Every old RPG has a playground rumour. Tales of Destiny's turns out to have been true, or near enough. Lilith Aileron, the protagonist's frying-pan-wielding younger sister, can apparently be recruited in the original PS1 game with no cheats at all, nearly 29 years after it came out in Japan in December 1997.
Both Kotaku and GamesRadar+ covered the find on November 3. Xarmo hasn't tried the method or checked the original posts directly, so what follows is what those two outlets report.
Who found it
Kotaku credits Azekura, a longtime Tales fan and administrator of the Japanese fansite Majestic Fantasian, who posted about it on November 1. The method has since been corroborated by several other people on both the English and Japanese versions, Kotaku says.
GamesRadar+ picks up the story through a video by Kevangelion, who credits help from SymphoniaLauren, Mziab and Ethanol, and who summarised the Japanese forum post in a 26-step guide for the "Legitimate Lilith Recruit Scene".
Fans had long assumed the game had nine possible party members. Kotaku says they knew Lilith was coded in as a playable character and had added her with cheats before, and she was known to be recruitable in the PS2 version. In the PS1 original, the assumption was that she had been pulled at the last minute.
Why nobody noticed
Probably because the conditions are absurdly strict. GamesRadar+ lists the ways to lose her: take items from people's homes, manually change Stahn's weapon in Part 1, sell or discard the silver ladle, get scolded by characters such as Rutee, skip certain conversations, annoy some merchants, or talk to Lilith more than once in Leene's Village. Dungeon loot is fine. Kevangelion's summary is that the route assumes "a 'clean,' obedient Stahn who listens and does not pick fights with the plot".
In other words, you have to be the most well-behaved hero in JRPG history. GamesRadar+ says no typical player could be expected to find all this.
Kotaku cautions that the actual list isn't fully settled. Azekura documented what they believe to be the requirements, some may turn out to be unnecessary, and testers are still working out which ones matter. Near the end of the game you buy a specific item at a specific time and speak to Lilith, Kotaku says. She then joins at level 6, by which point the rest of your party is at a very high endgame level.
GamesRadar+ places her arrival in Part 2 of the game, where she announces, "I'm coming with you, like it or not!"
An apology, nearly 29 years late
The payoff has a catch. Kotaku reports that in the original Japanese version the game softlocks after you recruit her, because a necessary scene doesn't play. The fix is to save before entering a town, shut the game down and carry on using the "BEST" version.
That prompted a reply from one of the people who made it. Jun Toyoda, an original producer on the game, said on X, in a machine translation quoted by Kotaku, that the first version "ended up with at least five major bugs remaining, including progression blockers, because we couldn't allocate enough time for debugging". He added: "We were supposed to cut Lilith's features altogether, but honestly, I'm really sorry."
Whether this is truly the first time anyone has done it is less certain. Kotaku notes that some people suggest the method was found closer to launch, and was simply mentioned on forums nobody went back to.
Ollie's take: My favourite part is the apology. A producer saying sorry, nearly three decades on, for a character who was supposed to be cut and somehow wasn't, is about as lovely as games history gets. It also says something about how these things survive. It doesn't sound like a hidden treasure so much as something a rushed schedule left behind, and it took a fan site, a long list of rules and a lot of patience to find it. The prize is a level 6 sister with a frying pan. I think that's perfect.
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