Tales of the Tempest ~ Opening
9Tales of the Tempest (テイルズ オブ ザ テンペスト) is an action role-playing game developed by Dimps and Namco Tales Studio, and published by Bandai Namco Games for the Nintendo DS exclusive in Japan.
Developer(s): Namco Tales Studio
Platform(s): Nintendo DS
Genre(s): Role-playing video game
Release: October 26 2006
Language: English Texts / Japanese Voices
Played on DeSmuME 0.9.11
Tales of the Tempest is an action role-playing video game. The player navigates the playable characters across 3D environments, including the overworld map, towns and dungeons.. The characters and environment are displayed on one screen of the Nintendo DS system, while menu options such as the character's current status are displayed on the other. The world is governed by a day-night cycle, effecting the environment and the behavior of elements within it. For instance, strong enemies appear at night, and towns cannot be accessed, but conversely some items and treasure are only available at night.
The battle system is a scaled-down version of the Tales series recurring Linear Motion Battle System (LMBS), a real-time system similar to a fighting game where character actions are performed at the press of a button, with specific buttons triggering either normal or special attacks. The version used in Tempest is called the "3-on-3 LMBS". The player controls one character, with the other two available in battle controlled by the game's artificial intelligence. After setting up a formation in advance, players can switch between characters at will during battle. During battles, characters can switch between three plains of movement, as opposed to previous 2D Tales titles which restricted characters to a single plain. This allows for characters to evade or surround enemies. Actions such as healing, character control and item usage are all controlled using the DS touch screen.