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Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World Review--

It used to be that folks who like the Tales RPGs – here in America, anyway – had something of a persecution complex. They had reason enough to feel persecuted, of course. Namco never bothered to localize Tales of Destiny 2, the original Tales of Destiny came here with lots of content clipped out, Tales of Eternia went through a confusing name change for no particular reason, and that’s just a few of the things that tended to get them in an uproar.

Nowadays, Tales fans can’t complain about that stuff so much. Their favorite games come out in the states like clockwork now – games like this one, the sequel to the GameCube’s Tales of Symphonia – and the quality of the average RPG translation has soared over the last several years. On the other hand, now that we’re seeing so much more of the series, and in a form much more faithful to the original Japanese releases, it’s becoming harder to see just what’s so great about these games anyhow.

Dawn of a New World has a few things going for it. Like the Star Ocean series, Tales has a durable action battle system that makes combat a fun challenge for your reflexes, and this particular version gives it a Pokemon-like twist.

Twice Told Tale

The original Tales of Symphonia was about a bunch of teenagers who got together and saved the world. (Bet you’d never have guessed.) The sequel begins two years later, and shows us a different perspective on the first game’s heroes – the first thing we see is Lloyd Irving, who led that bunch of teenagers, carving up our new hero’s parents and setting fire to their town.

One might say he’s just turned from one RPG cliché into another. Formerly the spunky fresh-faced boy hero, now he’s the implacable henchman of the domineering evil empire. (He’s also opening the game by destroying the hero’s home village, which is another one from the classic cliché file.) There are worse ways to kick off a sequel, though – seeing a familiar character in such an unfamiliar role leaves us a little unsure of what to expect.

For a little while, anyway. Soon enough, Dawn of a New World settles down to standard fantasy-quest plot starring standard fantasy characters. There’s the foreboding mentor figure, the mysterious girl with hidden powers, and worst of all, the gutless, whiny, insecure leading “man.” Emil, the main character, eventually grows something like a spine, but waiting for him to get around to it is no fun at all.

Out of Proportion

The trouble with the character concepts extends to how they look, not just how they’re written. Somewhere, someone seems to have made a basic mistake when it comes to designing this game’s character models. The animation is technically solid – surprisingly lifelike, in fact – but it’s the wrong kind of animation for these big-headed 3D cartoon munchkins. Realistic human body language performed by caricatures with massive Popeye hands and simple, nearly blank facial expressions just winds up looking creepy.

The lines that they’re asked to speak don’t help much. Namco’s translation isn’t bad, but either way, the root of the problem goes deeper – a lot of this game’s dialogue was unsalvageably silly to begin with. It would sound cheesy and overblown in any language, no matter how much an editor tried to hammer it into shape.

Gotta…Well, You Know

This more or less leaves the battle system to save the game, and at least it makes a reasonably good try. Early on, it seems just like the combat in the original Symphonia – you lock on to a target and fight them in real time along a 2D plane, as if you’re playing a quick game of Street Fighter against each monster on the battlefield. Soon enough, though, the game heads off in a different direction. Instead of collecting a party full of other human allies, Emil mainly fights alongside the monsters he captures in combat.

At first, this seems like a pretty neat idea. The game boasts dozens of different monsters to capture, and it’s fun to be able to mix and match Emil’s backup. (He also gets different special attack moves depending on which monsters he fights with.) After a while, though, flaws in the system start to show. The process of capturing a new monster is tedious and repetitive, and a lot of them don’t actually offer that much tangible assistance in a fight.

Fans of the series, and especially the original Tales of Symphonia, may still want to give this sequel a go. They’ll want to see what the first game’s characters are up to, and they might have a little more patience when it comes to this kind of dialogue and storytelling. Anybody else, though, can probably find a much better RPG somewhere this season.

Article By: D.F. Smith