This immediately brings forward one of the biggest problems with Dawn of the New World. Emil, our hero, starts as a whiny, apologetic, pathetic loser who suddenly gains the power of bad-assery, yet somehow remains a whiny, apologetic, pathetic loser in the process. Though he slowly gains confidence through his lady-friend, Marta, Emil will be a thorn in your side for almost the entire game. It feels out of place for the main character to be that annoyingly whiny, especially considering for how long it goes on. I don't care how it works into the story. Heroes are supposed to be manly, because we want to play as manly men. Not whiny kids.
Thank goodness you can choose to control other party members in battle! The battle system has been improved upon tremendously with the addition of a free-run button and the ability to equip more than four Artes (special moves) thanks to the motion controls of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Because the battles are more open this time, setting up a good formation and then maneuvering your characters into a favorable position is more important than ever. It's very easy to get surrounded if you don't watch what you're running into. Still, often times the battlefield feels clogged up because of how your partners and enemies seem to roam around freely themselves without really staying in some pre-determined battle formation. While you do have some control over how characters act and what moves they can perform, battles usually turn into free-for-alls.
This is especially true when you are using captured monsters to fight alongside you. New World introduces the ability to ally with enemy monsters and have them join your party. Unfortunately, you go about capturing them through some very confusing elemental system that somehow determines whether or not you can capture a monster from that battle. After joining your party, captured monsters can learn new skills, including very useful healing Artes. Because different monsters have different elemental alliances, adding them to your party when entering certain areas can be helpful.
However, there is never a point in the game where having monsters fight with you is any significant advantage over main characters. Since you can never directly control them, and they cannot use items, friendly monsters don't feel like they're really a part of your team, but rather just out there doing their own thing. In fact, it never really feels like you have a solid party at all, particularly because the characters from the original game will constantly join and leave the group as the story dictates. You never have a chance to build up a stable platform that you're comfortable with, which ultimately ruins the flow of the game.
Still, the one thing that the Tales games have always excelled at is telling a good story. Optional skits further explain the story behind all of the characters, and if you decide to read through them all you'll learn quite a bit about the heroes. However, even that comes at the expense of speedy gameplay, as everything stops when you activate one of the skits. There really should be some way for the skits to take place simultaneously with the action. Despite that, the story is really the thing that gets you through the beginning of the game, if only because you want to know why Lloyd (the main character from the first game) killed Emil's parents. About the time when you find out is also, conveniently, about the time when the game actually starts to become much more tolerable. Even so, that's asking quite a lot to have to sit through a lot of slow conversation and curious story branches early on.
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is going to disappoint a lot of people, particularly fans of the original GameCube epic. Naturally, it would be hard to live up to the original, but the sequel feels uninspired. It's still a good game on its own merits, mostly because the battle system is still solid and it's addicting to try to string together the biggest combo possible. However, the constant whining from Emil, a party that never feels like it has a foundation, and poor pacing and flow make waiting for the good stuff an exercise in patience, where it should be an exercise in fun.
Pros:
Lastability: 8.0
The game can take 100 hours to complete if you really want to go after all the subquests, monsters, and optional goodies. However, unlike the original, which took as many as 80 legitimate hours to complete, this will only take half of that. Because the majority of the game is optional, whether or not you decide to explore it comes down to how much you can tolerate its weaker parts.
Final: 6.0
Dawn of the New World is a moderately enjoyable game, but there will be plenty of times when you wonder why you keep bothering with it. It may be because the battle gameplay is good fun, or that the story is interesting enough to keep your attention. Or maybe you've got a high tolerance for annoying lead characters.
I think the Tales is at a point where the only ones that will truly get it are the fans.
The series barely gets glowing reviews, yet it has legions of fans who swear by it and enjoy it the most.
I think the Tales is at a point where the only ones that will truly get it are the fans.
The series barely gets glowing reviews, yet it has legions of fans who swear by it and enjoy it the most.
Hmm, from a brief glance it looks like Vesperia was reviewed rather favorably. Some of the reviews for it seem quite estatic for it.
While I have yet to play Symphonia 2, am in a few number that doesn't mind the drop in cel-shading? Thinking back to Symphonia 1, the look for it was kinda spotty in places. Maybe I'm just thinking of the clunky animations during the cutscenes.
I take issue with that statement about how we should have "manly men" as our heroes in RPGs (it's rather limiting and stereotypical)
Actually, it's hard to tell, but this game is very subtly cel-shaded. I probably didn't notice until my 5th hour of gameplay.
Proof reading in the Quick Reply box sucks.
Why do I get a "You don't understand Mystery Dungeon Games" vibe from Pros post?
