Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World | Revo Reviews (ft. Sol)
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- Опубликовано: 4 авг 2024
- Symphonia was an incredibly well-received Tales game, meaning it was high time for a sequel. A great way to capitalize on its success...right? Let's talk.
Sol's Twitter: / talesofsolgilou
Sol's Channel: / @solgilou
My Patreon: / zaffrerevo
My Twitter: / zaffrerevo
My Twitch: / zaffrerevo
Time Stamps:
0:00 - Intro
3:33 - Dawn of the Story
17:03 - Presenting the New World
22:50 - Fighting, Exploring, Struggling
35:41 - The Verdict
Sol has helped out a lot on this channel. He's the one behind my RUclips logo, so if you want any digital-design work done, he's your man! If you're reading this dude, thank you so much with your patience and hard work towards making this beast of a video, I think it was well worth the wait and that our efforts truly paid off :)
Also, woohoo! First collab done! Onto the next...please don't expect that for a while though, I'm sure that's gonna be a long video as well.
---
CREDITS
- Music -
(in order of appearance)
The More That I Try
• Video
Water Symphony
• Video
Rovers
• Video
Derris Kharlan
• Video
In a Shadowy Woods
• Video
Search a Seal
• Video
Along the Beach
• Video
Town of Wind and Ruins
• Video
Avenger (Richter's Theme)
• Tales of Symphonia Daw...
Raising a Curtain
• Video
Like a Glint of Light
• Video
Full Force!
• Video
Person Who Conceives Frenzy
• Video
With Courage
• Video
New Fight, New Labyrinth
• Video
Climb it Hastily!
• Video
Underground Passage
• Video
The Wilderness of Sadness
• Video
A Life-Threatening Quest
• Video
Then I played "The More That I Try" again because it's such a banger of a song...and I was running out of good tracks from the OST at this point, so uh...yeah.
- Footage -
Green Background used:
• 8K Useful Universal Gr...
All other footage was captured by yours truly! Look at me doing all of the hard work, why don't we celebrate with a drink of water? Or maybe hitting that like button? Hmmm?? 
Игры
Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality
"Huh?"
@@UltraInstinctLink it’s a line from the game
@@EVERYWHERE_MAN The "huh" wasn't me asking what they're talking about, I'm quoting the video, hence the quotation marks lol. Watch things until the end before you put your 2 cents in, it will give you a better idea of what people are talking about in the comments section
as a kid/young nerdy teen that sounded cool 🤣
This game really taught me it’s ok to have different opinions, because this has always been my favorite game despite all the shit this game gets from the internet
Legit, this is like... My... Fourth favorite game in the series? I really loved the psychological themes this game had going for it. And Rie Kugimiya's performance was awesome.
@@Patrick-bn5rp oh yes indeed, she was great and so was Emil’s Japanese VA (forgot his name, Connie from AoT), love most things this game had to offer
I'm just curious, did you guys play this before or after the first symphonia?
@@joeray8854 I played it after. To be fair, I didn't like traversing Symphonia's overworld. Like at all. It felt like filler to me.
@@Patrick-bn5rp thats so funny, because I felt totally opposite, liked the feeling of freedom the overworld gave (even if it was trash) and not having an overworld to traverse made the sequel feel claustrophobic to me. But to each his own. It must have been frustrating all this time having basically the whole Fandom trash a game you loved
Marta is actually super fun to play as when when you get weapons that cast low level spells when you attack. It's random, but I still like it.
One thing I'm starting to notice, your reviews feel like a conversation with the audience, rather than a scripted, fact-based summary of the game. It's almost like you yourself don't know everything you're going to be talking about. It's really refreshing, in a way.
I've given up on a lot of video game reviewers in the past few years, even some of the more popular ones, but I always feel relaxed with your reviews. Even when you're discussing something you dislike, you don't have that pessimistic personality that everyone else uses, and I really appreciate that.
was honestly going for the vibe since the very first revolutionary review, so i'm really glad that came across to you and hopefully others!
I think that's great too, addressing what other people think and not just explaining why the reviewer's opinion is better than everyone else's. :)
As a Tales fan and DotNW lover I really wanted to comment my defense of this game, but I think Sol nailed it. The overall story and especially Emil's character really made it for me, so that even if other parts were mediocre I didn't feel like it ruined the experience. I'm glad you chose to frame this video as a debate rather than bashing it one sidedly.
