Reddit reviews Tales of Destiny II

https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Destiny-II-Playstation/dp/B00005NCBY

Did a bit more checking. Found that, don't know if it helps. Seems a tad expensive, but there may be cheaper versions or ROMs

EDIT: Heh, I hope you don't mind the long-winded response; I love introducing people to my favorites, and most of them are kind of obscure, warranting descriptions. I didn't realize how long those descriptions were actually getting... :P

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> Any other recommendations?

I mostly play action-RPGs; as I've gotten older, turn-based games feel slower now than they did when I was young. Figuring out enemy movement and attack patterns, dodging and/or blocking at the right moments, and generally thinking on your feet holds my attention much more than menu-driven combat nowadays...

My favorite series I'm still actively watching is [Ys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys(series)); their three latest games are amazing, but especially the slightly older Ys Seven (originally made for PSP but later ported to PC), which feels very much like an evolution of the Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu series' gameplay style. Interestingly, while each game in the series is made to be relatively standalone by re-introducing the characters and not referencing previous games much, they are technically direct sequels taking place in sequence and following the same main characters as they travel across the world they live in. I'd recommend playing Ys Seven, Ys: Memories of Celceta, and Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (if you can handle that one's price tag -- it's only about a year old) before the rest. If you end up wanting more of the series, Steam has the latest and greatest ports/remakes of all the games except the fifth one, which was never released in English (though the Super Famicom version has a fantastic fan-translation if you're not afraid of emulation). For some reason, though, a few of them don't have their in-series number in their title: The Oath in Felghana is a remake of Ys 3, Memories of Celceta is a ground-up retelling of 4 (though it's the first version of 4 to officially have an English translation), and Origin is a prequel that takes place before the events of Ys 1.

Aside from Ys, I am also very much into the Tales series, though they've been going downhill a bit in the last few years; their latest games (Zestiria and Berseria) are still good, but feel very generic compared to the earlier Xillia and its sequel, and the best games in the series (IMHO) are the earliest ones. The PlayStation remake of Tales of Phantasia is my favorite game of all time (for any system), but that version can only be played with a fan-translation patch since it was never officially released in English. Unfortunately, the only version of Phantasia that did receive an official translation was the god-awful GBA version, which was ported from the SNES by a third-party company who really didn't know what they were doing; they couldn't get it playing at a decent framerate during combat, so they slowed down the combat system to half-speed without tweaking the encounter rate or control response, meaning the gameplay became about as interesting as watching paint dry and felt generally laggy and unresponsive... Tales of Eternia (PS1) is my second-favorite in the series. It's called Tales of Destiny II in the US despite having nothing to do with the previous Tales of Destiny (which was rather mediocre IMHO) because the He-Man franchise held the rights to the name 'Eternia'. Unfortunately, it's a rather expensive game, worth nearly $100 in its original form; I'd recommend getting the European PSP version instead, if you have the system, as it usually goes for under half that price and PSPs are region-free. Thirdly, Tales of Symphonia for GameCube is an amazing experience -- I prefer the other two I've listed here a bit more, myself, but for most fans of the series, this is their favorite of them.

Also, if you haven't played it, I urge you to try Chrono Cross. It's not good as a sequel to Chrono Trigger, but taken as a standalone game, it's a fantastic experience. With 45 different recruitable characters, and a branching storyline that changes depending on which ones you're using, it's a bit like a budget Suikoden game but with an easier entry (the Suikoden games are good, but notoriously hard to get into; the few I've played are extremely boring in the beginning, except for the DS spinoff, Suikoden Tierkreis). Its turn-based combat is a bit on the bland side, but it has a novel method of handling attack order, ramping up your accuracy on each successive hit in a 3-attack sequence, meaning you can start out with more accurate but less damaging moves for the first two attacks and finish with something bigger that wouldn't be able to hit if you'd just tried to use it outright (at least, that's how it works if memory serves; it's been half a dozen years since I've last played that game, lol).

Oh, and while I haven't finished it yet, I can say with confidence that the game I'm currently playing, Radiant Historia (DS), has very fun combat despite being menu-driven (its combat mechanics are built around shifting the enemy's position in a 3x3 grid in order to hit multiple enemies with your attacks), a very interesting take on time-travel (you create a branched timeline near the beginning, and spend your time hopping between important points in each branch, basically playing out two separate sequences of events that somehow affect each other or give you abilities you can use to get further in one or the other), and one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard (written entirely by Yoko Shimomura, most famous for her work in Kingdom Hearts, I'd honestly rank this soundtrack right up there with Chrono Trigger's... though I wish it were more varied; many of the songs are used in multiple places, and it would be awesome to hear more amazing unique works instead). The original DS version has better artwork, IMHO, but there's also a 3DS remake that adds animated cutscenes and full voice-acting (though unfortunately they replaced the much more gothic-looking original character portraits with ones that look decidedly more generic).