A fix is currently in the works.
In a series of Tweets from the official Tales of Series Japanese Twitter account, Tales Channel Plus, Bandai Namco gave a statement regarding the issues seen so far for Tales of Symphonia Remastered's Nintendo Switch edition.
【お詫びとご案内 1/3】
Nintendo Switch™版「テイルズ オブ シンフォニア リマスター」をプレイいただき、ありがとうございます。
現在発売中の本製品版にて、ゲームプレイの問題になる事象を確認しております。
現在、修正に向けて調査を開始しております。— テイルズチャンネル＋ (@tales_ch) February 24, 2023
The translation is as follows:
- Apology and Information: Thank you for playing Tales of Symphonia Remastered for the Nintendo Switch. We have confirmed that there are currently problems with this version of the game that is on sale. At present, we are currently investigating on a fix.
- We will give out information on an update as soon as it is available through this account, so please wait for more info. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused to our customers.
- If you have any inquiries regarding Tales of Symphonia Remastered, you may do so through here.
For context, players of Tales of Symphonia Remastered's Switch Edition have been experiencing some technical issues and some odd changes within the game as compared to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions. The issues that have been noted so far are, but are not limited to:
- The transition from exploring to the battle screen has been changed to a somewhat blinding white screen instead of the old glass-breaking transition. The said glass-breaking transition is still in the PS4 and Xbox One versions. See below:
- Extremely long loading times, much slower than even the PS2 version of Symphonia, when transitioning from battles and going back to the world map.
- The main menu and skits' backgrounds have been changed to just a black background instead of having the game as the background. A comparison is seen below between the Switch (left) and PS4 (right) versions:
- Issues of the game having extreme lagging and frame rate drops in certain scenes.
- In later parts of the game, having Colette in battle causes significant frame drops. Players have noted that removing her from the party seems to help solve the issue.
Tales of Symphonia Remastered's release have been met with significant negative feedback because of the said issues with the Nintendo Switch version, alongside other problems that have been popping up:
- There have been some delays in the game's release (some shops shipped them out late, after the game's release date).
- Previously advertising an "event skip function" which turns out to be mostly for just the animated cutscenes (fans have noted that the Japanese website highlighting said feature was conveniently changed post-release to say that it works only on said animated cutscenes). You can see the change made below:
At the very least, Bandai Namco seems aware of the issues and are hopefully working on a good enough fix.
Tales of Symphonia is the fifth mothership title of the series and the only title to be released for the Nintendo GameCube. It was then later ported to the PlayStation 2. It has a direct sequel escort title in the form of Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, and the two were later ported to the PlayStation 3 as a single release in the form of Tales of Symphonia Chronicles. The game is a distant prequel to Tales of Phantasia.
