Well, I've noticed they've remade Tales of Phantasia for the GBA. So I thought, "It'd be nice to play it again." and took it upon myself to check it out.
I was expecting a direct copy of the SNES version, maybe with some extras and probably worse sound (For example, I didn't expect the song in the pre-start menu intro type thing (Not the introduction to the game but the little clip you often see before the game menu (you know, with New Game etc. (Brackets are fun)))).
Well, sound-wise I was correct, but they'd also drastically altered the intro too, which miffed me a bit. Secondly sound-wise, they've re-recorded all the voices with tacky non-japanese voices. Some might enjoy this, I however don't. It just sounds cheap, cliche' and just plain crap like most English-language voices for games (barring things such as Metal Gear Solid or some other rare things).
Well now the next thing I noticed, they've removed that classic menu and replaced it with a much more bland one. This also however includes Tales of Symphonia aspects such as Titles, but without displaying what stat changes. As far as I could see (By comparison between titles), there were no stat changes. This pissed me off, I enjoyed ToS while playing it, but when it was done I realised I thought it was shite and now that's been branded onto this.
I said that was the next thing I noticed, but it wasn't, I just put it before this to build up to this: they've "improved" the graphics. Now in my opinion, the ToP graphics were top-notch, for SNES or GBA and an exact copy of those graphics wouldn't bother me at all. But they didn't re-do ALL the graphics, no. They just did the Characters with pointless bright colours so they're inconsistent and don't match with the surroundings they're walking about. This REALLY pissed me off, what was wrong with the old graphics? Why improve them badly? Infact, why improve them at all? This was also true for the Battle graphics, though they weren't as visually disgusting to me as the walking on-map ones.
And another thing (Yeah there's more). Due to the limits of the GBA "controller" if you can call it that, I found battles outlandishly hard to win without sustaining major damage. To get round the lack of buttons they used the ol' ToS trick and stuck directional buttons to the "Tech" button. I could've lived with that, but it wasn't just the button configuration, oh no, it just didn't work like the old one did. Cless (Now named Cress, but who the hell cares about that? It's a translation thing) seemed to be impossible to manoeuvre, you seemed to be able to attack in a variety of useless ways. Each resulting in you most likely missing the enemy followed quickly by them smashing into you for a strangely large amount of damage. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you allowed to block in the old one. It could be because I didn't manage to get to a point where I could equip a shield, maybe that was it, but it still pissed me off greatly.
And no, it's not because I'm bad at games... I own at games, and I used to completely kick ass with the old ToP. (Not to toot my own horn or anything)
Please, I beg of you, at least play the new GBA version somewhere before buying it to see if you don't loathe it to infinity such as I do.