[[2026 Game Collections]] ## 2025-12-14 Starting my goal of beating all the old **[[2026 Game Collections#^0f79dc|Tales of]]** games that I haven’t fully finished, or are so old that I’ve forgotten about them[^1]. **Tales of Destiny** is the first game to come after **Phantasia**, which I recently completed[^2]. However I’m playing the remake on the [[PlayStation 2]], translated by the goat fantranslator team, Lifebottle Productions. So far it’s a hoot. It’s similar to the other single-lane **Tales** games, but it has the thing I vastly prefer from the Combat Designer who’s name I can’t recall for the life of me. But in **Destiny** it’s called the Chain Capacity system. Basically rather than having MP/TP, your special moves are a resource that you spend in cycles. I love this system so I’m gonna go freak mode and explain it in detail, sorry. A character can have a range of CC. Say something like 4~6. This means the minimum they can have is 4, the maximum they can have is 6. Artes cost varying amounts of CC. I'll use Stahn as an example since he's the main character and you're guaranteed to be at least a little familiar with him: So say Stahn currently has 4 CC (with a range of 4~6). With that, you could do: - 4 basic attacks - 2 basic attacks and use Demon Fang once (it costs 2 CC) - Demon Fang once and then follow it up with one Tiger Blade (which also costs 2 CC) - You can also back step and that will spend 1 CC as well. If you do a combo and spend all 4 CC you have before letting any of it regenerate, then your meter will grow and when it refreshes, you'll have 5 CC. Imagine then you do another combo and do a back step followed by 1 basic attack and then a Dragon Swarm (3 CC). Then you'll burn your full meter and when it regenerates, you'll have 6 CC available, letting you now do a big maximum combo. However, your CC will cycle. Spending all that CC I just mentioned will reduce you back to your minimum CC of 4, requiring you to build it all back up. This can mean certain characters (particularly the more caster focused ones like Philia and Rutee) can't actually cast all of their spells at any given time as their current CC level might not be high enough. In which case, they'll need to drop a combo or two to boost it up high enough to drop the good shit, like Indignation or Resurrection. It’s a ton of fun. I find MP boring in games like this. Just let me go crazy with my fighting game moves in this fighting game RPG. It’s not as technically in-depth as something like [[Tales of Graces F - Remastered|Graces F]], but it’s still been a blast. Besides that, the encounter rate is pretty abysmal, not gonna lie. I was prepared for this though, and look forward to cheating my way through as needed to get through some of the longer, tedious dungeons I’ve been warned about. ## 2025-12-19 Just wrapped up Tales of Destiny: DC’s English translation from Lifebottle. GOATed battle system. I love when abilities are a resource to be spent instead of a constantly whittled down resource, especially in a series like Tales, where cool moves should be used constantly. This makes sense because this combat designer would go on to do Graces F. The characters are fun and likable. Stahl has Sol Badguy’s 6P which made me simultaneously mark out and have terrible flashbacks. But holy shit. In a series infamous for final thirds that are a slog, Destiny’s final third is the sloggiest slog of them all. This is _really_ saying something if you’ve played any Tales games. Between the high encounter rate slew of dungeons, and annoying puzzles, I was really struggling to power through. And it’s especially bad because there’s no real guide for this game, given it’s only been fantranslated in recent years. So I couldn’t even do my usual old-man shit where I look up a good two seconds into getting frustrated. Great game overall, and despite my whining it’s probs top 5 from this era because of how hard the combat and progression systems carry. But damn…that final third. [^1]: **Symphonia** and **Abyss** lol [^2]: I didn’t write about it because it’s kind of a nothing-burger of a game. Makes sense as it was the first one, but yea