Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World review

The Tales series is known for its chatty dialogue scenes that pop up while you roam the map. They’re only there for entertainment purposes, but serve to connect the party in ways the main plot never could. Entire conversations take place in these scenes that reveal character traits, interests and hobbies that flesh them out wonderfully, and we happily listened to every damn one we could. Then, as this strange balancing act would have it, the in-game dialogue between Emil, Marta and the various friends and enemies are so horribly clichéd and trite it’s like they were pulled from a third-rate, Japan-only RPG for Saturn. How can the bonus voicework and exchanges be so fun and then the ones that matter be so boring?

Above: Sheena looks good anywhere, but only sounds good in the dialogue breaks

The next half-good/half-bad point really ticked us off – many of Dawn’s action scenes are animated beautifully, with fluid, lifelike movements from every character on the screen. You hardly ever see JRPG characters behave like this, leaning into runs and realistically bending all their joints in the appropriate manner. When they’re on the screen, it’s hard to look away. And then for no reason at all the other half are just as stiff and robotic as every other JRPG released since the PlayStation One days. We expect the latter at this point (even the super-spiffy Tales of Vesperia is guilty), but it’s even more of an insult when far better scenes exist in the same damn game. This, coupled with the inane dialogue and the next point we’re about to drop, are what really hold the whole thing back from greatness.

The main quest is about Emil trying to find magical cores that will help him awaken Lord Ratatosk, the monster who’s lending Emil his power during battles. Along the way you keep running into Lloyd Irving, the hero of the first Symphoniafrom 2004, who’s apparently gone off the deep end and is killing people left and right, Emil’s parents included. This twist was known from the first press releases, but it’s still an amazingly unique and cool idea to pursue. Make the previous beloved hero, whom you spent 40 hours with, the villain of the sequel? Brilliant… except that you spend far, far more time dicking around with the downright dumbest quests we’ve seen in a while.

Above: Lloyd is constantly at odds with Emil and Marta. Too bad these encounters take forever to come around

Instead of pushing ever onward, always one step behind Lloyd and feeling like there’s an actual chase or vendetta at hand, you’re usually scattered from one task to the other in a very artificial let’s-extend-the-game kind of way. Here’s an intentionally long-winded example:

You need to cross the ocean to chase Lloyd but can’t because the town has an arsonist loose who’s setting everything on fire. They won’t run any boats until he’s caught. They thought they caught the culprit, but then another fire broke out, so he’s probably not to blame. You check this culprit out and sure enough he’s someone you know that can’t get out of jail because the one person who could stand up for him was knocked unconscious by the last fire. Checking him out reveals a toxin in his body that can only be cured by rosemary, which is in a cave outside of town. You claw through a huge dungeon to find the rosemary wilted without sunlight. After finding a way to get sunlight on it and instantly grow it to proper size, you fight a boss then take the rosemary back to heal the dude to vouch for your friend to help you find the real arsonist. Once healed, the guy says it was a magic frog that knocked him out, and your team deduces it’s all the seafood in the town that’s attracting these explosive amphibians. Now you plan to lure it into town and take it out… only the town’s conveniently out of the main component, jellyfish. Now you’re off to another town to fish and retrieve one sole jellyfish, return to fight the magic frog and still not cross the ocean to do the one thing you’re interested in doing.

Above: Get used to this screen, you’ll see it a lot

Then, cutting back on that annoyance ever so slightly is the overworld. Some might complain about the lack of a walk-there-yourself map, but in this case we happily chose our destination from a pre-set list and instantly teleported there. It’s fast, it gets you where you need to go and helps alleviate some of the back-and-forthiness of the main story.