Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

So the purpose of this blog is not to review games. In fact, while I've talked a fair about a bunch of games in the past, I don't think I've ever done an actual review of one before as I have with anime and books and voice actresses. But I'm going to do one today for Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World. Why? Well, there are a few reasons, but the main reason is because IGN hit the game with a 6.7 review, which I thought was rather shocking score for a game I've been anticipating for months to receive. I usually trust IGN's judgement, but I got the game anyway and have discovered that they were... well... pretty wrong. And I figured that it'd be interesting for a few of you to talk about why that is.

Let me start by saying what's wrong with the IGN review. It's pretty simple, really: The guy assigned to review it hadn't played the fucking first fucking game.

Imagine someone going to a bookstore and picking up a copy of Harry Potter of the Prisoner of Azkaban without first reading Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. Now imagine that same person publishing an article in a big name literary review site and complaining about how he had trouble keeping track of what's Hogwarts and Voldemort and all these weird details about Harry's early life that he just can't get his head around. It's an absurd way to premise a review and it's more or less exactly what this Daemon guy did here. The IGN guy complains about how he has trouble following the dialogue, but that's because half the dialogue in the game is referring to events of the first game. Geez.

So anyway, I will now give the internet a review of the game from the perspective of someone who has actually played the first game.

In short: It's not as good as the first Symphonia, but it's still a pretty damn good game.

Dawn of the New World is set two years after the events of Symphonia. I won't talk about the plot, since Frad is a lazy fuck and hasn't even started the game yet, but the new story centers around a fellow named Emil and a girl called Marta. The original Symphonia cast are still very important (Lloyd especially plays a rather surprising role), but the focus of the story is on those two.

Often when you have a sequel to successful game, you have a tendency on the creators' part to be conservative. Just make the same sorts of sights and noises that the player is used to and you'll go far. And to a certain extent, this is what Namco did. I'd say about 60% of the game occurs in locales are places that are from the first game. Which makes sense, of course. Why, after all, would Meltokio suddenly look completely different? Although I do wonder who it was that went into the old dungeons and refilled all the chests.

But when it comes to story, Namco was much bolder. The original Symphonia hit on themes like racism, betrayal, slavery, revenge and just generally trying to walk the best path in a difficult situation. The Affection system could provide a love subplot, though that was just a subplot. In any case, Lloyd's unwavering optimism could make me feel a naceous at times, but it really was part of his charm. Dawn of the New World, on the other hand, does touch on those themes but make no mistake: this is a love story.

When I heard that they were scrapping Symphonia's famous Affection system, I wondered what the hell they could be thinking. I figured it was because they were making budget cutbacks or something, but the real reason turned out to be because they wanted to focus in on these two in a deeper way. And while occasionally the story lapses into bouts of cheese, you do have what I think is an interesting tale here. Emil, while initially extremely hatable, has a few interesting surprises inside of him while Marta, while being a tad over-the-top in some respects, is pretty well made with recognizable human emotions. Most importantly, the two go well together and I applaud the creators for taking this path rather than rehashing their past success.

Beyond Marta and Emil, there is still quite a lot to be said. The original Symphonia cast was way more rich and well-developed than pretty much any other J-RPG I've played, but what the creators seem determined to do in this game is fill in any gaps in their dynamics from the first game. You get to find out how Sheena gets along with Regal and how Presea interacts with Raine. It's not just random ToS fan service, but rather genuine character development.

Going beyond story, the biggest change to the game is probably changing the world map into a sort of Mario 3-esque level system. When you clear dungeon A or town A, you pick the next point on the map and go there. This saves time, but it really brings the immersion level down a notch and Namco actually admitted that the only reason they switched to something so low-grade because of time constraints. Weak. Also, since I was pretty interested in the main story I spent most of the time just clicking ahead to the next town, so needless to say I missed a crapload of subevents. Oh well.

The combat system is a sort of beefed up version of Symphonia's with a better camera and the ability to run in any direction you like. Occasionally you'll have a giant dragon ass blocking the entire screen, but that hasn't been a huge problem. The game also isn't as hard as the first game and being able to map 16 move keys (B + stick/D-pad/Wiimote shakes) makes fights more engaging as you aren't locked into a certain move pattern as you were in the first game. It isn't too difficult, though there is a hard mode to be tried.

Less exceptional is the pokemon system they added with 'monster pacts'. This addition is retarded for many reasons, but here are three:

1 - There are only four damn slots in the party. Why do I need to capture monsters? I have humans I can put in those fucking slots.
2 - Capturing the fuckers is a pain.
3 - It's horribly abusable. The second creature I caught was a wolf who has evolved into this snow-wolf demigod thing. It's around level 90, has as many hitpoints as Emil and Marta put together and deals like 1500 damage a hit. I rarely use the damn thing because it's stupid and I'd rather have humans in my team rather than some stupid snow dog, but its existence bothers me.

On a brighter note, customization from the first game is also back and beefed up. Enemies will drop all sorts of crap and you can use said crap to make shinier weapons and armour. The system itself works well and if you use it properly you can keep your equipment ahead of the curve, but the interface could really have used an overhaul. Dividing items into categories (weapons/armours/accessories/etc) would have saved me a lot of scrolling. Materials are pretty easy to find, with an abundant supply available through the game's subquests.

But that brings me to the game's biggest flaw. Remember the Sword Dancer from part 1? Or Abyssion? Or any of the many many subquests in the game? Yeah, Dawn of the World has almost none of that. Instead what you can do is go to the local Katz guy and ask from a quest. You then are teleported from town to some sort of quest zone. Quests vary from everything between hunting down some thieves to delivering some food. Interesting, no?

But here's the catch: They're all the fucking same! There's a wind cave, a fire cave, a mine and maybe two or three other quest zones. So if the bandit quest is in the wind cave, you get to her by dropping a rock to open a door and then going in to kill her. If the delivery quest is in that wind cave, then guess what? You do the exact same fucking thing with the rock dropping!

I don't know what the hell they were thinking when they made that crap. The things are optional and don't detract from the main storyline at all, but the fact that Namco decided to make these stupid pointless things rather than the robust subquests you had in Symphonia tells me that they are lazy fucks.

The voice acting... sigh. Rie Kugimiya originally voice Marta. I've chosen not to rant too much about what a crime it is to dub over Rie though, so I won't. (Oh, and for the record, in spite of what impression you might have gotten from the last entry, I am not stalking that woman. Or well, not yet at least.)

The voice acting is solid. Of the returning cast, some of them retain their original voice actors and some don't. Quite frankly, of the ones that have been changed, I think they sound better. Don't get me wrong, the new actors sound a lot like the old ones and only Lloyd's voice sounds completely different. But their delivery is just a lot better. Genis especially I think sounds a lot better now.

There are a lot more battle quotes, though occasionally they'll clash and break the immersion. Like for instance, this is something I often hear in boss fights:

Marta: "You're using too many items!"
Emil: "It's to win!"

*two seconds later*

Emil: "Don't use so many items!"
Marta: "But this is more fun!"

So apparently they think alike. Or something. But other than that, the battle quotes are still nice and quirky. There have been a few times when the victory quotes have made me laugh aloud even.

Still, while the game lacks some of the depth of the first game, what with no world map, pokemon and a paltry number of real subquests. However, the story has many virtues, the characters you know and love from the first game are back and better than ever. The voice acting is good (though it needs a dual-audio Japanese) and combat is fun.

Overall, I would give it an 8.5 of 10.

As a side note, do you see how this blog has a 'There's More' and 'Contract Post' button? Anyone know how I can do that here? That'd be nice, I think.