Tales of the World Radiant Mythology 1 is seriously underrated.

I have been playing this game since launch way back in the day, and every time I revisit it, I get addicted to the loop again. At the time anyone outside of the Tales fandom seemed to talk down on it. I think that's changed a LITTLE since then, but not much.

Most people write it off as only being enjoyable by fans of Tales - but I don't think that's true, because I had only played Symphonia before this, and still found the characters and stories enjoyable for a portable game.

But the gameplay shines too. The battle system is a simple Tales of the Abyss/Symphonia on the go. The customization options are awesome, and I just want to keep leveling up and even switching classes to get new gear and try other gear sets out because they just look cool.

And then people crap on the quest system. And yes, it's repetitive, it's out of order sometimes, and very, very grindy. But, if this is the only RPG you've got for a while? Who doesn't want something to last longer? Even if you use a cheat like I did for double XP at the higher levels, it still takes FOREVER to level up to 250. To me, that's just more time to play the game, an incentive.

My one complaint I do have for the quest system is the loop of "go to guild, get quest, talk to quest giver at another location, go do quest, come back to quest giver to complete"... I really think that going to the quest giver steps could have been removed and it would have been a much quicker process, but whatever.

I am going to work on a little video review of this game for my YouTube channel because I've been working through the entire series again, and this one really stands out to me for it's gameplay loop. At it's core, it's a short, but repeatable JRPG for on the go and short stints of play, and an incredibly in-depth one at that, as I'm still discovering things I didn't understand or know existed in the past - like how the crafting and forging systems actually work to improve gear, or the EX MAP dungeons, which despite having played this game multiple times throughout the years, I only yesterday discovered and understood how they work - and now I'm grinding away at those to try to get the best gear for my Ninja. Level 216 and still enjoying the loop, and kind of want to do it on other job classes too once I'm done.

I even tried moving on to RM2 and RM3, games I haven't played completely, and I couldn't. I just wanted to go back to the simpler stylings on RM1. I also honestly think it looks prettier than the 2 sequels. Sometimes, I think simplicty and streamlining is a really good thing in games and this is a good example.

Anyway, that's just my first thoughts, I kinda wanted to share them while also documenting them somewhere so I can come back to it for my script later.