 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| The Entertainment Review |
| Genre: RPG Developer: Namco Bandai Publisher: Namco Bandai |
The long running Japanese role playing Tales series has a huge fan base, but for newcomers it may be a little bit hard to see why.
“Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World” is an ordinary RPG game without a single original idea. A sullen country boy with a bad
haircut is destined to save the world from monsters through a poorly translated story. Everything about the game feels old and doesn’t
offer anything new to fans of the series
“Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World” is set two years after the GameCube game and features several returning characters.
Fans of the first game will enjoy returning to this world and seeing their old friends. The story is about the world falling into ruin and a
character named Emil is the one who can set it right. Players are supposed to keep track of things like the Chosen of Regeneration, a
Blood Purge, a Great Tree, the Giant Kharlan, a new World Tree and much more. It is all just fancy dressing for what is really a dull
adventure.
Emil is probably one of the worst heroes of all time. When in battle he gets a little braver, but for the rest of the game he whines and
apologizes. A young girl names Marta is his primary companion and love interest through this game. Thanks to the terrible
translations, their back and forth dialogue doesn’t work and what could have been a charming romance comes across as childish.
Most of the folks people meet along the way suffer from a similar lack of depth.
This new game to the series certainly looks like a GameCube sequel. While the menus and maps are slick, the in-game visuals aren’t
very impressive. Some of the character animations are good, but for the most part the game looks very last generation. Several towns
show nice detail, but most dungeons are dull and lifeless. Environments aren’t very interactive either.
Battles are not random, and unfold in real time as in previous titles in the series. Players have several different attack methods at their
disposal, as the A button will chain combos, B will perform magic attacks, and C will get the player’s companions together for a team
attack. As characters progress in levels they will learn new skills, but only a limited amount of skill points can be used at one time, so
there is a nice bit of strategy in deciding which skills to use with each member.
New to the series is a monster hunting feature where monsters that are defeated can be added to their party, if certain conditions are
met in battle. Captured beasts can fight along with Emil in battle and cooking meals for them will improve their abilities. Of course
countless other games have done the monster hunting thing, and have done it better than this game does.
This is a very slow game from the slow story line to the battle loading times that take several seconds to the strange pauses in
dialogue. It is also very linear. The game leads players by the hand from one location to the next without any choice on their part.
Players are told where to o next to move the story along. Towns usually have a guild that will send players on a little quest to earn an
item, but even that doesn’t provide a sense of freedom. Players are warped to a small dungeon to collect the item and they are warped
back when the quest is completed. Even weapons and armor is acquired linearly. Each new town will have the next level of equipment
in stock, so there isn’t any choice of what players can do.
All the voice acting in the game is nice, but it can be so hard to understand players might wonder if it is more of a loss. It probably
wouldn’t be so bad if players could listen to the Japanese voice track, but that is not an option. While these provide some good
information, they aren’t exactly animated. Characters fade between different poses and the fade is just long enough to feel weird and
ineffective. As best the music is forgettable, it is pretty cheesy and will seem reminiscent of the early ‘90s midi music.
Even with all of these complaints, the game isn’t a complete loss. It isn’t broken; it isn’t glitch, which means it works. The story is very
long and there are thousands of lines of voice work. The graphics, while not amazing, are good enough. In “Tales of Symphonia: Dawn
of the New World” had come out 10 years ago it would have been fairly impressive. The games biggest crime that the game committed
is that it was common.
Wii gamers that are desperate for a role playing game, especially those that enjoyed the first game of the series might be able to
overlook this latest game’s tired game play and story line. This game was made for those fans and they probably decided long ago to
get the sequel. However, games have moved beyond linear story lines. The real time battle system is fun, but trudging through hours
and hours of awkward dialogue isn’t. The game’s visuals aren’t anything terrible, but they don’t look anything that couldn’t have been
done on the GameCube. Deing the only RPG on the Nintendo Wii’s horizon, this doesn’t feel like a relief, but instead a depressing
disappointment.
“Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World” is an ordinary RPG game without a single original idea. A sullen country boy with a bad
haircut is destined to save the world from monsters through a poorly translated story. Everything about the game feels old and doesn’t
offer anything new to fans of the series
“Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World” is set two years after the GameCube game and features several returning characters.
Fans of the first game will enjoy returning to this world and seeing their old friends. The story is about the world falling into ruin and a
character named Emil is the one who can set it right. Players are supposed to keep track of things like the Chosen of Regeneration, a
Blood Purge, a Great Tree, the Giant Kharlan, a new World Tree and much more. It is all just fancy dressing for what is really a dull
adventure.
Emil is probably one of the worst heroes of all time. When in battle he gets a little braver, but for the rest of the game he whines and
apologizes. A young girl names Marta is his primary companion and love interest through this game. Thanks to the terrible
translations, their back and forth dialogue doesn’t work and what could have been a charming romance comes across as childish.
Most of the folks people meet along the way suffer from a similar lack of depth.
This new game to the series certainly looks like a GameCube sequel. While the menus and maps are slick, the in-game visuals aren’t
very impressive. Some of the character animations are good, but for the most part the game looks very last generation. Several towns
show nice detail, but most dungeons are dull and lifeless. Environments aren’t very interactive either.
Battles are not random, and unfold in real time as in previous titles in the series. Players have several different attack methods at their
disposal, as the A button will chain combos, B will perform magic attacks, and C will get the player’s companions together for a team
attack. As characters progress in levels they will learn new skills, but only a limited amount of skill points can be used at one time, so
there is a nice bit of strategy in deciding which skills to use with each member.
New to the series is a monster hunting feature where monsters that are defeated can be added to their party, if certain conditions are
met in battle. Captured beasts can fight along with Emil in battle and cooking meals for them will improve their abilities. Of course
countless other games have done the monster hunting thing, and have done it better than this game does.
This is a very slow game from the slow story line to the battle loading times that take several seconds to the strange pauses in
dialogue. It is also very linear. The game leads players by the hand from one location to the next without any choice on their part.
Players are told where to o next to move the story along. Towns usually have a guild that will send players on a little quest to earn an
item, but even that doesn’t provide a sense of freedom. Players are warped to a small dungeon to collect the item and they are warped
back when the quest is completed. Even weapons and armor is acquired linearly. Each new town will have the next level of equipment
in stock, so there isn’t any choice of what players can do.
All the voice acting in the game is nice, but it can be so hard to understand players might wonder if it is more of a loss. It probably
wouldn’t be so bad if players could listen to the Japanese voice track, but that is not an option. While these provide some good
information, they aren’t exactly animated. Characters fade between different poses and the fade is just long enough to feel weird and
ineffective. As best the music is forgettable, it is pretty cheesy and will seem reminiscent of the early ‘90s midi music.
Even with all of these complaints, the game isn’t a complete loss. It isn’t broken; it isn’t glitch, which means it works. The story is very
long and there are thousands of lines of voice work. The graphics, while not amazing, are good enough. In “Tales of Symphonia: Dawn
of the New World” had come out 10 years ago it would have been fairly impressive. The games biggest crime that the game committed
is that it was common.
Wii gamers that are desperate for a role playing game, especially those that enjoyed the first game of the series might be able to
overlook this latest game’s tired game play and story line. This game was made for those fans and they probably decided long ago to
get the sequel. However, games have moved beyond linear story lines. The real time battle system is fun, but trudging through hours
and hours of awkward dialogue isn’t. The game’s visuals aren’t anything terrible, but they don’t look anything that couldn’t have been
done on the GameCube. Deing the only RPG on the Nintendo Wii’s horizon, this doesn’t feel like a relief, but instead a depressing
disappointment.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
