Ranking Every "TALES OF" Battle Theme | TIERLIST

[@nightmarishcompositions4536]

There are some battle theme bangers in every Tales game, but my favorites are almost never the first ones. I really like the Tethe'alla's battle theme in Symphonia, Never Surrender from Abyss, Tenacity from Vesperia, etc. They usually pull out the best battle themes in the final or pre-final act of the story imo 😅

[@endlessend2646]

Legendia is such a black sheep in the franchise. Chibi art style, different composer, back to 2D battles. It has it's issues (post game is just as long as the actual game with no VO in the US version), and I believe it's not very well liked by the community, but it was my first and I love it to death. The soundtrack is the best in the franchise IMO. Go Shiina one of the GOATs. Also, Vesperia on hard is crazy difficult due to some of the difficulty spikes (see the forest boss that was in the demo). Definitely recommend giving it a go again on normal difficulty.

[@itsmerb86]

I love Legendia too, ya ain't alone friend.

[@Wistfulness89]

Never thought I'd get to find a tales of battle theme tier list video in my lifetime. Thank you for that. Sakuraba is my favorite game music composer.

[@dbaby494]

Tales of Symphonia is my all time favorite game! Nice to see the battle theme ranked well!

[@Jerichords]

I think Berseria and Graces are my two top favs in the series!

[@EZog58]

Tales of the Abyss actually has an anime adaptation that was uploaded to KZbin by the official Tales Of Channel! I recommend giving it a watch, it is probably the strongest Tales Of story out there. Gameplay was also solid, but far from my favorite Tales game - but story-wise, I consider it one of the best.

[@FElord-dw1sy]

I'm Vesperia biased so Furnace of War is my favorite 1st battle theme, but also fun fact, Arise's 1st battle theme is a remix of Vesperia's act 3 battle theme Tenacity, so that's cool.

[@Jerichords]

I just listened to Tenacity, and I don't really hear it?

[@FElord-dw1sy]

@@Jerichords ​ @Jerichords It's mainly in the beginning melody of both I find. Arise's is slowed down a bit, and Arise does do a lot original with the rest of the song so the rest of Tenacity isn't heard in it. If it helps, Tenacity also has a remix in Vesperia that I don't like, called Undying Resolve, that might make the beginning melody a bit clearer. Overall though it's only like a 5 second or so motif, and the song isn't a full remix, so I do apologize for being misinformative on that. It's been a while on both so I thought there was more shared between them. Still appreciate you taking the time to check it out.

[@fruitloops8929]

Aaaay let's go!

[@Jerichords]

Let's fookin' goooooooooo

[@VandalHeart26]

Wow, after your awesome FF rankings now the Tales of series?! Motoi Sakuraba, master of prog rock?! Count me in, hell yeah :)

[@Jerichords]

The Tales of series is my bag! And Sakuraba is awesome, I have to give him my dues! I've got a Star Ocean one lined up in the future, too!

[@CC-df3pn]

Sakuraba is an odd composer. Sometimes his OSTs feel very phoned in, other times they are just insane. Sometimes the battle themes are just there, then we get stuff like Isaac's theme or the Saturos battle theme... Running trend there, yeah I'd say the first 2 Golden sun games on GBA are Sakuraba's best work. He also knocks it out the park in the Star Ocean games, I mean Stab the sword of Justice from SO2 is phenomenal (often overlooked in general, but Star Ocean the last hope has some stellar tracks especially the battle theme) To me though Sakuraba will always be the synth master, especially synth pan flutes, he really loved those pan flutes in the 2000's from Golden Sun to Tales to bloody Mario Golf. Legendary composer that always feels like a coin flip is the gist of my ramble I suppose.

[@Jerichords]

Have you seen how large this man's discography is? He gets a pass for phoning it in sometimes because he's put in some WORK!

[@CC-df3pn]

@@Jerichords oh I agree, the amount of games he works on he gets a pass for the occasional meh sounding songs. But I do think that early to mid 2000's pan flute midi era Sakuraba was his peak, at least for me anyways.

[@Manikin27757]

For the DC version of Tales of Destiny, it features Leon as the MC and has his own version of his battle theme that replaces the main one. For Radiant Mythology, while it reuses battle themes from other games, it has its own battle theme named Blazing! (other battle themes from other games are used when it is about quests or battles related to the other characters). Don't forget themes from the mobile games such as Tales of Crestoria and Tales of Luminaria (ost made by Go Shiina for the latter).

[@Jerichords]

I didn't forget about Crestoria, Luminaria or the Radiant Mythologies, I just didn't include them because this was for the mainline/mothership titles. I DID forget about Leon's side in DC. "Irony of Fate" gets a B Tier and I would place it right above Graces!

[@Manikin27757]

@@Jerichords For Crestoria's case, it is also considered as a mothership title according to the in-game library and for Luminaria, it's not a escort title but a mothership title as the entire cast of 21 characters is completely original, without having characters from other titles crossing over. Also, the OST for Leon's Side is not "Irony of Fate", it's "Fate of a Fencer", which is a remix of the former.

