Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Didn't think I'd be reviewing this now

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World



Namco-Bandai’s announcement that there would be a direct sequel to the ever popular GameCube RPG Tales of Symphonia was met with both excitement and skepticism. Direct sequels to Tales games, like Final Fantasy games are rare and ToS is still the most popular Tales game outside of Japan. However, direct sequels are not always known for their quality. It did not help with it was revealed that the old characters were not the main focus of the game, there would be no explore-able world map, and there would be monster capturing and training. So how does Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World compare to the original, and can a fan of the original enjoy the Wii sequel?


Story

Two years have passed since the first game ended and all is not well in the world of Tales of Symphonia. Despite the new Great Tree, the world is being plagued by unusual weather patterns and powerful monsters. Furthermore, with the two worlds together again, the technologically advanced Tethe’allans are looking down upon and oppressing the Slyvaranti. This conflict erupts in an event known as the Blood Purge, a massacre by the Church of Martel allegedly led by the hero Lloyd Irving. A boy named Emil Castagnier loses his parents in the massacre, hating Lloyd ever since. Months later he meets a girl named Marta Lualdi who says that in order to return the climate to normal, the Summon Spirit of the old Kharlan Tree Ratatosk must be awakened. The timid adolescent joins Marta, becoming a Knight of Ratatosk in order to save the world and face his parents’ killer.

Like most Tales games, Dawn of the New World is reliant upon RPG clichés. There is the need for collecting elemental objects in order to awaken some minor deity who may or may not be entirely benevolent. There is a rebel groups whose aim is to stop the ones ostracizing them by any means necessary. The main heroine is a rather perky girl who uses healing and light magic. The main character wants revenge on someone who killed his parents, and so on and so forth. Even if the plot is nothing new, the story itself is still well done. For the most part the script is well-written with genuinely witty and funny dialogue. I was also impressed at how the story does not feel like a cheap cash-in on the first game. It’s fairly well-developed and to me, a believable and welcome continuation of the first ToS.

As with the original though, the story’s strength more lies with its characters, and character development and interaction. Main character Emil starts off as a cowardly, quiet boy who can’t stand up for himself. As the game progresses, however, Emil slowly becomes more confident, braver and more willing to do what he must. This is further enhanced by Johnny Yong Bosch’s excellent performance as he goes from being quiet and often stuttering to being far more confident when speaking. In the meantime, though the contrast between him and the much more upbeat and love struck Marta make for very amusing scenes and skits that easily out-do many of the first game’s. Both she and Emil are fleshed out and well-developed, just as much if not more so than some of the characters in the first game. Their romance is the best I’ve seen so far in a video game, which may not be saying much since most games I played with romance either rush it or do it poorly. Other new character such as Tenebrae the Centurion of Darkness, mysterious man Richter Abend and villains Alice and Decus are also fairly rounded. In contrast to this, though, most of the returning characters have little to no development in the game and apparently have not changed much in the two years between both games. This latter part may disappoint some fans, though I personally see them as more cameos and fan service with the real focus being on the new characters.


What's gotten into you, Lloyd?!



Battle System

As always with the Tales series, the game has real-time battles. This particular system is called the Free-Range Linear Motion Battle System. I have not played any other Tales games that use this system, so I can’t say how it compares to them. I can say that I got quite a bit of enjoyment out of it. Similar to the first Tales of Symphonia, the A button is used for regular attacks and the B is used for special moves called Artes. Pressing the button enables you to block attacks. By pressing and holding the Z button your character can go from moving only back and forth to three dimensions to better maneuver around, though every hit you take is a critical. It’s relatively simple system but quite fun, even with easier enemies. Unison Attacks return from the original, but there is no combining of artes like Mirage Thrust and Prism Stars. Instead, whichever battler matches the element on the grid, be it human/half-elf or monster, the latter will attack the target while the former casts respective elemental spells. If there are multiple kinds of the same element on the grid, then a much stronger spell will be casted. The bosses in this game can be quite brutal if one isn’t prepared but the challenge is quite welcome. While it is possible to have up to four player controlled characters, it is fairly uncommon to have four playable characters during the course of the game until much later as monsters cannot be directly controlled by players. Luckily, the camera no longer focuses on player 1 but pans out so that all player-controlled characters can be seen. It may also disappoint fans to know that it’s not entirely clear on how to control the characters from the first game. While the second and first player can control them more easily, for a single-player or player one, the battle has to be paused and the button pressed until the character in question is set to manual.
New to the Tales series is monster catching and raising. During battles the field has one major element and four minor ones which can be seen on the lower left side of the screen. By matching the major element to four minor elements, a monster can be captured provided it is the last monster beaten. Captured monster join the party if there are empty slots and if not, are sent with the Katz guild much like the PC in the Pokémon games. Aside from gaining levels, monster stats can increase one per level by giving it food that Emil, Marta, or any of the earlier characters cook. Feeding it is also how monsters can evolve into more powerful creatures, which often branch off. They grow faster than the human characters, allowing them to become incredibly strong, but this is off-set by the monsters acting on their own and can be quite useful during difficult boss battles, especially since the original character cannot level up or change equipment. Being a fan of the Pokémon games, I spent many hours capturing, evolving and training creatures that I liked the appearance or power of, but those who do not like monster-battler games may not get as much enjoyment out of it.


The Idiot Chosen joins the new guys.