At this point in time the franchise's anime cutscenes were not even that long, the entire franchise up to this point only had about 45 minutes in total of anime cutscenes so I'm pretty sure they probably ended up spending more on motion capture. Irony
Another excellent video, Zaffre! Keep up the good work.
my number one fan
This review certainly did not disappoint! Great job you guys! It was so nice to finally see this game get an actual genuine and detailed discussion dedicated to it. I really think you guys nailed all aspects of this game and gave it an overall critical yet fair review, discussing the good and the bad and showing how there's more to talk about than just the blatant over-hating I generally see surrounding this entry. Seriously, great job you guys!
The thing I really want to talk about is Emil. He's such an interesting and compelling character to me because in a lot of ways, I relate to him SO MUCH. I'll be honest, I've only watched playthroughs of DotNW because I've never had the proper consoles to play them, but even though I didn't play it myself, I still found myself relating to and empathizing with Emil. At the time I watched it, I was pretty young and admittedly going through some hard times in my life. Seeing this character who was shy, always so easily scared, always apologizing and having a hard time meeting anyone's' gaze and stumbling over their words and having no self worth, hit me so damn hard because at the time that was ME. Hell, I STILL have a hard time with over apologizing for things that aren't my fault and have trouble with self-confidence. And seeing him deal with verbal and physical abuse really hit closer to home than I would've liked. In all honestly, I didn't want to like Emil. I didn't want to acknowledge that I resonated with what people consider a "weak" or "pathetic" character. Instead, I feel like I forced myself to like Ratatosk more. Now don't get me wrong, I genuinely do love Ratatosk. He's the typical badass character, but that's when I realized: that's the point. Ratatosk is the typical badass main character who's strong, brave, and confident. He knows his place in the world and knows his worth and he doesn't need anyone else defining that for him. Emil is none of those things, and THAT'S what ultimately made me love him. His struggles, his insecurities, everything about him felt genuine and real. And he's proof that progress isn't linear. Emil stumbles, he regresses, he falls back on old habits, but he doesn't let that stop him from wanting to become a better person. Someone who can finally be a strong, confident, and reliable person without having others worry about him. That gave me hope. I really needed a character like that during that time in my life. I know the line gets made fun of a lot for how repetitive it is, but courage really was the magic Emil and I, myself, needed in order to change and grow for the better. I don't understand why everyone nowadays has to compare a character's growth to Luke's. Both of them are phenomenal characters who go through tremendous growth throughout their stories. There's no need to compare them. We should accept them both as being really good, rather than always having them at odds.
Wow, this got longer than I intended. Wonderful review guys!
Oh my gosh, you two have the actual best chemistry I think I've ever seen in a video
Both of you made really good and understandable points! I haven’t played this one yet, but I plan to sometime. I hope I can find myself enjoying it!
I've been waiting for this. Woo!
I know I’m late but I love your videos and voice It’s filled with so much passion
Ayyyyyyyyy came here from the "beginner's guide" vid, SUPER EXCITED TO SEE THIS. Love me some DotNW
Even though I don't completely agree with some of the things you say in these reviews they are still awesome. Its so easy to see how much time was put into the reviews.
Thank you for introducing me to sol I watch some of his videos and I love them
Thank you for this revolutionary review
Another DOTNW fan here, lovely review. Emil and his character arc carry the game for me, still one of my favs in the series.
Favorite game
How is OP's comment from a month ago when the video was released today?
@@BBJL_Hanson patrons are always a review ahead. since this is public they have access to the octopath traveler review now
*guest has Magilou hat* I see you keep cultured company, Revo
I love this game it is definetly one of the best games i've ever played and I really liked your analysis in it, i've already seen this video twice but i'm only commenting now.
Tommy Wiseau called.
He wants his voice back.
(you can't burn me if I burn myself first)
oh hi mark
So since you're a big fan of Emil, is your name a combination of Magilou and Emil's prototype name- Soleil? :)
@@theoaremevano3227 Gonna be honest fam, it wasn't until today.
24:54 okay no. I can't let this slide. The monster taming mechanic is not nearly as random as you're making it out to be. As explained in the tutorial, the elements on that thing in the corner need to be so that the big icon and 4 of the small icons are the same element. Doing this causes the last defeated monster to be "Spellbound" giving you the opportunity to recruit it. Monsters of higher parts of their evolution lines are naturally harder to recruit, with 4th rank monsters being outright impossible to spellbind. Binding monsters with the same element, getting the help of a powerful monster of a similar race (ie using a wolf to help recruit beast-race monsters) all can greatly enhance or even guarantee your success rate for recruiting. Considering NONE of the footage in your review seems to have Emile with his Centurion skills equipped, the ones that add elemental properties to specific base artes and allow him to freely manipulate the elemental grid as you damn well please, I'm going to assume you just didn't pay attention to the tutorial given how sluggish the introductory hours are in pacing so you never realized they actually put alot of thought into this.
