IGN
Review
of Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
The long-running "Tales" series of Japanese role-playing games (JRPG) has a rabid fanbase – but for newcomers to the series, it's hard to see why. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a run of the mill, standard JRPG without a single original idea in its head. Sullen country boy with a bad haircut destined to save the world? Check. An awkwardly translated, incomprehensible story? Check. Monster hunting? Check. This entire package -- from the story to the gameplay to the visuals -- feels like a relic we should have grown out of by now.
Dawn of the New World is set two years after the GameCube game and features several returning characters. Fans of the first game will probably enjoy returning to this world and seeing their old friends. The story is some garbledygook about the world falling into ruin and this spineless little coward named Emil is somehow the only one who can set things right. There are way too many arduous titles and concepts here. Players are supposed to keep track of things like the Chosen of Regeneration, a Blood Purge, a Great Tree, the Giant Kharlan Tree, a new World Tree… It's all just fancy window dressing for what is really a mundane adventure. A few high-minded concepts are proposed, like the confusion between what is right and what is wrong, but they aren't used effectively. While the script is not that interesting to begin with, it's also been clumsily translated so that dialogue often just barely makes sense. What is this, amateur hour? It's possible that, in many of these instances, there simply isn't an easy translation from the original Japanese. But that doesn't make it any easier to sit through.
Emil has to be the lamest "hero" ever. When in battle he does grow a pair, but for the rest of the game he shuffles around whining and apologizing. A young girl named Marta will be his primary companion and love interest. But thanks to the wonky translation, their back and forth doesn't work and what could have been an endearing romance comes across as childish. Most of the folks you meet along the way suffer from a similar lack of depth.
Dawn of the New World certainly looks like a GameCube sequel. While the menus and maps are slick, the in-game visuals aren't very impressive. Some of the character animations are good, but for the most part DotNW looks very last-gen. Several towns show some nice detail, but most dungeons are dull and lifeless. Environments aren't very interactive, either. Can I read what this message board says? No. Can I check out this book shelf? No. Okay, then, I'll just get back to my boring adventure.
Battles are mercifully not random, and unfold in real time as in previous Tales games. Players have several different attack methods at their disposal, as the A button will chain combos, B will perform Arte (magic) attacks, and C will get your companions together for a unison assault. As characters progress in levels they will learn new skills -- but only a limited amount of skill points can be used at once, so there is a nice bit of strategy in decided which skills to set for each member. Four members can be active in battle at once, although more can be traveling with you (what are they doing while we're fighting, I wonder?). Players can choose which member to control on the fly and set various strategies for everyone else. Multiplayer battles are also available, with up to four people controlling four party members during a fight (only human characters, though -- monsters can't be controlled by anyone but player one). This combat system is one of the more engaging aspects of the game.
New to the Tales series is a monster hunting feature where, if certain conditions are met, monsters you defeat can be added to your party. Captured beasts can fight alongside Emil in battle and cooking them meals will improve their abilities. Of course, countless other games have done the monster hunting thing, and done it better.
This is a very slow game, from the sluggish story to the battle loading times that take several seconds to the strange pauses in dialogue (more loading, I presume?). It's also very linear. The game leads players by the hand from location to location without any choice on their part. We are told where to go next to move the story along -- sure, we could go back to the town we were just at, but there's nothing to do there. Towns usually have a guild that will send you on a little quest to earn an item, but even that doesn't provide a sense of freedom. Players are warped to a short dungeon to collect the item and they are warped back when the "quest" completed. Even weapons and armor is acquired linearly. Each new town will have the next level of equipment in stock, so there isn't any choice of what to use.
All this voice acting is nice, but it can be so incoherent I wonder if it's more of a detriment. It probably wouldn't be so bad if we could listen to the Japanese voice track, but that is not an option. The "skits" return here, where anime versions of our characters face the player and share a brief conversation. While these provide some good information, they aren't exactly animated. Characters fade between different poses and the fade is just long enough to feel weird and ineffective. At best the music is forgettable – at worst, it's pretty cheesy, reminiscent of early '90s midi programming.
Even with all of these complaints, the game isn't a total loss. It's not broken; it's not buggy; I never encountered a glitch. The story is very long and there are thousands of lines of voice work (a feature missing from most Wii games). The graphics, while not eye-popping, are good enough. If Dawn of the New World had come out 10 years ago, it would have been pretty impressive. But 10-year old gaming conventions don't make for an engrossing RPG today. This game's biggest crime is that it's commonplace.
©2008-11-10, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
