Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World Review

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is this generation’s offering to the continuation of the story after Tales of Symphonia for Gamecube, which garnered many critical acclaims as well as commercial success in a system almost devoid of RPG games. This game, like the last, also came out on a system completely devoid of RPG games, and for most, good games in general. How does this game stack up to its original?

Loved:
Character Development
The shining example of this game is its character development. We follow Emil and Marta in their development throughout the game. Of course, that’s what we’ve come to recognize as an integral part of the game itself. This is exemplified with Abyss, Vesperia, the original Symphonia, etc. This is what we’ve come to define the Tales series itself.


Character Skits
A favourite of Tales of Symphonia (and on) were the character skits, where you can optionally press a button during a prompt to get to a small skit where characters in different frames talk with each other for a short time, usually about the content. This heavily expands on the character development as well as fleshing out the storyline better than if you did not see them. It helps that often times a bit of humour is injected in there as well.

Battle System
I love the battle system of the Tales series, and this delivers more of the same action-packed movements we’ve come to know in the series. Distinctively, it made some significant improvements upon the original, using the same battle engine as Abyss and Vesperia.

Monster Capture
This actually is a double-edged sword. The fact that your own monsters are part of the backbone of your party makes monster capturing rather integral to your game can actually enhance your experience. While there are issues with it, it’s still a welcoming addition to the game, especially since you can finally fight with your very own monsters (you know, monsters that you always wondered why they’re so awesome). Reincarnation is done fairly well, and the monsters catch up to your levels fairly quickly after sitting out for a few levels.

Neutral:
Graphics
Usually people want me to talk about graphics. So I will. It’s last-gen.

Hated:
Monster Capture
The issue with monster capture is that the system needs time to get the hang of, and also that usually you’ll just stick with the wolf you got in the beginning of the game, and perhaps a bear (the bear class is somewhere between broken and ridiculously broken. My bear guy, at the end of the playthrough, had about double Emil’s stats.). It’s not encouraging at all that you can easily fail capture sequences, where they run away, so you’ll have to fight more to get another attempt, and often many times in a row.

Tales of Symphonia Characters
What’s with the point of using them anyways? They’re completely useless in any mode harder than hard, precisely because of their level cap (they’re stuck at level 50 by the end of the game). You can’t change their equipment, and generally they’re just not as useful as a monster. Bad choice on their part there. It doesn’t help that the characters themselves seem more like tack on characters that are almost devoid of character development as well.

AI
It’s been a problem since the original Symphonia game. They still haven’t fixed the incredibly bad AI in this game. Marta as a CPU is somewhere between “useless” and “better off dead,” while Emil as a CPU doesn’t attack nearly as quickly, carefully, or as TP efficient as you are. Good thing that he’s still at least OK compared to Marta. The monsters’ AI also tend to suffer as well. It doesn’t help that there is an incredible lack of tactical options compared to what you can have in the original Symphonia.

Recycled Everything
Seriously, nearly everything’s recycled. Every town and half of the dungeons were recycled, without change, from the original game. The amount of new material is staggeringly low for a sequel to one of the highest standard games in last generation.

Main Storyline
Cliché.

Fan Service
The starting point OF this game is fan service. I can’t say that this is a good starting point for any game. Then again, Dissidia, Super Smash Brawl, etc. all start with fan service in mind.

Verdict: If you like story and character development. Get it, but be aware that you’ll have to go through some fights playing as a girl in order for you to have something effective. If you want an epic, Final Fantasy-like RPG game, look elsewhere. If you’re looking for another Tales game, it’s well within your expectations. Just be sure that you haven’t played the first one in recent while, the similarities in the environments is rather frightening.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is currently out now for the Nintendo Wii, and is selling for something like $39.99.

Wii Okami confirmed

It's confirmed.

I need not say more other than it being on my list.

RPG Cliches

I recently just randomly stumbled upon a grand list of RPG cliches that obviously took a while to compile, but seems to be pretty complete for the most part. Hilariousness ensues. ;)

For some reason, I'm fond of the "Law of Cartographical Elegance" and of course "Mommy, why didn't they just use a Phoenix Down on Aeris?". XD

Soul Nomad

So I randomly went to NIS's website and checked it out, considering that I haven't heard much from them ever since Grim Grimoire came out (and I have yet to pick that one up, though there is no rush to do that). Then I found this. Oh look, another NIS game coming out. On look, it uses like the same sprites as Disgaea and them all. This game's supposed to be SERIOUS? :O

So all of a sudden, I'll have to get that...

And for those who aren't keeping track, that's Persona 3, Growlanser, Grim Grimoire, and Soul Nomad (and the World Eaters) on my list now. That's what we get for supporting the little guys, right? :-/

New Izuna

It's been a while, but Success actually did announce that a second Izuna is apparently in the works. Those that bought the first one because the girl had pink hair and looked cute would probably have been shocked at the difficulty of the game for the most part, but the game was good nonetheless. It's nice to see our cute pink-haired heroine will get a second go at crawling through those dungeons again.

Source: Insert Credit

Persona 3

Well I found a "review" of Persona 3 that really does give quite a bit of insight into the world of Persona 3. I preordered this one months ago myself, though I have not touched its legacy (until a couple of days from now, that is), but really this game looks to be a very good one indeed.

Persona 3 is published by Atlus.
Official Persona 3 website