I take issue with that statement about how we should have "manly men" as our heroes in RPGs (it's rather limiting and stereotypical)
They don't have to be manly, they just shouldn't be emos. Noone wants to listen to a whiny annoying guy (urk, FF8). If the character shouldn't act manly then at least make him shut up rather than complain. Hell, RPG heroes tend to grow to godlike powers, a whiny character just doesn't fit for someone who can kill a dragon with his pinky. Or, you know, the best option for RPG characters is just to let the player pick the line he wants to say and thus give his character a personality himself since that's what role playing usually means.
it's really not that difficult to understand, and is far easier to understand than the original. When it comes to capturing monsters and the "elemental grid" that everyone has such difficulty with... if the entire grid is a single element, you can try and capture a monster after battle. That's not difficult to understand...
And for unison attacks, if that monster/characters element is present on the grid in the corner, they will contribute to the attack. It may seem difficult at first, but it really is extremely simple.
THE JACKEL
LOL game reviewers suck.
it's really not that difficult to understand, and is far easier to understand than the original. When it comes to capturing monsters and the "elemental grid" that everyone has such difficulty with... if the entire grid is a single element, you can try and capture a monster after battle. That's not difficult to understand...
And for unison attacks, if that monster/characters element is present on the grid in the corner, they will contribute to the attack. It may seem difficult at first, but it really is extremely simple.
THE JACKEL
Must not be too easy to understand considering the game averages scores around this.
it's really not that difficult to understand, and is far easier to understand than the original. When it comes to capturing monsters and the "elemental grid" that everyone has such difficulty with... if the entire grid is a single element, you can try and capture a monster after battle. That's not difficult to understand...
And for unison attacks, if that monster/characters element is present on the grid in the corner, they will contribute to the attack. It may seem difficult at first, but it really is extremely simple.
THE JACKEL
Must not be too easy to understand considering the game averages scores around this.
except I explained everything you need to know about that elemental grid to play the game in my post. That's all there is to it. All one element, capture monster. Characters element on grid, participates in unison attack.
If people have a hard time understanding that if you use a water element move, a water symbol appears on the grid, fire move, fire symbol, etc... well that's just... yeah...
THE JACKEL
While I haven't played the game I know I would knock it quite hard if it took this "deep" of an understanding of the game mechanics to enjoy it. If a game doesn't grab my attention after 10 hrs or so, then too bad for it.
While I haven't played the game I know I would knock it quite hard if it took this "deep" of an understanding of the game mechanics to enjoy it. If a game doesn't grab my attention after 10 hrs or so, then too bad for it.
I don't blame you. The JRPG audience is dominated by casual grandma gamers, as the majority of non-casual Tales fans are shown to be Wii owners.
it's really not that difficult to understand, and is far easier to understand than the original. When it comes to capturing monsters and the "elemental grid" that everyone has such difficulty with... if the entire grid is a single element, you can try and capture a monster after battle. That's not difficult to understand...
And for unison attacks, if that monster/characters element is present on the grid in the corner, they will contribute to the attack. It may seem difficult at first, but it really is extremely simple.
THE JACKEL
Must not be too easy to understand considering the game averages scores around this.
except I explained everything you need to know about that elemental grid to play the game in my post. That's all there is to it. All one element, capture monster. Characters element on grid, participates in unison attack.
If people have a hard time understanding that if you use a water element move, a water symbol appears on the grid, fire move, fire symbol, etc... well that's just... yeah...
THE JACKEL
Actually, it's not quite that simple. What element you make the entire grid makes capturing monsters of the same element easier. Also, you can use one of your monsters in the current battle to try to strengthen your chances or properly pacting. Problem is, I've found that even using monsters of the same element as the one I'm trying to capture doesn't work all that often (it doesn't help that the game doesn't tell you what element the potentially captured monster is). I usually just try to pact with just the grid instead. Also, you don't get moves that allow you freely change the elemental grid quickly till a fair bit into the game. Until then, it's a real crap-shoot whether or not you'll get a random grid that'll allow you to capture monsters.
Also, you generally never really know if the captured monster is even useful till you've done a fair bit of grinding. You can eventually grind any monster up to insane levels, but if their innate moves suck and they look lame (which most of the monsters do) I never feel compelled to do so. By virtue of being monsters, your captured comrades don't really add any personalty to battle (unlike their human counterparts, who can do more than grunt or make that annoying high-pitched whine), so I'd rather not use the monsters at all. I only use them at all because the non-Emil, non-Marta human characters can't level-up or change equipment.
Another nerd wars has started. Time to run away before we start debating who is the best roguelike player.
If you're a huge Tales fan then you're going to buy this game anyway regardless of the reviews it's getting. So go buy it and enjoy it (or at least convince yourself you do) and call it a day. There's nothing to be accomplished by getting overly defensive of it. Windy isn't the only reviewer to give it a low score. It may just be a game that will seem brilliant to some and meh to everyone else.