Tales of Phantasia - Plot

Plot

Tales of Phantasia begins by showing a heroic battle between four unknown warriors against an evil sorcerer and king, Dhaos, the outcome of which changed the fate of the world. The warriors were victorious, but Dhaos escaped through time. However, four different heroes are awaiting him: they seal the weakened Dhaos away using the power of two pendants, thus returning peace to the world.

Twelve years after Dhaos had been sealed away, a young swordsman named Cress Albane (Also romanized 'Cless Alvein') and his best friend, Chester Burklight, live in the town of Toltus. One day, while Cress and Chester are out hunting in the forest, the town is destroyed by a dark knight named Mars and his soldiers. Every villager is killed in the attack, including Chester’s sister and both of Cress’s parents. While Chester mourns, Cress vows for revenge. He decides he should flee to the town of Euclid, where his uncle lives; however, Chester refuses because he wants to stay behind and bury the dead first, and Cress finally decides to go by himself.

Upon his arrival in Euclid, Cress heads to the northwestern house, where his uncle lives. However, on Cress's first night there, his uncle betrays him, and he is thrown in jail by Mars. The heirloom pendant entrusted to Cress by his father, Miguel, is taken away from him, but Cress does not know of its significance in holding Dhaos sealed, nor that his father was one of the four who sealed him away.

In prison, Cress hears a voice, and the person it belongs to gives him a pair of earrings, which he uses to break down the wall of his cell. As he goes to thank the person, however, Cress sees that the individual has been impaled by a sword; he takes the blade and uses it to open the prison doors. In one of the cells, he meets a woman named Mint Adnade. She thanks Cress for freeing her and asks him to also free the person in the cell across from hers, who she says is her mother. At this point, Cress realizes that Mint's mother was the person who had helped him to escape his own cell. Not wanting Mint to learn of her death, he says that he saw no one in that cell and insists that they must escape immediately, which they achieve by traveling through the prison's aqueducts.

Soon afterwards, the party meets Chester again at Trinicus D. Morrison's house, another of the four warriors. Trinicus informs the party that he knew Cress’s parents and Mint’s mother quite well, and they once joined together to seal away a great evil. He is horrified to hear that Cress’s pendant has been stolen, and immediately runs off towards a nearby mausoleum. Cress, Mint, and Chester deduce that Mars must be there, and so follow Trinicus without his knowledge and against his will. Unfortunately, Mars manages to release Dhaos using the pendants before Trinicus and the party can stop him. With no hope of dealing with the all-powerful Dhaos for now, Trinicus attempts to send Cress, Mint, and Chester back a century into the past, so that they will learn about Dhaos and procure a means to preemptively defeat him. After killing Mars, Dhaos attacks the party with a magic spell that Chester dives in front of. So it is that Chester and Trinicus are left behind to suffer Dhaos’s wrath, with only a broken bow and a diary respectively all that Mint and Cress have to remember them by.

In the past, Dhaos is still causing chaos, preparing for an imminent war against the two largest human kingdoms — Alvanista and Midgards. These events happened ninety-four years before he was sealed. In this time period, Dhaos’s evil pervades most of the world, and he even controls the prince of Alvanista’s royal family. The party learns that the only way to defeat Dhaos is by using magic, but neither Cress nor Mint can practice the magical arts — only elves and half-elves can use the powerful spells. However, they soon meet Claus (Also romanized 'Klarth') F. Lester, a summoner, and Arche Klein (a half-elf witch), who join them in their quest. Claus is a researcher of summoning (the act of evoking a magical spirit or elemental), and is thus one of the only humans who can indirectly use magic by forming a pact with the spirits via special rings and then summoning them to attack in battle. He suggests that the spirit Luna may be useful to them, so the party travels across the world to the deserts of Freyland, the depths of the ancient dwarven caverns of the Morlia Gallery, and to mountains above and caves below in search of rings and spirits to help them fight Dhaos. Along the way, they meet Brambert, leader of the elves in Ymir Forest, and learns of his connection to Arsia the woodcarver, a half-elf. The party then learns the reason why half-elves are forbidden in Ymir forest, the history of the elves' separation from the humans years ago, and Arche's family background.

After making a pact with Luna, the party heads to Midgards and succeeds in helping fend off Dhaos’s army in the conflict called the Valhalla War. They proceed to Dhaos’s castle in search of him, with hopes of restoring peace to the world and avenging the deaths of their loved ones. Reaching the throne room, an epic battle with Dhaos ensues. Unfortunately, Dhaos escapes. The party soon learns about the ancient city of Thor, the seat of an advanced ancient civilization that died out after a meteor strike. The city sank beneath the sea and is now situated on the ocean bottom 100 miles northeast of Venezia City. Claus summons one of the spirits, Undine, to bring them underwater and into Thor, which they find was not completely destroyed thanks to a force field that had been protecting it. After defeating the city's ancient civil defense system, they find a room with a time machine.

The party travels back to their original time to interrupt the resurrected Dhaos from killing Trinicus and Chester in the mausoleum, and fight him once more. This time, Dhaos is thoroughly defeated, and the cave begins to collapse in on itself, and an unconscious Dhaos. The party escapes and then decides that, with Dhaos most likely dead, they have succeeded and can part ways so that Claus and Arche can return to their original time. But at that moment, a time-traveller arrives from the future to inform them that Dhaos is still alive and is terrorizing the future. Cress and company immediately go to Thor and travel forward in time fifty years to deal with Dhaos and his minions once and for all.

Upon arriving in the future, the party learns of Thor's history: It was one of the three ancient civilizations, the other two having been Odin and Fenrir. Long ago, an event called the "War of the Ancient Civilizations" occurred, wherein the forces of Thor tried to intervene in a battle between Odin and Fenrir. At this time, it was discovered that a comet named Samier was destined to hit the planet; this is the same comet that was discovered earlier in the game to have destroyed Thor. The party also learns of the Eternal Sword, which is considered to be the only weapon capable of eliminating Dhaos once and for all. After acquiring it, the party ventures into Dhaos’s floating castle, invisible to those who do not wield the Eternal Sword. When they reach the top, they battle against Dhaos, who they learn is much more than a simple sorcerer. He is actually from another world that is trying to save The Tree of Life (Yggdrasill, or as Dhaos calls it, The Giant Kharlan Tree) from withering and dying; the Mana that the tree exudes is of utmost importance to the survival of this world, the planet Derris-Kharlan. After his defeat, Cress and the others return to the Tree, and the Goddess Martel explains Dhaos’s circumstances. The game’s protagonists come to realize that, in the end, Dhaos was merely trying to save his people; by defeating him, they had doomed his world. Finally, Claus and Arche return to their own time. Suzu, however, leaves before Claus and Arche. After the party leaves, Martel decides to form a Mana Seed and travels to Dhaos’s world to save their Tree of Life. In the Super Famicom version, Dhaos’s corpse, as well as Martel herself, both become part of the seed, but in the later versions of the game, Martel sends the Mana Seed into space including only Dhaos. In the GBA version, Mint also creates a barrier around Yggdrasill before leaving so that the Mana Seed can be formed.