, fans of both the Tales series and JRPG fans rejoiced. Not only was it more proof that more Japanese titles were making it over to the PC, but it was also the start of something that if it sold well would continue the porting of the series over to the PC. However there’s just one problem with this and that is regarding the recent Tales of Symphonia port.
In a word, it’s a complete mess as reported over in Reddit and NeoGAF. Luckily I had held off as I wanted to see how the port fared and to say I’m slightly disappointed is an understatement.
But what’s actual going on? Well, there’s a multitude of issues such as the game being locked at 720p, despite what resolution you select. The frame rate is also locked at 30fps, which is completely unacceptable. But it gets worse. There’s typos all over the place, no mouse support, the game doesn’t even replace the previous PlayStation 3 buttons with generic or Xbox 360 buttons, tons of reports that the game randomly crashes, there’s only 6 save slots, the languages are all messed up with some words not even showing up or things simply not being translated at all. There’s even a DRM called “VMProtect that is being used that apparently will spawn off a new executable for the game, every time the game is ran… I can’t even explain that, what in the world was Namco thinking there. There’s other issues, however these are some of the more relevant ones.
However it seems that while people are taking to Steam to express their dismay, it seems there are certain people who are actually defending this mess of a port. Despite that, the game is getting heavily down-voted over on Steam, which can be seen here.
All I have to say, this is pretty disappointing for those who were looking forward to this port. And while I can’t totally knock Namco for this port, especially since they never really stated they were going to “spruce” it up for the PC. Yet there’s no excuse for those other items such as the broken languages, typos or even changing the buttons. In fact the sad part is that this port was hyped up to be more than what it ended up being and I feel bad for everyone who picked up this game and was looking for a overall decent experience.
Lastly, all this poor port does is re-ignite the flame war between console and PC gamers, which who will over look the praise that Tales of Zestiria gained when it was released on the PC last year. We’ve already seen the backlash from WB’s crappy PC ports with Batman: Arkham Knight and Mortal Kombat X and now this. For everyone good port it seems we’re receiving several bad ones. Now I’m started to wonder what the state of Dark Souls 3 will be on the PC and that really scares me.
The ball is in Namco’s court and the question is now, are they going to address this or will they remain mum on the issue.
