Tales of Symphonia 2

Today was a relatively average day. Did some grant work and played some games. Tonight (well, technically yesterday but I'm writing this at 1:30AM so I still consider the 21st) they were having the ODST midnight release. I was gonna go but got busy talking to some people and didn't feel like fighting the crowds. I didn't really have time to play it tonight anyway since I'm heading straight to bed after writing this (business trip tomorrow).

Found out dad's getting a root canal due to some infection he's had for a week or two that's been causing him to feel down. I can tell he's been a little nervous about not shaking being sick so easily. The male side of our family has a history of dying in their mid to late 60s and dad is 63 so I guess he was worried it was something serious. Anyway I'll be wishing him the best and that there are no complications. He came over to drop some pictures for the web site (which I did a little bit of work on today) but I think he mostly just wanted to see me. I could tell he was uneasy about the operation.

Anyway, the game we're doing today is Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Same format as last time. Also: Spoilers for the original Tales of Symphonia.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

Overall:

A sequel in both name and story to the popular Tales of Symphonia, Dawn of the New World (I always call it ToS2 in my mind, so if I slip you know why) is set a few years after the original and the two worlds have been joined as one. Of course all is not well or there wouldn't be much of a game and in this case the problem is that all over the world there have been mysterious and deadly weather patterns popping up. Also the first game's main character Lloyd has apparently gone bad and is causing destruction all over the planet (though apparently only you seem to know about it somehow) and the new main character has a vested interest in stopping him as his town was one of those hit. There are two new playable characters: Emil (the one just mentioned) and Marta (mysterious girl involved with the the weather thing) as well as the old characters from the first game joining (and leaving) your party throughout the game. You journey to a bunch of familiar places to try to right the wrongs and save the day using Tales' action RPG battling system.

Pros:

This game retains the same fun battle system of the first ToS game and actually expands on it in some ways by letting you move in any direction and not just towards or away from the enemy you're targeting. Anyone who liked the feel of playing as Lloyd will find a good fit with Emil and the few people who liked playing as Colette will find Marta to be similar though a tad more healing based then Colette was. The graphics are about the same so if you like the anime cel-shaded look then that's a plus (if you don't add this to the next paragraph). Multi-player is present like it was in the first game so you can play as a friend if you want.

Cons:

One of biggest flaws in this game is how they tried to shoe horn in some pokemon monster collecting crap into the game. While relevant to the plot, it feels rather tacked on in how it's implemented into the game. Combine this with the fact that the Tales 1 characters don't level up (even after they join you permanently at the end of the game) and you're stuck with half of your team being grossly under leveled since the levels the ToS1 guys join you at are (with the exception of the first time Colette joins you) much lower then Emil and Marta or having to collect and train monsters to use in your party. You can not control the monsters and even if you choose the under leveled route you can only play with two human players as opposed to 4 of your friends like in the first game. The monsters actually level up insanely fast, they have a Disgaea-ish transmigrating thing where they go back to level one but are a higher class of the same kind of monster and retain a percentage of their stats (in this case I think it's roughly 20%). A wolf I caught near the beginning and have been using throughout the game has transmigrated 2 or 3 times (from about level 20-30 each time) and is still 30 levels higher then Emil and Marta who have also been used the entire time. It feels like the developers knew people tend to not play as monsters in RPGs where established story characters existed and instead of letting us have levelable ToS1 guys (and you can't change their equipment either) they said screw it and practically forced you to use monsters. This problem is compounded by the fact that neither Emil or Marta are likable. Emil is your typical mega-pussy who is afraid of everything, except in other games it doesn't take them 50 hours to get over it to an acceptable degree. But Emil is still better then Marta who is a lovey dovey jailbate girl who literally can't go a single cut scene or battle without saying how much she loves Emil and wants to marry him. I'm not joking, that's not much of an exaggeration, 90+% of cut scenes involve her wanting to jump his bones and most of her end of battle quotes involve love and loving Emil. If I wasn't playing with a friend I would have switched her out of the party for another level 80 or 90 monster. To pile on more complaints the game designers were pretty lazy when it came to dungeons as you go back to all of the summon shrines from the first game as all the macguffins (in this case "Centurions" that control a given element) all happen to be in the same spots as the elemental summons were. Lazy. They added a side quest thing that you can access from the Katz guild as well. In theory I like this idea that they are giving you some straight forward side quests that aren't easily missable like some of the sidequests in the first game were (they can be missed if you go too far in the story, but the katz are everywhere and you have a long time to do them). Alas they screwed it up as each chapter of the game they repeat 60-70% of the quests but with slightly stronger monsters in the exact same dungeons with monsters placed at the exact same points and chests placed at the exact same points. And there are only 4 locations (Forest, Volcano, Ice Cave, Windy Cave) these quests take place in so not only are you doing the literal same quest over and over in the same locations you are doing quests that are 95% the same in the same locations as well (seriously, the only difference between the "different" quests is that the cut scene at the end and after each mid boss are different). Oh and you have no real black mage to play as, so I hope you weren't planning on playing Genis as Marta only gets offensive magic at about level 35+ and even then it's two spells of the same type.

Overall Rating:4.75/10

Closing Remarks:

As you can see from the sheer size of the Pro paragraph versus the Con one that this game has a lot stuff that they messed up on, much of it actually a downgrade from the first game. I was gonna give it a 4 or 4.25 but just writing all that con stuff made me dislike it more. In it's favor the fun battle system is all it has to stand on and even that was hurt by reducing multiplayer and gimping the ToS1 guys while forcing a monster collectathon. I loved ToS1 and had high hopes for this game and if they had just kept it the same with a new story it would have been significantly better then this. While a good battle system can go a long way in a game where you have to use it hundreds of times, that alone can't save a bad story that sounds like a bad fanfiction, bad characters, bad dialogue, last gen graphics, and the sheer lost potential this game has. That's the worst part, you could see how this would be a fun game if only they left the good formula alone. So yeah, skip on this unless you have a high tolerance of annoying characters and LOVE the ToS1 battle system.