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YMMV / Tales of Destiny

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Alternative Character Interpretation | And The Fandom Rejoiced | Awesome Bosses | Broken Base | Complete Monster | Die For Our Ship | Game Breaker | Moral Event Horizon | Narm | Player Punch | Rescued From The Scrappy Heap | Scrappy Mechanic | That One Achievement | That One Attack | That One Boss | That One Level | That One Sidequest | The Scrappy | The Woobie


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise here.
  • Americans Hate Tingle:
    • Well, in a minor way. For the Western market, this is an early Tales game, so otherwise not too groundbreaking, maybe a Cult Classic, they'd see more to Tales of Symphonia when it comes to the Tales game, while respecting that Destiny is the first Tales to come to the States. However, in Japan, it is much more considered important next to Phantasia, to the point that it got a sequel, remake, and bonus appearance in Namco × Capcom. Why? Two words: Leon Magnus.
    • The original Leon is a Base-Breaking Character in the Western fandom versus one of the most popular characters in all of Tales in Japan. Its hard to enjoy a game with adventure when there is a guy holding a shock collar button threatening to kill you all if you don't do as he tells to. Leon regularly belittled and insulted the party telling them how little any of them meant to him, yet Stahn kept insisting on trying to befriend him. Even Stahn's sympathy toward Leon when he is revived as a zombie feels like Character Shilling considering all the terrible things he's done toward Stahn in pursuit of his personal ambitions. In Japan, there was a number of Japanese exclusive Drama CDs and other media that toned down a lot of Leon's sociopathy and made him more sympathetic. The remake and Tales of Destiny 2 starring a redeemed Leon were also never translated.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: One of Johnny's Blast Calibers summons a dozen amps out of nowhere, and the other one summons him an electric guitar to perform a solo. The game takes place in a middle ages-like setting. These events are never referenced or questioned outside of battle.
  • Cargo Ship/Ho Yay: The 'bath skit' in Leon's side of the remake, Played for Laughs. Essentially, Philia asks how long Chatlier and Leon have known each other, and Chaltier states they're never apart, even when Leon takes baths. Philia's reaction, and Leon's comment about 'weird rumours', says it all. There is also a cutscene where Chaltier asks if they could do anything to help Johnny, and Leon acts very upset at the prospect of giving up Chaltier, that could be interpreted this way.
  • Complete Monster: Kronos (known as Miktran in Japan), the millennia-old King of the Aetherians, is a racist who uses his people's well-being as an excuse to commit genocide against the populace of the Earth, known as the Er'thers. When the Er'thers tried to kill him, he killed one of them and overwrote their Swordian's personality in order to remain alive. Once he's unearthed a thousand years later, he possesses Hugo Gilchrist, making him kill his wife and abuse his son for 16 years and nearly causing several world wars to erupt as a means to gain the Eye of Atamoni. Though he uses the well-being of the Aetherians as an excuse to laser the Earth both before and after his "death" and to kill hundreds of people, he has no true care for his people, as shown by him ignoring the descendants of the Aetherians living in the wasteland of Calvalese. A cruel and petty man, he takes amusement from the suffering about others and will stop at nothing to revive his kingdom.
  • Die for Our Ship: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise here.
  • Disappointing Last Level: After Dycroft is activated and you finally get to go up to the Aethersphere to save the world, you're treated to... a barren new world map littered with a handful of identical pyramids that must be completed in a gauntlet of tedious, confusing, nearly identical multi-level mazes, all with that fun high encounter rate. With little plot development. Yay.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: A hotly-contested example in Leon: it's unanimous that he's a complete dick with sympathetic reasons for what he's doing, but fans are divided on just how many squishy points this gets him.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Kongman is a rather hilarious example, actually. He's a very minor optional character in the original, but his portrayal in the remake vaulted him into popularity to the point where he personality was more developed in the remake. People love to hate him, and Namco's bonus DVD's waste no effort in ripping the piss out of him.
    • Lilith's quite popular, considering she's a minor character. May be because she is an Ascended Glitch.
    • The pink-haired enemy Priest, for her very fanservicey design in the remake; she's got quite a lot of (mostly erotic) fanart. She was present in the original game too, but everyone there is super-deformed so there wasn't too much to show.
    • The High Priest from the remake too, for similar reasons as the Priest. Also for her striking resemblance to Sylvia van Hossen and Artoria Pendragon.
  • Epileptic Trees: After the remake made Johnny Chaltier's intended owner before he was stolen by Hugo, many fans believe Johnny could hear the Swordians and was merely pretending not to befitting his Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • Fan Nickname: Miktran's second form from the original game is sometimes jokingly called "Chiba Prefecture" and "Chicken Wing" because of its ridiculous design. The English fandom usually calls it the "GIANT STEAK".
  • Fanon Discontinuity: The localized names for Woodrownote , Johnnynote , Miktrannote  and Kongmannote  are completely ignored by fans, who exclusively use their Japanese names.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Stahn/Leon is far more popular than Stahn/Rutee, the Official Couple, in part because of just how popular Leon is as a character, and the plot added in the remake concerning Stahn's attempts at befriending Leon despite the latter's insistence against this. It's eventually revealed that Leon did consider Stahn something like a friend.
  • Game-Breaker: Leon is arguably the strongest character in the ToD remake. He may have crappy defense and low HP, but once powered up, he can kill things before they even have a chance to lay a finger on him. Let's see...
