Tales of Destiny is a PS1 RPG originally released in Japan in December 1997. While quietly beloved by some fans, it’s historically been one of the more obscure Tales games due to never getting released on modern consoles and its PS2 ports only coming out in Japan. No modern remakes yet.
For years, fans have assumed there were a total of nine possible party members in the original game. Yesterday, nearly 30 years after the original release, someone found a tenth.
Lilith Aileron, frying-pan wielder and younger sister of protagonist Stahn, is officially, legitimately recruitable in the original Tales of Destiny, and it was only just now discovered. And I cannot emphasize enough how batshit this find is.
For one, the person who found it, Azekura, is a longtime Tales fan and administrator of Majestic Fantasian, a Japanese Tales fansite. The process for recruitment has since been corroborated by multiple other individuals on both the English and Japanese versions of the game, and has also been corroborated by one of the original developers posting on Twitter/X, who apologized because her recruitment (which is a wildly convoluted process) apparently softlocks the game in the original edition but can be salvaged by moving to later versions. I’m floored.
PS版テイルズオブデスティニー（発売:1997/12/23）
リリスをバグではなく正式に仲間にできました！条件らしきものは以下にまとめています。https://t.co/1Uq9sb1U96
（サイトトップページ）https://t.co/Ias6vPGUp0 pic.twitter.com/WLcCIoSGV3
— 校倉 (@azekura) November 1, 2026
Why has this method never been found? Well, some are suggesting it has, back closer to the game’s launch, but was just never well-documented beyond mentions on forums no one read ever again. Fans have also known that Lilith was coded into the game as a playable character for a long time, and have added her to their parties before with cheats. She also was known to be recruitable in the PS2 version. But in the original PS1 version, it was just always assumed that she had been removed at the last minute for some unknown reason, and no one really followed up until now.
But probably the most obvious reason no one ever found Lilith’s recruitment requirements is that they seem to be pretty convoluted. As I write this, the actual list of rules still isn’t fully known. Azekura documented what they believe to be the requirements, but it’s possible some of them aren’t actually required and testers are working right now to figure out which things are and aren’t important. But generally, it seems like you need to play through the entire game without taking items out of people’s houses and without being “scolded” by party members for going the wrong way or doing things you’re not being asked to do. There are other moments where you need to speak with certain characters at certain times.
Finally, near the end of the game, you have to buy a specific item at a specific time, and then speak to Lilith to recruit her. She joins the party at a pathetic level 6, which is terrible as the party will be at a ridiculously high endgame level by then. Also, if you’re running the original Japanese version of the game, it will actually fully softlock after recruiting her, with a necessary scene not playing. You have to save before you enter a town, shut down the game, and then run it on the “BEST” version to continue.
Jun Toyoda, one of the original producers on the game, went out of his way to apologize on X for this. Via machine translation, he said: “It’s amazing that you managed to find a way to recruit Lilith as a companion. Destiny‘s Ver.1 ended up with at least five major bugs remaining, including progression blockers, because we couldn’t allocate enough time for debugging. We were supposed to cut Lilith’s features altogether, but honestly, I’m really sorry.”
リリスを仲間にする方法をみつけてしまうなんて凄いです。デスティニーのVer.1はデバッグ期間が十分にとれなくて進行不能を含む重大バグが少なくとも５つ残ってしまいました。リリスの仕様も割愛したはずだったのですが、ほんとすみません
— Jun Toyoda (@nuja) November 2, 2026
This whole thing sounds like some fantastic playground rumor (seriously, read the list of presumed requirements!), like Mew under a truck in Pokémon or saving Aerith in FF7, and that makes it ridiculously fun, even for people like me who never got their hands on Tales of Destiny. Congrats to Azekura and everyone who worked on digging up and verifying this ridiculous, very old secret and bringing it into the community’s view again. Now when are we getting a modern remake of this game, Bandai Namco? Lilith awaits.
