After completing Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Destiny on PS1 I expected the same, but better for Namco's next installment in the series. And I wasn't disappointed for the most part.
Isometric perspective was the best choice to showcase gorgeous hand drawn and pre-rendered backgrounds, which aged far better than most 3d prerenders from Final Fantasy and similar games. Character sprites are also more detailed and proportions are closer to anime characters.
Battle system feels the same, but also more difficult. Even though annoying pausing when someone is casting a spell is gone, it's still annoying that camera flies all over the place from main character to spell caster. Enemies often brake your attack chain, and can use spells with minimal delay, so you'll take a lot of damage in each battle. Also, combat became more chaotic with a lot of stuff flying on the screen. Often you won't be able to see your character in the crowd. Grinding is back, and leveling up between major dungeons is a must, because difficulty ramps up after each one.
Music is good, nothing got stuck in my memory, but if I'll hear it I'll recognize it instantly.
Plot moves slowly, and becomes interesting midgame. It also feels more childish compared to Tales of Phantasia. Characters motivation and development arks are quite shallow. I didn't feel any connection or compassion towards any of them. Most interesting character to me - Max would've been a much better protagonist in my opinion.
To summarize, I didn't get as much satisfaction from Tales of Eternia, as I got from previous installments. It has one of the best graphics in jrpgs on PS1, and if you master the battle system, gameplay becomes very addicting. But for a casual player, there are much better Tales games.
