Current Events > Just started Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, and... hoo boy

(+) Yeah! (+)

So I've heard some dissent regarding this game in the past. Someone got super buttmad over it in a TV Tropes review, and as I was getting into the first game I ran into some limited info about this one. Seems like it's a B-team sequel, like a Final Fantasy X-2 sort of dealie. My impression of it from that alone is that this isn't a well-liked game.

Well, I just booted it up for the first time. And oh boy, things are already off to a rocky start. The characters have new VAs, I know that much - the guy I assume is doing Kratos does a passable job, but if that's Lloyd's voice, then this game is gonna be a bumpy ride. And I don't like where the plot is going, and I'm not sure if I appreciate the writing so far - the first game's plot and dialogue structure was a bit basic, but it was charming. So far, this game has tried to be more dynamic in its cutscenes and dialogue, and it's just not good. It feels like it's trying to be Neon Genesis Evangelion in this cutscene I'm on, where you meet the red haired guy, and I really don't know if Emil is the sort of protagonist I want to play as in this world. Time will tell, I'm giving the game a chance, but that 8 and a half minute cutscene at the start was not a good start - I've heard bad things about this game, and the cracks are already starting to show.

What sort of experience do you think I'm in for, CE?
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I played it like 10 years ago or whatever, not long after it came out (goddamn), but I liked it. But I also pretty much enjoy any jrpg
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Oh that game sucks. I pretend it didn't happen. The first one is dope but the second is a trainwreck. The gameplay is...kind of fun? Even that has its flaws though.
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Actually, I'm starting to warm up to Emil after his first skit. I'm not opposed to Shinji-type characters - let's see where this goes.

MedeaLysistrata posted...

I played it like 10 years ago or whatever, not long after it came out (goddamn), but I liked it. But I also pretty much enjoy any jrpg

I'm liking the graphical fidelity, and the voiced skits are nice. The music sounds like it's gonna be a pretty good throwback to the first game as well, I'm all over that.

I hope that the battles are fun enough to sit through, like Symphonia's were.

Flamazide posted...

Oh that game sucks. I pretend it didn't happen. The first one is dope but the second is a trainwreck. The gameplay is...kind of fun? Even that has its flaws though.

I hope the gameplay is good. I feel like this is gonna be like FFX-2, where the story and characterisation is a bit wonky but the gameplay is solid enough to carry the slack.

Speaking of which, I actually got the FFX games recently as well. Guess I'll play the Symphonia games back to back, then the X games after them.
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Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.
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Oh boy, now that's an overworld. lmao

Yes Emil, murder that bear. Murder it like Lloyd murdered your family!
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I really dislike any games that have "the pokemon element" namely catching and raising monsters to be in your team. I didn't leave pokemon only to play another monster collecting type game eugh, fuck that.

Oh as for the actual game, yeah garbage. At the time of owning a wii I was really desperate for any rpg (having just played and enjoyed tales of symphonia) and actually was looking forward to this. It might have been just being on a symphonia high that made me want the game but it's awful, and the new characters are hella annoying.

I'd definitely give it a pass and suggest waiting for tales of vesperia ps4, a game we'll finally be able to play after 10 long years. Hopefully it's good since it's by the phantasia, symphonia and abyss group

Gheb posted...

Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.

hey remember that time you said courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality?

"flashbacks to teh time Gheb said courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality"
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anyway its ok
not as good as symphonia
i dont like emil, but i do like marta

both emil and marta have an infinite combo that turns any boss fight into a joke
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yusiko posted...

anyway its ok
not as good as symphonia
i dont like emil, but i do like marta

both emil and marta have an infinite combo that turns any boss fight into a joke

Yeah, I'm probably just gonna auto-battle the entire time. I'm here for the story and item management.
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It's pretty hilarious just how much everyone hates Emil.

"The last thing I need to see right now is your miserable face." - Christ, what the fuck! I'm like 16 years old!

"Are you here to shoplift something?" - Fuck dude, I was hoping to get some leather gauntlets or something. Jesus.
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I liked it. Not the best but definitely not the worst. I like it better than ToZ and ToB.
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MrMallard posted...

It's pretty hilarious just how much everyone hates Emil.

"The last thing I need to see right now is your miserable face." - Christ, what the fuck! I'm like 16 years old!

"Are you here to shoplift something?" - Fuck dude, I was hoping to get some leather gauntlets or something. Jesus.

You're going to hate him too but for different reasons lol
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They should do a prequel where you play as Mithos, Kratos, Yuan, Martel, and an earlier form of Noishe.
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Gheb posted...

Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.

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CapnMuffin posted...

Noishe.

But he's just a dog!
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I think a few of the VAs are reprising themselves, like Colette.

But yeah do yourself a favor; stop playing now and go replay ToS1.

CapnMuffin posted...

They should do a prequel where you play as Mithos, Kratos, Yuan, Martel, and an earlier form of Noishe.