[@tylerpettit921]

The Ps1 Tales games give me such a high! I adore those Ps1 midi drums!

[@ThatKaitoDan]

For me it's gonna be very hard pressed to knock The Arrow Was Shot and Furnace of War off the top perch together though that might also be just Abyss and Vesperia being the first Tales games I always think about. Though man I forgot how epic sounding Don't Look Back was, has me more curious now if they'll keep that kind of grand feel to general music in the next Tales game.

[@stupogo0]

once you do tales of boss would a grab bag of motio sakuraba other work be a good idea?

[@zikawakenya5863]

Id love to see him hear sakurabas work on the baten kaitos games!

[@Jerichords]

I think so!

[@Jerichords]

I have played the first game, and I am partway through the second game, but Baten Kaitos has some bangers!

[@PhoenixMasta]

I'm sure Eternia was my first Tales Of game on the PSP, and you actually introduced me to it and the Tales series with it lol My favourites are Rebirth, Legendia, Arise and Hearts. (Man, I FORGOT how hard Battle Artist went and that it was the normal battle theme)

[@itisirandom]

Love to see more love for the Tales games. (also fellow magilou enjoyer hell yea 🤝🏾)

[@jazzerjaw]

For me, The Edge of A Decision, Like a Glint of Light (both 1 and 2), Flame of Hope and My Sword Shall Open the Way all stand out in my head for Tales battle themes none of them are the first battle theme however except for Flame of Hope, which makes sense. They would likely save the stronger battle themes for different parts of the game's story. Regardless your opinions pretty much lined up with mine. Didn't know Rebirth's first battle theme cooked that hard

[@Jerichords]

I feel like My Sword Shall Open the Way is pretty weak as a battle track, especially one that is introduced during the late stages of the game. But the others are great!

[@Roanix1]

I'm curious why you can't get the original versions of songs. They're all easily accessible on KZbin...

[@Jerichords]

For these, I procured the original soundtracks rather than KZbin rip, and these were the earliest versions I could find. The reason I had that addendum at the start was because of people dunking on me for using the Pixel remaster arrangements in the FF Rankings, when fundamentally, the composition of the music is still the same

[@nickfarace9339]

Yo, I'm telling you to go figure out a way to learn the Rebirth battle system. As an avid Tales of fan its the best one they ever did IMO and its easily the best RPG battle system I ever played. Some of the boss fights from that live rent free in my head for life. I don't know a lick of Japanese but I worked out how to get through it (with manual translation docs alongside to help a bit). The painful part was dealing with the customization cubes because I would have to work out a few of the things on there to get my bearings on it before I knew what was what and that customization of abilities is an enormous part of the gameplay. But seriously, its worth the effort. Its also the biggest screw up of any game dev company IMO that it STILL does NOT have a legit english translation. I mean hell, it doesn't even have a legit fan translation (one has been in the works for like 10+ years but its stuck in some special kind of hell). I got through the story thanks to the amazing work of Lanyn doing subtitled vids of the whole damn game.

[@Jerichords]

Now that I'm much older than I was when I first tried it, I am absolutely down for giving Rebirth another shot. I'm on the fence about whether to wait for the translation patch that's almost done, or to use the text translation. Yeah, that cube thing was really confusing and I wasn't quite sure what I was doing with that. I am really hoping they go back and translate some of these older games and make them GOOD (nothing like Hearts R, I'm BEGGING).

[@nickfarace9339]

@@Jerichords The cube isn't so bad if you can uhh, read the things. But its a lot of words and there wasn't enough context to get them easily with my translations on the side. Once I could orient myself on it I could figure it out (they had figures for the cubes in the translation) Where did you hear the translation was almost done? I feel like that has been said for oh.... 5+ years? It is super hard to get info about it and seems to be trapped in some kind of drama hell but I dunno. At least Destiny Remake on PS2 was finally done (which is also a really good tales game). It took a long time for them to do translations of the PS2 games because how hard it is to edit the files.

[@irielios]

Came from the kh battle theme video and found peak wow

[@symphomaniac]

Oh I'm here for this. MASSIVE Tales fan

[@Jerichords]

Tales fans RISE UP!"

[@VandalHeart26]

@@Jerichords *playing Rising Up from Tales of Zestiria* ^^ (God, I love Shiina)

[@degapalgamer3772]

Yo dude you should definitely check out the Legend of Heroes Trails series when it comes to battle themes

[@Jerichords]

@@degapalgamer3772 Now that's a series I have to get my teeth sunk into, because I've only played the first and a bit of the second game so far!

[@degapalgamer3772]

@@Jerichords It only gets better from there. I hope you enjoy your journey, and do keep us posted!

[@wiseguy240Winston]

Vesperia in A? I love that game, but that battle theme was the epitome of mid and basic. It also gets repetitive real quick. Outside the guitar it be forgettable. Would put it at C

[@Jerichords]

That is fair, it is fairly repetitive, but I do like it's vibe. I like it for the same reasons I like Xillia's "Clenching Fists"!

[@tylerpettit921]

In my opinion, Tales of The World; Radiant Mythology's is the worst! Its so boring and unmotivating.