Namco has announced that its upcoming PlayStation 2 RPG Tales of Legendia will be split into two different parts. The first part is the standard story part which lets players follow the adventure of Senel and his friends on the Ruin Ship. This part will take about 30 hours to complete. After the ending sequence however, players will be able to access so-called character quests. Those quests will show what happened to the various characters after the end of the game's main scenario. This mode will not only feature new characters and a higher degree of freedom, but also a higher level of difficulty. It will take about 25 hours to complete. Therefore, Tales of Legendia's total scenario is twice as long as its counterparts in previous series installments. The recording of the voice acting alone has apparently taken two months.

Tales of Legendia will be released in Japan on August 25th for 6,800 yen ($62.64 US). A US version will follow in 2006.

• Famitsu
• GameWatch