Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

"Fanservice doesn't Mean its not Worth $40"

When Namco announced their intention to create a follow-up to the popular 2003 GameCube title Tales of Symphonia fans of the JRPG genre let out a collective cry of joy. After all we all know as of late Nintendo is pretty limited when it comes to the RPG genre and when you consider how great and wonderful Tales for the GameCube was you have to imagine a sequel for Nintendo's monster the Wii would live up to the expectations. And of course this is where the problem lies. You have to imagine that this game is as good as it's predecessor.

Before we go into this let me just say I fully understand that Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World was very low budget compared to other installments of the Tales series. I understand that most of Namco's budget went into the development of the equally awesome Tales of Vesperia for the 360. Because of this I will try (key word: try) to review this game with its budget and development time both in mind.

Story: 6/10
Everything starts off smoothly enough. After the world regeneration two years prior (as depicted in Tales of Symphonia 1) the worlds of Tethe'alla and Sylvarant are now one. Unfortunately as mentioned in ToS the world reunion has caused climate changes. Lakes have dried up, deserts are turning into arctic tundra and fierce earthquakes ravage the land. Pretty much what you'd expect.

At the same time the hostilities between the Sylvaranti and Tethe'allans begin to rise as one would expect. After all if you put two civilizations side by side, give one awesome technology such as super guns and a cure for cancer, and the other cheap swords and a questionable herb you can imagine the former will decide to oppress the latter. That is pretty much what we see here. The Tethe'allans are predictably oppressing the Sylveranti. In order to combat this, the Sylveranti Liberation Front (read: The Vanguard) is created to oppose the Tethe'allan Royal Family and the Church of Martel.

Because of these hostilities the Blood Purge takes place in Palmacosta, also known as that town that's constantly getting screwed up the butt by terrorists, rogue trees and other such garbage. This tragedy is carried out by our main protagonist from ToS the “Great” Lloyd Irving. This is what tips off a series of events that get Emil Castagnier caught up in the plot. Emil's parents are slain in the Blood Purge and because of this Emil is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Luin (also known as the OTHER town that got screwed by terrorists). Soon Emil meets the enigmatic Richter who first utters a tacky catchphrase you will hear a hundred times over before the end credits sequence. After this another series of unfortunate events which unite our hero Emil with Marta Lualdi, they must embark on a cliche fanservice quest of collecting eight elemental Centurians which is a word interchangeable with Spirit regardless of what the game says.

Throughout this roughly thirty-five hour plot you will have one and off again meetings with the original Tales cast, most of whom come with new voice actors that will make your ears bleed. Even though we eventually gather up all eight of the old cast the main focus is still on Emil and Marta who from the get-go immediately develop some sickening love storyline that would even make Locke from Final Fantasy 6 vomit. From the beginning Emil himself is a very unlikable character at first, making him the opposite of most JRPG heroes. He's a wimp who's afraid to do anything and he can't even hold a sword properly for the first ten or so fights. However as the game progress he develops more as a character which is something I have to give Low Budget (read as: Namco) credit for. After all I'm sure we all got sick of the incredibly ballsy smart-ass main heroes that always plague the Tales series (yes I'm looking at you Yuri!). Opposite Emil we have Marta whose personality is reminiscent of Keira Knightly only with bizarrely small feet. Marta is a little spitfire but also your typical kind-hearted goody-goody who as you probably guessed without me telling you also plays the role of your party's White Mage. While she's adorable Marta has next to zero character development and if she isn't hanging all over Emil or talking about her feelings chances are she's getting kidnapped or running off on her own. Lastly we have Richter who serves as this games mysterious but nonetheless awesome badass!

Of course chances are if you've been a long-time Tales fan you don't play the games for their somewhat repetitive plots and life lessons, but rather the game itself. Which takes us to...

Gameplay: 9/10
The fluid gameplay that has become a staple of the Tales series returns with a vengeance this time around. Many Tales games use what they call, ahem, the “Flex Range Element Enhanced Linear Motion Battle System” which you might recall from playing Tales of the Abyss or Tales of Destiny. Like all Tales games this pretty much results in what they call *clears throat* the “Stride Motion Linear Battle System”. If you're familiar with Tales you can ignore this completely, if not let me sum it up. In Tales games you pretty much control one person in the party out of four. As this person you can freely run around the combat area and choose your target while the AI tries (and usually fails) to make your other party members help out. Most of the time this just means casting healing spells you don't need any more or spamming artes rather than trying to build up a combo. Fortunately you can issue commands to your human teammates via the menu and shortcuts to make things go a bit more smoothly.

While the battle system is relatively unchanged from the GameCube title now we also have the Element Grid. The purpose of the Grid is to determine what kind of unison attacks you can use, what monsters you can catch, and even if certain characters will regenerate health. Of course this doesn't really matter because you can change the grid by using elemental moves. Because the Grid can change it will almost always be Water-based because in an attempt to be different healing spells are Water elemental and not Light.