The review of my first and most beloved tales game.
Take the game out of it's "Symphonia" context and I think the game is serviceable. This was my first Tales game as well so I never knew the former stuff I needed to know and I ended up liking what was given to us and thinking about what else this universe could have in it.
First Tales game I ever fully played. Love it for what it is, and just got the first Symphonia, and I'm already enjoying it as well! Here's hoping Namco eventually makes another Symphonia set during the Mana War with Kratos and the rest
This was my first Tales game as well, always wanted to play one of them and I just happened to see it in a store one day. I knew at the time that it was fairly disliked, had no idea why though and I didn't really care to somehow get Symphonia first, so I just got this, ended up loving especially Richter (whose courage quote really stuck with me at the time) faster than you could count to 3. Long story short, I ended up loving the game and I couldn't have been happier that I decided to give it a shot. Also really loved the final boss just for the music, which I'm glad was mentioned and later used here. It'll definitely always have a huge place in my heart.
Though I will say, I played through the game like 5 times at least and I had no idea about the thing with the dialogue choices and the true ending, so that kinda blew my mind
Disagree with most of this. Played this after I played Tales of Symphonia itself. Loved the monster system, sad the voice cast was gone but at least the new were also good voice actors, had no problems with bosses or difficulty spikes, loved the artstyle, liked the music but liked the firsts way more, sad there is no world map but get that it's because of budget so I don't see it as an actual flaw, only played as Emil and the gameplay felt amazing with him.
Also a Dutchie here~
P.s. Wow didn't know people looked that way at world maps. I like the world maps in earlier Tales of games waaay better than in the newer ones. Was really surprised hearing that.
My personal favorite Tales Of, my first Tales Of, and the only one I really enjoyed.
wow, this was uploaded in 2021!?!? I play Tales of Symphonia around once every two years and never get bored of it. It always feels fresh and love that game to death. I've only played DotNW once and was turned off by the lack of an actual world map and the remixed music. I was truly hoping for a new experience with the vibe, but they really tried to stick to the original. I got pretty bored the last time I played it. I began looking up good things about it to decide if I should give it a second try, cause why tf not? Hearing the competing sides really spiked my interest and I will totally try this again as soon as I find the time. Thank you for making this video, I might have never played this game again if you haven't made it. (take my subscribe you deserve it)
Glad that people who loves the game exist. ❤️
will you review any of the 16-32 bit era tales of games? phantasia destiny, eternia?
Great video as expected from the channel. It was interesting to hear the thoughts of two Tales experts this time.
I liked the story and many of the new characters, favorites being Emil and Tenebrae.
For me Emil was relatable at the beginning, reminding of myself as an insecure, picked on teen many years ago and as someone who also lost a parent early, I think that experience's effects on Emil were shown realistically (unlike Ni No Kuni's Oliver, but my problems with that character is another discussion). Add that to the development Emil goes through, as talked about on the video.
Tenebie (:D) is one of my favorite fictional mentor- type characters in general. The combination of his wisdom and sense of humor make him awesome to the point where I could make a vid about him if I was a RUclipsr.
I liked the combat for the most part, though not as much as my favorite Tales systems like Graces and Berseria. For more detailed thoughts I need to replay and update my opinion about DOTNW combat, since it's been some years since I last played it, but my opinion about the monster collecting feature will remain unchanged.
It would have been so great if the monsters had been playable, so I could have devasteted my enemies with my manticore, shadow dragon, cerberus and my other new be(a)st friends in addition to the two main heroes. Missed potential for sure, but I still like the inclusion of the feature as it was and would hope that a future Tales game would do the same but better.
BTW I noticed that you removed the vid about Berseria's story that I planned to rewatch soon. The artist is in charge of his old works sure, but just letting you know that I thought it was a great story analysis and if I remember correctly, it was also my introduction to the channel too.
thank you for the comment! to explain, i plan on reviewing berseria in this retrospective relatively soon, there are a couple of tales games lined up before it and i just want the berseria video associated with my channel to be that. i put that and a bunch of the other videos i recently unlisted in a playlist so if you still want to watch it, there's always that option! but i just want a video that's public to accurately reflect my soon-to-be updated opinions on it
@@ZaffreRevolution Glad to know the story analysis is still there as well as other older vids. I'll be looking forward to the new Berseria review and those coming before it, Abyss, Legendia and Zestiria I'd guess. Since I haven't played any of those three yet, the content of them will be a good introduction.