Non-Combat Gameplay/Controls

As mentioned earlier, there is no overworld map for this game. Instead, players choose to go to towns and dungeon from points on a map. I would be lying if I said I didn’t mind this since I enjoy exploring. It also makes the game shorter. The game runs smoothly for the most part, but loading screens can be a bit long, especially before a battle. There are, of course, skits in this game and unlike the first Symphonia and most of the Tales games released in North America, they are fully voiced. I found myself chuckling at them very often. I personally find them much funnier and overall better done than the first game. I also rather liked being able to point at the screen and click A to use the Sorcerer’s Ring. To rest assure those who loath Wii waggle controls, this is only point in towns and dungeon that uses motion control. On the overworld map it is possible to point to and choose locations, but it is usually more convenient to pick the town or dungeon from a list. The only waggle controls during battles are for using some shortcuts, and sadly the remote isn’t very precise in this. It is not always able to tell the difference between swinging the remote and nunchuck up-and-down or side-to-side, which results in some annoyance and why I stuck to using the Control Pad shortcuts as much as possible. Other than that, I felt the controls were quite tight and spot-on. I did find having to hit the B button the button side of the remote awkward at first, but I quickly grew accustomed to it.


He tends to get flustered a lot around her.



Graphics

The chibi-looking cel-shading of the old game is gone, replaced by anime-esque polygonal characters. Sometimes their movements are a bit stiff during cutscenes, but mostly I enjoyed how realistic their are (apparently they were made using a motion capture system of some sort). I also loved how expressive their faces are, from the more serious ones to the goofy features such as eyes reduced to dots and other anime dipsy-doodle during comedic moments. As good as the character models and designs are, however the backgrounds are a bit lackluster and during cutscenes the background sometimes shimmers while the camera pans. I didn’t think the graphics were terrible, but they certainly could have been better.


Emil takes his time looking out over the snowy city



Music/Sound

The music in Dawn of the New World is largely consisted of remixed version of the original game’s tracks. Each town has its old theme, the old characters have their theme, and many battles will have “Full Force” or “Like a Glint of Light” depending on location. As with the first game, I thought the music served the game well and was decent, but not particularly noteworthy save for a handful of outstanding tracks. I also would have liked it if there were more original tracks since I found a few of them to be quite good, especially the new boss themes.

It may be due to the skits, but this game feels like it has much more voice acting than the first one. The acting itself is excellent, especially for Emil, Marta, and Tenebrae, who do most of the talking. That is not to say there isn’t the occasional hiccup or poorly-done line, but these are easy to overlook. Fans may be upset to learn that many of the old character’s voices have been replaced. Regal is no longer voiced by Crispin Freeman, Raine no longer by Kari Wahlgren, and others. I thought they were still good actors regardless and many of them sound fairly similar to the original actors.




Score

Story: 4/5

Graphics: 3.5/5

Battle System: 4.5/5

Non-Combat Gameplay: 3.5/5

Controls: 4/5

Music/Sound: 4/5

Replay value: 3.5/5


This game is clearly meant for fans of the first Tales of Symphonia. It tries to sum up the story from the first game, but most people who never played it would probably not be able to get full enjoyment out of this game. The game is by no means perfect and is certainly not as good as the first. However, considering that it is a direct sequel, which tend to be rather sub-par, it is a pleasantly enjoyable game. The battle system is fun, the story compliment the first game rather than feeling like an unnecessary tack-on, the new characters are well-developed and endearing, the voice acting is superb, and it is genuinely funnier than the first. While the developers could have easily botched this game up, they put some real effort into Dawn of the New World which I greatly appreciate.
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This may or may not be the last time I do a review in this format. I wish to fix up and reformt some of my reviews from here and submit them to RPGamer. When (if) they are posted, I will start a thread asking if people perfer this method, with divided sections for each aspect of the game or like RPGamer's which have them put together in a more essay-like form.

Great! You review is very well done! And I like more this format, for me is easiest to read

Oh, and something stupid happened. I looked at the scores, and I saw 4, 4.5, 3, etc..., and I thought it was out of then. I was very surprised an anooyed, but then I saw it was out of 5

WHAAAAAAT NO MORE CEL SHADED CHIBIS? BOOOO DOWN WITH NAMCO FIGHT THE POWAR

Uh...this is a really nice review. Keep up the good work. And I agree with Celsica, this format is better and easier to read.

I prefer using out of five rather than out of ten when it comes to ratings because peple tend to look at out of ten ratings like school grade. Anything below a seven out of ten is considered failing, so essentially there are six numbers never put to real use as a 5/10 may as well be a 2/10. With five out of ten, people can get a better grasp of how good something is. 1/5 is the absolute worst, 2/5 is bad, 3/5 is decent, 4/5 is great and a 5/5 exceptional (not perfect, mind you). The .5's are for refinement.

I'm afraid so, Klonoa. ^^; While I do miss the chibi cel-shaded characters, I like the better facial expression on DotNW's characters. Though surely they could have used cel-shaded chibis and given them better expression. Oh well.

Regardless, I'm very glad that you both liked this review. I'm still going to see if people prefer this over the RPGamer format, but that won't be for a while now.

Great review, I haven't seen your original format but this one works pretty well.

Just wondering, are there a lot of mini-games, side-quests, and hidden side-stories in DotNW like in the first one? One reasons why I still play ToS is because each time I discover a little bit more of the story by going back and talking to random insignificant NPCs or NPCs who only had 15 seconds in the spotlight at different times during the game.

Oh dear, I did forget to mention a few things in this review...

Yes there are some mini-games, though not as many as the first and for the most part they are connected to the story and can only be played at certain points. I also neglected to mention the puzzle-solving in the dungeons. Most of the Side-quests are obtained from the Katz Guild, which usually invovling killing a specific monster or traveling through a dungeon. This game does have Sub-Events or "hidden side-stories" as you put it, both with the villains and later on, the old characters from the first game.

I'll have to add that to the review the next chance I get. I need to pick up my sister and run some errands before work, though, so not now. Thanks for pointing this out to me, SSC!