What is Tales of the Abyss?

Tales of the Abyss launched in Japan on December 15, 2005, ten years to the day after Phantasia, and it carries the anniversary's weight. Its world runs on fonons, particles of sound and memory, and on the Score, a prophecy that has scripted the planet's future for two thousand years. Into that scripted world falls Luke fon Fabre, a pampered noble's son with no memory of his childhood, whose journey from genuinely unlikeable to genuinely heroic is the most discussed character arc in the series.

The game was developed by the team behind Symphonia on an evolved version of its engine, with Fujishima designs and the first fully 3D free-running battles in the series. Its themes are the line's darkest: replicas, engineered lives, and whether a person made as a copy owns his own future. North America received it on October 10, 2006, with a complete BradyGames strategy guide, one of the last English Tales guides ever printed.

Abyss escaped the disc more than most. A 26-episode television anime adaptation ran from October 2008 to March 2009, and the game received three separate manga adaptations in Japan, alongside novelizations. Its opening theme, Bump of Chicken's 'Karma', remains a live staple at series concerts and festivals.

The collector's choice is between the PlayStation 2 original, shelved with its English guide and Japanese perfect guides, and the 2011 Nintendo 3DS port, which cleaned up the loading and carried the game to Europe. Either way, Abyss is the mothership title most often named when fans argue the series can stand beside any RPG of its era.