Yeah this is one of my biggest pipe dreams of all time tbh
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emil is voiced by johnny yong bosch proving he does have vocal range
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Symphonia 2 > Symphonia 1

Muffinz0rz posted...

I think a few of the VAs are reprising themselves, like Colette.

But yeah do yourself a favor; stop playing now and go replay ToS1.

I just finished the first game though. If anything, I would drop Dawn of the New World and focus more on Borderlands and Mass Effect.

Also I think Cam Clarke reprises his role as Kratos. That explains why the opening narration is pretty spot-on for Kratos' voice, lmao

yusiko posted...

emil is voiced by johnny yong bosch proving he does have vocal range

Yeah, I read this. Kind of want to play the game further to hear him progress, because I read on TV Tropes that his performance gets better as the game goes along - sort of like a Tidus effect, where the character starts as a dipshit but evolves vocally as the game goes along.
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Yeah, so far this has been the definition of a bad sequel.

* The tone has taken a complete 180 - the first game was a bit tropey and on the nose, but it had fairly wholesome and refreshingly nostalgic tropes to it. So far, Dawn of the New World has been pretty edgy, with Emil's superpowered dark side and Lloyd taking a heel turn.
* It retroactively ruins the end of the first game. "The worlds were reunited by Lloyd and Colette, and with their heroic actions, the Great Tree of Mana was reborn once again. But then the two populations began to subjugate one another, Lloyd and Colette co-opted the Church of Martel and now it's a police state that pillages and burns down cities from the first game. The world is shit, and so is Emil's life." Great. I get that this is all gonna be one big misunderstanding, or something - but to kick the game off with Lloyd - Lloyd, of all people - being a murderous asshole? To throw the brave new world under the bus for the sake of angst and edge? I dunno, it's kind of a dick move.
* The plot involves another ancient force in the pre-established game world, but it was never mentioned in the first game. Who the fuck is Ratatosk? What the fuck are Centurions? They behave like Summon Spirits, but they're this great force of beasts with like politics and struggles that are introduced for the first time in this game to push this monster-swapping mechanic. Nothing about this game feels like a natural progression from the world of Tales of Symphonia - they can handwave it away with "this is before the Great Kharlan War or whatever", but it doesn't gel with the game I just played.

The mood of this game is generic anime edge, and it clashes with the world that Symphonia established. At least, that's my initial reaction. I'm gonna keep playing to establish a more in-depth opinion.

When I say that this game is the "definition of a bad sequel", it's because it reminds me of two games that came out of nowhere and weaved new story out of a serious left turn in the plot department. Final Fantasy XIII was not a good game, and XIII-2 was honestly just a better game as a whole, but it's not a great sequel because it threw out XIII's ending and pulled this "Lightning disappeared when we saved the world" plot point out of its ass. Caius came out of fucking nowhere, so did time travel. It rectified XIII's worse problems as a game, and was a better package for it IMO, but it was a game that didn't need to exist with how XIII ended - and the plot they came up with to be able to make a sequel was convoluted and just kind of bad.

Then there's Jak 2, which took a vibrant setting littered with an interesting mix of ancient and futuristic technology, and reduced it to a depressing gray slab of a city with smog, guns and cars. My opinion of it has softened in time, it has nice areas, but it checks the boxes - trades in the straitforward, earnest plot of the first game for an edgelord plot about a guy with a dark side? Check. Kind of throws the world of the first game under the bus? A bit, but it helps to set up the new evil force at least. Well, it's kind of established at the start of the game? Through a stable time loop, I guess? But even then, it shifts the setting so far away from the first game's roots that it feels quite alien. At least it had a lot of the same cast and crew.

With these two other games under my belt, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is ringing warning bells in my head. And it feels like it's pandering to otaku with Marta being into Emil right off the bat, considering that he's a mopey Shinji type. And hell, you could throw the whole "edgy superpowered dark side" battle form under the label of pandering, since Emil just sort of gets it from Tenebrae and then becomes this hardcore dude who can destroy anything in his path. It feels like the game is full of low-effort pandering to otaku players so far - will it change as I go along?
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Sounds bad but also what I expected. A shame.

Nothing triggers me more than when sequels fuck up the protagonists from the former entry.
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And I mean none of those aspects are bad on their own, Mass Effect 2 is a game that pulled off a tonal shift spectacularly and there will be great sequels where the plot is "you did a thing but now there's another thing that you didn't know about so go do this other thing" - it works in games like Uncharted because it's set in a realistic world, where this mysterious treasure hunt shit could exist. But even then, it can also just hit the right notes coming off of the first game.

And a sequel doesn't have to be planned out as an installment of a series to be good, there are sequels that were pulled out of wholecloth because the first one did really well. There's nothing inherently wrong with being like "here's a new adventure! Things happened and now it's time to do another thing!" And an open-ended ending like ToS could go either way, though I'd argue that it ended on an optimistic note.

