Tales of Phantasia[a] is an action role-playing video game developed by Wolf Team and published by Namco for the Super Famicom.

The game takes place in a fantasy world of Aselia and follows Cress Albane, a highly-trained swordsman who is driven by vengeance after his hometown is destroyed.

To prevent further catastrophes, Cress is aided by the use of time travel to gather allies from the past who can help him put an end to Dhaos's rampage once and for all.

The game was written and programmed by Yoshiharu Gotanda, designed by Masaki Norimoto, and scored by Motoi Sakuraba, Shinji Tamura and Ryota Furuya.

Tales of Phantasia was highly anticipated but experienced several delays and development challenges, eventually being released in 1995, near the end of the Super Famicom's lifespan.

While Chester stays behind to bury them, Cress leaves to meet his uncle Olson for help, who reveals that he is being forced to work for Mars before stealing his father's pendant and locking him in jail.

[10] After rendezvousing with Chester, the party meets Trinicus D. Morrison, one of the four heroes who sealed Dhaos away years ago, who reveals that their parents were once his comrades and is shocked to discover that Cress and Mint's pendants were stolen.

[12] The two arrive one hundred years in the past to a time before Dhaos was initially sealed, where the villain is currently waging a war with his demon armies against the human kingdoms.

After a fierce showdown, Dhaos escapes once again, and the party makes their way to an ancient city called Thor that houses a functional time machine to return to the future.

After meeting with a group of elves, Cress obtains the legendary Eternal Sword, the only thing that can stop Dhaos from moving through time, and travel to his invisible fortress for the final confrontation.

Attempting to obtain a seed from this planet's world tree, Yggdrasil, Dhaos instead found that its power was fading as well due to the humans' constant misuse of mana-based technology, and decided to wipe them out to save it.

[15] As the party members realize that by saving their world they have doomed his, Martel takes pity on their plight and sends a mana seed into space in an attempt to rejuvenate Derris-Kharlan's tree as Cress and his team return to their proper times.

The story was based on an unpublished Japanese novel called Tale Phantasia (テイルファンタジア, Teiru Fantajia), written by the game's total programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda.

[28] Namco Hometek translation producer Aki Kozu explained that the company eventually passed on an English release due to "Timing and market demand", as well as the development team being too busy with Tales of Eternia to properly support a localization effort.

[30] One such title, a Game Boy Advance version of Tales of Phantasia, was announced shortly after the deal signing for an originally expected release of December 2002.

[24][32] An English-language version of Tales of Phantasia was announced for the first time in November 2005 by Nintendo Vice President of Sales and Marketing Reggie Fils-Aimé for release in North America and Europe in March 2006, with English voices, and the theme song being replaced with an original track, due to licensing issues.

[34] In June 2006, Namco announced during a press conference that the game was being remade for the PlayStation Portable handheld as Tales of Phantasia Full Voice Edition (テイルズ オブ ファンタジア-フルボイスエディション-, Teiruzu Obu Fantajia -Furu Boisu Edishon-), and would be released the following September.

[38] The new version features a faster, more streamlined battle system where casting magic spells no longer temporarily pauses the action on screen, allowing more attacks to occur simultaneously.

[45] Although the original Super Famicom version did not receive a commercial soundtrack at the time of its release,[48] an official album for the PlayStation remake was made available in May 1999 by Victor Entertainment, and features 77 songs across two discs.

The episodes themselves focus on the party's encounters with Dhaos and the scenes involving the Tree of Life and the Elves, omitting a great portion of the story told in the original game.

[84] Sales of the title were slow during its debut month, which series producer Makoto Yoshidzumi attributed to being released at nearly the same time as Enix's popular Dragon Quest VI,[96] and would sell a total of 212,000 copies in the region.

[98] The Game Boy Advance release marked the first official English-language appearance of Tales of Phantasia, which was met with mostly positive reception in the West, earning a 73% average from GameRankings[92] and 76 out of 100 rating from Metacritic.

[93] While websites such as GameSpot felt that the game distinguished itself from other role-playing titles with its action-based combat system, it also overly relied on too many random battles to "drag down the pacing and pad out the playing time".

[86] IGN commented that the battle system was unrefined when compared to later games in the series such as Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube, but that the graphic and audio quality held up "relatively well" eleven years after its original release.

[79] Eurogamer expressed that the title's late release near the end of the handheld's life hurt it when compared to similar ports on Sony's PlayStation Portable, and that the game's "messy" interface and "rough around the edges" localization paled in comparison to the Super Famicom's unofficial fan translation.

[100] TouchArcade gave the game 1 star out of 5, criticizing the heavy use of In-App Purchases as well as how some of the save points (mainly the ones near bosses) have been disabled.