The fact is that Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World evolves in some aspects, while stops or even goes back in others. Even so, it doesn't mean it isn't a good game, although it's not as "epic" as the first one. The ones who played the original Tales of Symphonia will see that Dawn of the New World is a new and beautiful adventure, but not as good as the other. And the ones who didn't play it will enjoy the charming characters and the excellent battle system.
Dawn of the New World is not as good as the former title, but at least – especially due to the feature, that you are able to catch monsters and send them into battle on your side – a great role playing game on the Wii.
This game has an undeservedly bad reputation. Probably because they mismarketed it as Symphonia 2, but then made all the Symphonia 1 characters side characters that only visit the party. So just don't go in expecting that. Another problem is that the inbetween story and antagonists were cut short and are pretty undeveloped.
Still, the final story & antagonist is pretty good and it has the best (funniest) skits in the series (I know Phantasia, Symphonia1+2, Abyss, Vesperia, Graces, Xillia1+2, Zestiria and Berseria).
For me that's worth alot. My primary attraction point to the Tales series is the skits. The characters are fine too.
Overall I actually enjoyed this the 2nd most after Xillia, about on par with Abyss and Xillia 2. (Yes, I liked this more than the original Symphonia. Maybe part of the reason I wasn't disappointed with it not being all that Symphonia.)
Wonder what the hell's up with the mixed reviews. Sure, it's presentation is disappointing, and not all the characters are great, but this is a diamond in the rough when it comes to RPGs.
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a worthy conclusion to the story which begun on Nintendo GameCube but it is not easy to overcome the boring beginning of the game, which is recommended especially to fans of the prequel since anybody not familiar to old characters and places will not be equally impressed by the fairly short plot.
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World's biggest drawback is simply that it's a direct sequel to Tales of Symphonia. While this provides the game with a fairly large potential audience of fans, the story draws very heavily from the events of the first game, and while it's possible to pick up the pieces during the game, those who haven't played Tales of Symphonia will likely find themselves lost.
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a lengthy linear role-playing game that will please fans of the series who aren’t looking for something new.
If you can look past the last-last-gen flaws that absolutely should be gone by now, there’s a totally playable bit of gaming here that’ll scratch your RPG itch for the time being.
This game stands out as one of my personal favorites. For not only having a great compelling storyline, but for having great game play as well. Sadly there was no free roaming and the graphics were dated, but better than some games of that time "cough" Sonic 06 "cough". I have never played the original Tales of Symphonia and if what people say is true. Tales of Symphonia will blow my mind since this game was nearly perfect and is a must have.
There are big nostalgia goggles when it comes when comparing Dawn vs the OG Symphonia. While i am finishing the first Symphonia again i'm reminded how much i like this one, the Pokemon kind of aspect of the game was a lot of fun to mess with, the characters while cliche can be very nice, specially the whole master and student thing Emil has with Richter throughout the game.
Fun game, slow at times, less annoying puzzles than the original that's for sure. fun overall.
Right away, you have to know, this about half the size of a standard RPG game. It plays like any other Tales game and has some cool features, like a monster development system; which feels forced at first, but works.
Combat is still fun and tense as it always has been. The story and characters seemed forced and almost plays as an epilogue to the original title and the main plot doesn't seem to even matter once you get further in the game. Despite the fact that the newer characters do tend to grow on you, EVENTUALLY.
I liked the game overall and by the time I was losing interest in the story, the game was finished. I think it being a shorter game worked out for me. But for the price it was originally sold at, I can see where the anger for the game comes from.
I finished the game before on Wii, i was deceived but i did kinda enjoyed seeing the follow up of the story and now i'm trying to do the game again on PS3 few year after and i just can't... Emil & Marta i really hate them both, i'm replaying the game it's like really boring and hard to keep up. I feel like the game lack in quality... It got to be the shortest Tales of, i finished the game in 22 hours... The music are good. Is it a bad game? i don't know but it's not a good Tales of.
Let me first just say I have never been more let down in my life than the day I got this game.
-Graphics
I'm going to start with the positive here, graphically I think this game was a step up from the first game and while not greatly impressive they still don't weigh the game down and fit fairly well as an enhanced version of the first games graphical style.
-Gameplay-
The select-a-destination world map system definitely breaks immersion compared to it's predecessor and is pretty terrible as a whole but that's something I could forgive. Where the game really does you wrong is the combat; Stale (techs with terrible combo-ability, repetitive even to the first game), attacks that break the flow of combat by triggering cut-scenes during combat which become painfully repetitive. Terrible implementation of a heavily Pokemon inspired system(see NiNoKuni for better implementation).
-Sound-
Don't get me started on how terrible the voice acting is, the first games voice acting fit and was definitely passable albeit cheesy at times but this game takes everything ToS did right and defecates all over it. To sum it up it was: extremely cheesy, lacking any believable emotion, poorly timed and worst of all it just didn't fit with a solid 90% of the characters (notably the first games protagonist, Lloyd). The sound design while not terrible was definitely not something worth mentioning.
-Story-
Somewhat similar to the first games story which is alright for a sequel. But they try to make this dark tone that ends up coming off as cheesy and pretty boring but again I could have forgiven that. The worst part about the story is that for a sequel it's incredibly inconsistent with the first game, they pull plot devices out of nowhere that have no relation to or directly contradict the happenings in the first ie. summon spirits and Centurions (don't you think we should have known about those in the first game??). Honestly I think the story is fine on paper but is so poorly implemented into the game that it just comes off as if it was written by a child.
-Characters-
Emil is one of the most annoying characters I've heard he's whiny at first and when he's not whiny they try to give him this cool, dark, hero attitude but they try way too hard and it ends up being just as annoying. Marta's character can be annoying at times but nowhere near as bad as Emil. The other new characters aren't notable except maybe Tenebrae who can be pretty witty, as for the old character's none of them seem to fit.
This game does a few things right but it's too-little-too late, if you're a fan of the original steer clear from this game, I've tried 3 times to play this game each time I've dedicated myself to this game, giving it another clean slate and a fair chance I can never get more than half way through the game. If I had to choose 1 word to express this game I would choose: disappointing or lackluster.
SummarySet two years after the events of the award-winning Tales of Symphonia for the Nintendo GameCube, Dawn of the New World follows the journey of two new young heroes, Emil Castagnier and Marta Lualdi, as they seek to uncover the mystery of why their world has fallen into ruin. In their quest, their paths will cross with the original cast o...