But all together, and not executed well, these tenants can make a sequel suck a bag of dicks. And so far, DotNW sucks a bag of dicks. Here's hoping it gets better.
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Why would you play TOS first, then FFX?

ToS is just FFX but a more complete story
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CapnMuffin posted...

Sounds bad but also what I expected. A shame.

Nothing triggers me more than when sequels fuck up the protagonists from the former entry.

Mind you, I think there's gonna be a misunderstanding or something. I don't think Lloyd is actually a puppy-kicking asshole, my issue is more that the game has to put me through the motions and build Lloyd up as this giant asshole when it seems like they're gonna justify his actions. I don't see how he could change so much in two years, and I don't like that the game goes so far as to use his name in the name of violence - it's just a farce to me.
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This game was alright, but it's a very poor follow-up to IMO one of the greatest JRPGs of all time. Also, Emil and Marta are two of the most insufferable protagonists that I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing. Thankfully, Tenebrae makes up for the both of them in spades.
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YonicBoom posted...

Why would you play TOS first, then FFX?

ToS is just FFX but a more complete story

I've played FFX in the past, technically speaking it's my first Final Fantasy game.

I just got the PS3 remasters recently, so considering that I'm playing a game that feels so similar to FFX, I might as well play it back to back to get a more complete picture regarding the similarities between the two games.
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Solar_Crimson posted...

This game was alright, but it's a very poor follow-up to IMO one of the greatest JRPGs of all time. Also, Emil and Marta are two of the most insufferable protagonists that I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing. Thankfully, Tenebrae makes up for the both of them in spades.

Tenebrae is pretty fantastic. Every team needs a snarky black cat to talk shit on everyone around them - that's why Sabrina was such a good show.

Tenebrae is like a more competent Salem.
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Also, while I enjoy monster-collecting mechanics, the way the game handled it--particularly in regards to catching monsters--was just annoying.

And then you run into the issue with having too many party members (Emil and Marta, the ToS1 cast, the monsters in your party) that only deploying four in battle is a serious limitation.
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Not to mention the fact that, while you can play as the OG characters, you still have to START the battle as Emil or Marta and manually change every fucking time.
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Gheb posted...

Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.

But if they say dreams where you die are good luck...
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Thekiller37 posted...

Gheb posted...

Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.

But if they say dreams where you die are good luck...

But people die when they are killed...

MrMallard posted...

Every team needs a snarky black cat to talk shit on everyone around them - that's why Sabrina was such a good show.

Tenebrae is like a more competent Salem.

Salem was the shit.
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I loved ToS and it's a shame DotNW is such a weak follow-up

Kinda like how Dark Dawn was a weak sequel to the GBA Golden Sun games (AND it ended on another cliffhange AND we never got a sequel after that, but I don't much care anymore. 1&2 were fine by themselves) Hey, they both have "Dawn" in their names, to boot.
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Garioshi posted...

Gheb posted...

Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.

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It was outsourced to some no-name company. Which isn't a surefire recipe for disaster, the two 7th Chord Tales remakes are great despite low budgets and so are at least one of the two games they made that aren't Tales but use the Linear Motion Battle System, but this developer is no 7th Chord.

Honestly though, my main issues are all party related. Emil and Marta are the only new characters, at the very least Alice and Decus should've been party members like planned, and then they should've had another 2~4 new guys on top of that, or maybe have some sort of job system if you don't want to have to write a fuckton of characters. Monster party members aren't bad in and of itself, the PSP game Tales of Phantasia Narikiri Dungeon X did them well if I recall, but you can't control them and the models are all recycled from Abyss, not even the original Symphonia. The returning Symphonia characters can't level naturally and are kinda barebones if I recall.

In general, the game wishes it could be like Narikiri Dungeon X. Another non-numbered Tales sequel focusing on a new hero and heroine, with recruitable monsters, a point and click world map, new and recycled dungeons, and all the party members from the original returning in supporting roles. Except it's actually great.

Thinking about it, a "Knight of Ratatosk X" remake could be pretty cool. A total from scratch remake, with a lot of plot rewrites this time.

DIE SCUM

*proceeds to power-level in the Lake Sinoa Cave until I'm level 10*
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Okay, I could bare Marta up to this point, but treating Colette like shit? I get why she'd react poorly, but I don't think that cutscene was very good. There was some foreshadowing, but it wasn't great.

Like I'm already starting to not like Marta for being kind of clingy and jealous, but Jesus Christ. That scene fucking sucked.

Oh, great exposition Tenebrae. Just tell me Marta's backstory this early in the game with little fanfare. He seriously shows up just to be like "Marta's had a tough life, it must have been hard for her", then basically goes "well, see ya" and disappears in a cloud of smoke.

Okay, so at least they're salvaging Marta by having her be like "yeah, that was stupid. Still feel angry, but I was a dick". A little goes a long way.
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i love marta just by virtue of not being as bad as emil
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I like Emil, personally. I'm chill with Shinji-type characters, even if Emil lays it on a bit too thick
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