Tales of Symphonia.... well, Fire Emblem

[A Black Falcon]

You should have waited. How far did you get in FFTA?

I don't remember... close to half, though, is by best guess. 15 hours maybe? 20 at most?

In FE I've had it for like a week and I'm over 10 hours in and am halfway. :)

They actually seemed even more artificial to me with that forced dialogue. I would have preferred something funnier ala Disgaea.

Forced? As I said, I consider it more natural, not forced at all... yeah, they talk a lot, but it's not just talk for the sake of talk, I'd say. It's talk for the sake of making the game feel more realistic in some way and to let the game creators provide a more detailed world and more information on the characters.

This is really why I rarely ever beat RPGs. The stories are just so damn stale.

That is usually true. The question usually is in how well they implement their cliche story and how much uniqueness they have in it...

We're talking about story so you know what I'll say. Torment wins. Though I do have one addition here -- I would definitely say that that game's story wins both for verbosity AND for uniqueness in a fantasy-RPG.