Now I'm sure you didn't even read that last bit because you are all, “Woah, woah monster catching! Taker please explain while I write an angry letter to Low Budget!” You can relax the monster system isn't nearly as bad as it sounds and you can't really be mad at Low Budget for including it, especially when you consider they at least had the kindness to work it into the plot. The monsters you catch can evolve as they grow and these evolution chains often go in circles so you can constantly evolve your monster to raise its stats. Each time you evolve a monster it drops back to Level 1 but retains 20% of its old stats and skill points. “Level 1, how are they useful in battle then?!” Monsters level up much quicker than Emil and Marta and you need to remember that they retain a portion of their stats. Having a Black Wolf at Level 1 with 2000HP is much more awesome that it might sound.

While the system if inherently good the flaw lies in the fact that there are just so many monsters to train. Like Pokemon, training them all to their best is a giant waste of time and you should always just find four that work for you (and no matter what you say, your Wolf will always be one of those four). It eventually just gets to the point where you don't even really pay attention to the monsters aside from giving them permanent spells via grimores. To be honest you don't even really need them to beat the game on Normal though it still doesn't hurt to train because on Mania and Unknown the Level 50-caped Tales of Symphonia cast will not cut it.

“Wait, wait, you mean like, Lloyd and Zelos and all them can only reach Level 50?!” Yes it's a move done by Low Budget to ensure you actually play as Emil and Marta and use the monster system. I personally don't blame them for this and you honestly refuse to play as anybody but Lloyd then you can just return your game, especially because Marta is damn near broken.

Graphics: 6/10
Could be better, but oh wait, yeah this is a Wii title. The graphics aren't nearly as fantastic as what we got in Vesperia (remember, this game had a low budget) but trust me when I say they are a step up from the first Tales of Symphonia. Thankfully the cut scenes used slightly improved graphics but it still leaves much to be desired. The environments also lack due to most of them being recycled from Tales of Symphonia.

On the other hand the Skits (you know, those ones you hit “Z” or “C” to watch?) are a huge step up. Not only is the text actually readable now, but the bubbles themselves are pretty animated. The skits are great, well-animated so there isn't really much to say. If you played ToS you'll notice the huge step up.

Sound: 7/10
The music is good although it's mainly recycled from ToS. This causes some of it to become pretty repetitive after only a few minutes. The new themes created for this game are all great and it never really seems out of place. There are also a few new battle themes that work really well including slightly altered battle music from ToS. All in all the music is great but there is room for improvement.

The voice acting is... solid. The new voice actors did a decent enough job, especially Laura Bailey (Marta), Kyle Hebert (Richter) and Johnny Yong Bosch (Emil / That guy from Bleach). I couldn't really find any complaints with the new characters at all, except some of them took long pauses between lines, but that's probably Namco editing if anything. The main complaint for many people regarding voice acting comes from the returning characters, especially the eight party members. Some of the old voice actors returned such as Heather Hogan (Colette) and Tara Strong (Presea). However the rest were all replaced. Some such as Troy Baker (Regal) were well-received. Others might honestly ruin certain aspects of the game for you. A very common complaint is the horrible voice acting produced for Zelos and Lloyd; two of the most popular characters. Getting a voice actor who sounds somewhat similar (again, Troy Baker) is fine, but the new actors for Lloyd and Zelos sound nothing like the old and it sometimes comes across like they didn't even try to read their lines like the old actors (R.I.P.: “Don't hate me ‘cause I'm beautiful!”).

Replayability: 9/10
Something Tales has always been good about is the New Game +. Once you complete the game once you access the GRADE shop with which you can get Double EXP, keep your old items or monsters, and even bump up the damage you and enemies take! If this alone doesn't make the game worth playing again (it's not like it's 50 hours like Symphonia 1 was) but there's also a new dungeon you can only access on the second playthrough in addition to new weapons. Couple that with various difficulty settings and you have a game that's worth playing through two or three times.


Final Thoughts
All in all Dawn of the New World isn't a bad game, it's just too much of a fanservice. It seems you return to all these old dungeons and locations just for the sake of saying, “Hey I remember this!” There weren't enough new dungeons and the plot just wasn't what a lot of people had hoped for. As I explained in the Story section, the eight elemental dungeons/items to collect has been done to death and we've just grown tired of it. I'd like to hope that some of the other oversights such as voice acting and graphics could have been rectified had Low Budget not been so eager to get two games out in one year for two separate systems, but what can you do. The game was good, but certainly not game of the year quality. Tales of Symphonia is often called the “Final Fantasy 7 of Tales” and following that trend it could be said, “Dawn of the New World is the Dirge of Cerberus of Tales,” because you know... both were disappointments.

Story: 6/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics: 6/10
Sound: 7/10
Replayability: 9/10

Final Score: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/09

Game Release: Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (US, 11/11/08)