Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World for Wii Reviews by Gamers

After playing into the second chapter and reading the Critic Reviews, I agree with most of their comments. However, if they gave this game a 3 rating, then Namco should be thrilled. How the critics can give it above a 6 rating is beyond me. Apparently "Bug-Free" is alone enough to get a 5 rating!

If you are good at the combat system, then you might be able to watch the movie that is packaged with this title. The "role" play in this is entirely railroaded and dull. You don't play any of the characters except to cause them to go where the plot demands them to go.

I also couldn't figure out how this is any different from the original. The controls are identical to it and this title does nothing to use the abilities of the Wii, you might as well play with the GameCube controller, though I'm not sure this is possible.

One redeeming feature is that you CAN skip the cut scenes, in the case that you aren't so great at the combat system. But even if I was flawless at the combat system, I'm not sure I'd care to watch the associated movie.

I tried it last night for the first time. I've not played the GameCube version, but I've been playing RPGs since Final Fantasy I and Dragon Warrior I.

The cut scenes were pretty. I'll give it that, but it's hard to judge the voice acting when it seems to play a 10 second-long sentence, then take 20 seconds to load the next sentence. It's not fluid at all. It's like having your 5-year-old daughter read out loud to you. It's excruciating.

I wasn't able to abort the cut scenes, eventually falling asleep until I was actually able to move. I attempt to save it so I don't have to go through that all again, and it's grayed out. So no saving yet. I walk 2 steps and another cut scene starts that I fall asleep through. This continues for 40 min (don't know how long of it was me sleeping while it was waiting for me) but I had to shut it off.

Since I've yet to save it, I'm going to have to go through all that again. I'll give it another shot, but I have a feeling this will go right back in the mailing sleeve the next day.