Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (known as ToS: Knight of Ratatosk in Japan) is a Wii sequel to the Gamecube hit Tales of Symphonia. The original ToS is considered to be the best RPG on the Gamecube (not a hard task really). I loved ToS, it was great, it sparked a keen interest in me to look out for and play the other games in the series. Since then I’ve played Tales of Phantasia, bought Tales of Vesperia on 360 which I absolutely love and now ToS: DotWN.
Being a direct sequel to ToS this game had alot to live up to. This time we have a new main character, Emil and two other new companions for him, Marta and Tenebrae. All but one of the cast of playable characters from the original ToS return and join and leave Emil throughout the game. In addition to this Emil is able to “capture monsters” which you can then use as characters in combat. This may seem like you have alot of characters but there are some restriction which drastically alters how you play. Emil and Marta are your usual characters, nothing odd there. Monsters can’t equip weapons or armor but can evolve into other monsters at certain levels. The original cast of ToS you can’t alter at all, they don’t even level up until the story makes them.
The story picks up two years after the end of ToS. The two separated world have come back together as one world and a new form of racism has emerged between the people of the two worlds. The world itself is in trouble, unnatural disasters have made the new world more dangerous. Lloyd, the main hero of ToS, is destroying towns and cities who oppose the church. A group called the Vanguard is planning to destroy the church and anyone who sides with it. The world isn’t the nice happy place players were led to believe was created at the end of ToS. Emil loses his parents during an attack on his home town by Lloyd. Emil then meets a girl called Marta and agrees to become a Knight of Ratatosk to protect her. The pair set off to find and awaken the servants of Ratatosk and Ratatosk himself to try and return balance to the disasters throughout the world.
I’ll leave the story at that because as the game progresses you learn that nothing is as it seems. The new characters in the game annoyed me at first. Emil was the wettest blanket I’d ever seen and Marta was crazy clinging to him. Around the half way mark of the game though they both began to develop as characters and by the end I actually liked them both. It’s a shame they were so bloody annoying during the first half.
The story at first was ok, there were ALOT of hints throughout of events and people that had been important in ToS but played no part in this game. It was nice to see that some NPC characters didn’t just vanish from the world. In one particular scene two of the ToS characters complain about all the crap they had to do just to get through one dungeon. I thought that was quite cool.
The combat isn’t as refined as I’d hoped. Emils Artes (special attacks) don’t seem to get stronger as you get new ones, they just look/hit differently to each other. The Unison Attack has taken a major kick to the face in terms of strength. You’re able to use it waaaay more frequently but the amount of damage you deal is greatly reduced and dependant on which characters join in with the attack. The Mystic Artes (big massive super attack) for your characters has also become more frequently available for use but reduced in power.
The graphics are nice but nothing too amazing. The music is split 50/50 between old ToS music and original scores. Like the graphics they’re nothing too amazing.
Over all the game was good but just below the standard I’d expected. It felt unrefined and it took half the game before it began to get really interesting. It’s not as good as ToS but it’s made me want to play Tales of Vesperia again which is a plus…..I think. Hopefully Tales of Graces, the second Tales games for the Wii will be better. We’ll see.