Beyond the cast, there's still much to like about the adventure. The length of the game is a very solid 30-40 hours complete with huge world maps featuring all sorts of hidden locations, towns, and dungeons. The 3d map itself looks really good, running at 60fps; which is much smoother than the original PS version. In addition, towns are gorgeous looking and dungeons are well designed. Basically ToE holds every thing that one can expect from a top-notch rpg, and now it's available in portable form.

Still for many rpg fans, the main draw of any Tales game is the battle system, and on the PSP ToE's battle system shines like no other. Taking advantage of the widescreen format of the PSP screen, ToE gives a new wide view of the battleground, allowing players to see more of what's going on during the action. This actually helps quite a bit and gives players a better idea of where all the enemies are and what the friendly AI is up to. For those who've never played a Tales game, the battles are somewhat similar to say Street Fighter II meets Final Fight. Imagine something like that but with multiple enemies, friendly allies, magic spells, and huge bosses. Once in battle players choose from a wide array of normal attack that are all chainable into special attacks, which can further be chained at times into all powerful super attacks featuring screen-filling amazing looking special effects. It's an exciting, action-packed, combo-heavy battle system that can't be beat.

Finally, the best new feature (well maybe not a 'feature') in the PSP port of ToE, is that the game now features zero loading (something the original PS version can't boast). After a row of PSP rpgs filled with so much loading it can drive a person crazy, having an rpg where jumping into a battle is instantly fun rather than 3-5 seconds of staring at a black screen is very satisfying and just makes the whole game experience flow all the better.

So the characters are excellent, the game is big, the battle system is one of the best out there, and there's absolutely no loading. Now what's wrong with it? Truthfully speaking...the answer is nothing. While it's true that those who've played the original might not see any reason to go through the entire game again due to lack of new features/scenarios, those who have yet to play Tales of Eternia will find the absolute best portable rpg that exists for any handheld system to date. Now that it's about to become available in English, Tales of Eternia for PSP is a game that no PSP owner should be without .


The Japanese version isn't all too import friendly as all dialogue and menus are in Japanese and it can be hard to figure out where to go next at times. But the European version is region free and in English so everyone can play it.

• Great characters
  
• Incredibly fun and deep battle system
  
• Top-notch 2d graphics
  
• Fully voice-acted story and hours and hours of voice-acted skits
  
• Zero loading
  
• 30-40 hour-long quest with lots of exploration and secrets

• Nothing new