Great RPG, but stained with a slow intro, terrible choice of heroes, and too much time spent watching instead of playing
This game makes a nice first impression starting from the beautiful menu screen. It's phenomenal, I mean you could have thought it was ps3 or xbox360 or something, this is a lot to say about just a menu screen but it just looked so artistically refined. Unfortunately, there's a brief "snap back to reality" when to venture past the menu screen and into the game. Ah yes, I am playing the Nintendo Wii after all. The graphics and artwork has shown considerable improvement from the prequel but definitely nothing to call home about. Occasionally the game suffers from some noticeable frame rate drops as well but nothing that will disrupt gameplay.
Jumping into the first "Tales of Symphonia," was a blast, but jumping into this one feels like falling from a twenty story building, only to have the flag pole from below impaled through your own pelvis having a few brief seconds of excruciating pain before bleed to your own death. Okay maybe that's overdoing it but beginning of this game is insanely boring, within an hour, you'll be running around as a very wuss like hero, barely getting any fighting action, and watching unnecessary cutscenes with awkward conversations between characters. I'm sorry Namco, but was this game tested before its release? Did I accidentally pick up some sort of beta version for this game? I find incredibly hard to believe they'd actually release a game, let alone a tales game with this painfully slow eye gouging introduction. Provided you can endure an agonizing first hour, and not much better second hour, you will be rewarded with a decent RPG experience – yes kids, there IS light at the end of the tunnel. Let's not push it though, the storyline is respectable but does seem a bit cluttered at times, and fairly linear leading up to the end. It has its moments, but not too many huge surprises. It manages to be charming but sometimes overly tacky. The intro could have definitely been improved and the ending could probably been a little less predictable. Let's just say overall it's alright, I mean not bad, good job, not great job, just good job. As far as relationship to the first prequel's story, there is none, but you sure will learn a ton about what happened in the original game if you haven't played it yet.
Throughout most of the game, you will be playing with the two new characters to the series featured on the box art – Emil and Marta. Emil is a boy who suffers from conflicting personalities, one of his personalities being a timid, low self esteem wuss. But when he senses danger, he changes into a rage driven killing machine controlled by a summon spirit. The game's 2nd most significant character, Marta, is a girl who has a very tomboy like personality but an obsessive love for Emil. There are also other new characters to the game that make this sequel feel like a fresh game, but veterans will be pleased to see many of the prequel's characters return to play significant roles in Dawn of the New World. Unfortunately, while the two new main characters spice up things for old tales players, I ultimately believe that they failed to be anymore than annoying throughout the game, and overshadowed the importance of other characters in the story. The main character, Emil's wuss like trait was truly overdone, after hearing him talk in such a sissy voice for so long, the other part of his personality is like a breath of fresh air. His wuss like personality actually starts to fade and becomes less annoying throughout the game, but the other main character – Marta, only becomes more annoying. Early parts of the game she's relatively cheery, and light hearted but deeper into the plot it's like she's like a teenage girl having her first period. To sum it up, I would have been fine with just a sequel using the original characters from, and I probably wouldn't mind inviting Richter either. (A new character done right)
The gameplay is overall a very satisfying experience but doesn't go without it's "What was Namco thinking?" moments. First off, the battle system has improved from the prequel. It now offers ability to free move, and the camera no longer locks on just to player 1. With a wide variety of moves and techniques available to perform on enemies, this game is great grounds for both a solid solo as well as co-op experience. The former "unison" bar where everyone performed a tech move at once from the prequel has been modified into more of a "lets all do a badass move at once," bar. It's definitely results in a more effective attack then the former combining of 4 tech moves, but removes the freedom of being able to choose which moves are going to be combined. The addition of new "Mystic Artes," add a whole new element to the game as well, allowing human characters to perform an overwhelmingly powerful move in which they even have their own little cutscene while they perform it, which is a another positive addition to the battle system from the original game. The only drawback to the new battle system is the new monster capture element. It allows you to capture defeated monsters and use them to fight with you, but it's just an unnecessary kicker to the game should have never been added because fighting with humans has an overwhelming advantage over using monsters. Plus human players cannot play as monsters, throwing less encouragement to even use monsters to begin with. To top it all off you don't consistently have 4 humans in your party until halfway through the game, so you're forced to rely on monsters. But overall, battling is probably the best aspect of this game, it's awesome…
Outside of battle, you are able to travel throughout areas on foot as the main character, Emil. The areas are well detailed but generally offer minimal interaction. Unlike the prequel, to travel from town to town in this game you select where you want to go on a map, no free world travel like the original. This brings to the game a new convenience of not having to travel across the whole map, but takes away a chance to discover new things and fight enemies on the world map like the original. At least the game doesn't mislead you often, making it quite obvious where you should be moving to, often activating a cutscene to advance the plot.
Oh man… I just said "cutscene," After playing this game though I seriously don't think I want to see another cutscene in any game for the next year. Dialogue, skits, bubble conversations, call them what you want – I don't care, its ridiculous how much time in the game you don't even spend playing. Sometimes it's you've just left a cutscene just to walk 5 more steps, have your screen fade to black again and watch another damn pointless cutscene. It's like your drowning in cutscenes, you're trying to find the surface but it's like you're under twenty kids on blow-up rafts, you think you've just escaped one cutscene then the next one hits you in the face. There's no reason for there to be so much game play time taken up by cutscenes unless the first two words in the game's title is "metal gear" NOT "Tales of," Obviously there are ways to speed up through these parts, but they often contain information relevant to the plot, or what you need to do next, but many times they don't. I found it quite irritating at times.
At the end of the day though, I respect Namco for making a decent attempt at providing a sequel for a great GameCube classic. I think ultimately they're more capable of doing better work than this, and I truly wish they would have taken a little more time refined some of the rough edges of what could have been an amazing sequel. I'd definitely recommend to fans of the original and RPG fans alike to at least give it a try.