    • Combine Chaltier with his Chaser ability that grants extra CC points, and if you get critical damage, you can kill any normal monster with a single combo. Oh, and Leon has the highest critical damage rate.
    • Gen'eijin is more spammable than spam itself.
    • Then there's "Marian...". Sword Artes typically hit nearby enemies or far away ones. With this one you can hit enemies that are close and far away by creating a damaging force field and firing a Sword Beam. Oh, and by the way, Leon is immune to damage while he's using it.
    • Arte extensions. You know how a character can normally only have 4 artes equipped at once? Yeah, about that...
    • Demon Lance Zero is also more spammable than spam itself. It also doubles as a self buff that gives 5 Penetrate with each use (can't be staggered for the next 5 hits).
    • But he dies long before we even get to the Big Bad! How do we fix this? That's where the Narikiri Dolls come in, a set of items that allow you to give any character the skills, balance, and sprite of any of their teammates. Though you can't get them until very late in the game, Leon's is the cheapest, and you can get multiples of each doll. Which means you can have a battle party of 4 Leons. Have fun.
    • For a change of pace, how about Johnny/Karyl's ultra-cheap Maware Rondo? Maware Rondo is a multi-hit move that moves in an upward spiral and hits enemies in an upward direction, essentially making it combo with itself as long as you have CC left to use it. Enemies are always staggered by this, allowing you to loop them without fail. It it such a powerful move that in the Director's Cut, even trying to use the move once during the Miktran Excessive fight will get countered by a Hi-Ougi.
  • Ho Yay: See this page.
  • I Knew It!: Leon and Rutee are siblings!
  • It Was His Sled: Leon betrays the party and dies.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Leon. The abuse he went through wasn't at all justified. The Jerkass part of his character was toned down substantially in the remake, making him come across as more of a straight woobie there.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Again, Leon. As the fan favourite, he's been paired with everyone. Marian, Stahn, Philia, Chaltier, Rutee, Hugo, Judas, Lilith, sometimes even Yuri. Oddly, Judas is rarely shipped with anyone besides Harold or Philia.
  • Memetic Badass: Leon. He's snarky, very handsome and extremely powerful with an awesome flashy move set and was Too Cool to Live. It was bound to happen.
  • Memetic Molester:
    • Hugo is quite possibly the single best example in the series, no thanks to this bit of Memetic Mutation. Becomes a subtle Ascended Meme in the remake when he gives Leon a mushroom known to resemble certain anatomy just to make Leon uncomfortable. Another part of this status can also apply to Miktran himself due to him being the one who was manipulating and possessing Hugo.
    • Kongman also got a very creepy moment in a bonus skit on DVD, buying a knockoff Philia Swordian and stating she was going to be his forever. The sword looks terrified.
  • Memetic Mutation: Miktran/Kronos's original final form is a GIANT STEAK!
  • Moral Event Horizon: Go here.
  • Obvious Judas:
    • While the twist that Leon betrayed the party was shocking at the time, it's blatantly obvious now that the Tales formula has become established that Leon is going to be the game's traitor. He's constantly sour and unpleasant about working with the party and flat-out tells Stahn he's not his friend in the original PSX game.
    • In the PS2 remake, it's made obvious that Hugo is a smarmy Jerkass ready to betray the King of Seinegald, complete with his redesign for the game sporting Four Eyes, Zero Soul, a Beard of Evil, and a Slasher Smile, yet it's a shocking twist in-universe when he has Leon steal the Eye of Atamoni.
  • Once Original, Now Overdone: This is the first Tales games to feature a major character betraying the party and dying for it. At the time this was a shocking twist that skyrocketed Leon Magnus to popularity, but since then nearly every Tales game has felt the need to add a traitor character to the party, leaving the twist these days feeling pretty blatantly obvious and overdone.
  • The Scrappy: See this page.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike: Well, more like Remake Difficulty Spike. The original Tales of Destiny is a fairly standard difficulty curve throughout most of the game. Director's Cut seems to be the same and offers you Game-Breaker a-plenty. Then you hit the last quarter of the game and puzzles become ridiculously complex, enemy damage and HP soars through the roof, and the endgame becomes one of the hardest for a standard difficulty setting in the entire mainline series. The game was made for those familiar with the series and especially the original, and takes the opportunity to kick your legs in for it hard.
  • So Bad, It's Good: The remixed track Relentless Assault for the remake.
  • Strangled by the Red String: Stahn and Rutee in the original game. While Rutee's crush on Stahn is established somewhat early on, Stahn shows no interest in her romantically at all, instead going on a date with Ilene Rembrandt and seemingly being genuinely happy with her before they have to part. Stahn and Rutee's most important late game conversation shows the pair's relationship at its lowest point yet after Rutee says Ilene deserved to kill herself, earning a What the Hell, Hero? speech from Stahn. They never truly make up from this fight and yet the sequel has the two Happily Married with no further explanation. Even worse, it was possible for Stahn to have romantic moments with both Philia and Mary in the original game (as well as the Ho Yay between him and Leon), making his ending up with Rutee even more confusing to audiences.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: In the original PSX version, Leon Magnus was supposed to be a Jerkass with a deserved death. However, much of his jerkass behavior involved picking on The Scrappy of the game, he had a pretty depressing backstory that made him come off as more of a Jerkass Woobie with a Freudian Excuse, and he was quite attractive, which made him into a Draco in Leather Pants. Namco took notice and not only gave him a larger role in the sequel, but rewrote him into less of a jerk. Surprisingly, it worked wonders, as Leon became legitimately sympathetic and a much more likable character because of that without losing his cold attitude. Though he's still not spared from his canon death.

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