Tales of Symphonia Switch Remaster is a failure, the developers apologize

Tales from the Symphony is one of the best entries in long Stories JRPG seriesand one of the more unique games in the Nintendo GameCube’s otherwise short-lived and uneven library. Of course, old fans and newcomers alike were excited to see the cult classic get a remaster for the Switch. What a shame the latest remaster is a poor port at best, prompting publisher Bandai Namco to apologize and promise an upcoming patch.

“We have confirmed that there is a gameplay issue with this version of the product currently on sale,” the rough translation reads. Twitter thread with “Apologies and information” written on it. “We are currently investigating a fix.” Bandai Namco doesn’t give details of what issues it’s talking about or when the first update might arrive. Kotaku asked for a comment.

Confirmation comes after a week Tales of Symphonia Remastered came out on both Switch and PS4. A cute and colorful role-playing game tasks you with fulfilling an ancient prophecy and battling an evil attacking a dying world – standard JRPG fare enhanced with lovable characters and a fun hybrid combat system.

The fans were already in a fight over the fact that the new version will be capped at 30fps rather than 60fps like the original GameCube version, but hands-on time has also confirmed other shortcomings, from long load times to some textures that break under the new HD upscaling . Many players shared their frustrations online, even going so far as to directly compare the recordings with the older HD versions available on PS3 and Steam:

I’ve spent a few hours with the Switch version over the past week, and while I generally enjoy playing it, the technical shortcomings and lack of new quality-of-life features leave a bad taste, especially for a $40 port of a nearly 20-year-old game. The colors are bright and the resolution is sharp, but the longer load times between random encounters really start to drag on, and the lack of any sort of auto-save feature is a real headache. How RPG site draws attention Even minor things are missing from his review, such as the fading between scenes, which now abruptly cut to black, or the blurred background when navigating the pause menu.

We’ve already seen it with 2022 remaster Chronocross. While the game featured new quality-of-life features such as unlocking fast-forward from the start and reducing difficulty, the HD effect hit the spot and the frame rate it actually performed worse than it did in the original PS1 version. Only Jthis week that the game finally got an update trying to improve its performance, aiming at 60 FPS.

Let’s hope it won’t take that long Tales of Symphonia Remastered patched up, though I’m not optimistic that it won’t still feel like a huge missed opportunity. If you’ve waited decades to get back to Lloyd and company’s fight against the Desians to restore peace and stability to the land of Sylverant, I can tell you it hasn’t lost its appeal. I only wish it had been brought back in time with more care and fanfare.