Never played this one, but it's interesting to see the similarities between it and Xillia 2 in terms of concepts and how Xillia 2 succeeded where this one failed. Great work as always, my friends
This was my first and only tales game, and I very recently figured out how much context there was supposed to be to it 😅 absolutely blew my mind to find out that Lloyd was the main character in the game before it! Like you said, if you start at dawn of the new world you're thrown into the world with very little context on a lot of the characters but I actually really loved it anyway, got really invested in the mystery of characters like Lloyd and Riktor
Dear Namco...Please do a complete overhaul remake of Dawn of the New World and redo the entire story properly! Make it truly feel like a proper sequel!
This was also my first tales of game, I didn't even know this was a series when I started playing it and had a lot of fun with it. Sadly I never beat and lost the original game but at least I have vesperia and the original symphonia
I have only just started watching this video, but I just want to say that Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is also the first in the series that I actually played. And while I have not finished it yet (I am playing the Wii version), I am also a big fan of it. The story, setting, characters, gameplay, music and graphics all are to my liking. And hopefully in the coming years, more people will learn to appreciate this wonderful JRPG.
this is my second tales game and I thoroughly enjoyed it. didn't play Symphonia yet.
Even though the internet gives it shit. This was my first tales game I've played and it helped me get into the series I love.
I was here just thinking "I think I'm gonna binge-watch Zaffre's Tales videos" and then this notification came. Are you a miracle dealer or are you just psychic ? 🤔
both babyyyyy
@@ZaffreRevolution Ya got me. Welp, back to the review marathon =V
This was my 2nd entry of the tales series. The first being the original tales of Symphonia.
The combat was clunky but after reading some guides on monster development and making some god tier monsters they ended up being superior to any tales character that scales with level. And at the time, I was into pokemon like game. Leveling and capturing monster was the unique aspect to the gameplay and combat system that I don't think any other tales games utilize .
Story - about average, as I came from knowing what happen from the previous game, I did enjoy the nostaglia from the world and characters but unimpress with the plot to justify having them in there.
New characters - I mostly just love Emil. Bi-polar personality, amnesia, great voice lines and development. It was a bit of a shame they cheaped out on giving his counterpart Ratatosk new looks. Like have emil wear different gear instead of just eye colour. Or hair design.
the rest of the cast were just okay to really bad.
Would I recommend others to try it: yes but you probably would want to play the first game to enjoy the OG cast popping in and out. 3.5/5 or 7/10
I'm just going to talk about my fond memories with this game here. My sister had just played through Tales of Vesperia (with me watching the whole time) and we had only just realized there were other games in the series. My dad brought this game home for us, knowing how much we enjoyed Vesperia, and we started playing it right away. My sister played as Emil, I played as Marta, and we had a great time. When we got to the final fight with Richter, I don't remember if we were too low a level or what, but we couldn't beat him. We ended up dragging in our other sister so she could play as Raine and constantly cast revitalize, and we finally won 😂
Frankly I enjoyed this game more than most. The combat was better than Symphonia 1 as it was more fluid and skills more fun. No other game let's use USE ENEMY MONSTERS TO BATTLE. That was so cool .
Character wise email and Marta are probably some of the best duo with tenebrae as everyone else was more so cameo like and Richter was an amazing character who you could see be a friend every step of the war especially in the side missions.
Relationship wise it was handled well as Marta is probably the girl who loves her man more than the other series and it's quite sad to see it go down in the middle part with Ichigo kurosaki I mean mode change Emil but Marta is the most aggressive female in romance and I respect that. Plus she ACTUALLY KISSES HIM
Story wise was almost nothing special apart from Emil and Marta plus all the new characters added but even then Marta's dad survived and it was basically orb equals mind issues overall.
Frankly I enjoyed the monster story a ton and it's very underated in combat and having mobs join the party overall. It's never going to be Grace's or abyss level of story telling and gameplay but it's worth a play after Symphonia to see the cast in later stuff but annoying it was made into a side game after being a mother ship game for many years by the studio as they wanted to space it from Symphonia 1 as much as possible.
Agreed 100%
@@Maceamcc yeah that's how I saw it. While the game isn't the deepest in anyway possible compared to the other games. I find it one of the most simple yet fun while the main trio is probably the best handled since it's basically about them
Also a nice beggining game for new players to get a feel for the tales games as well for me.
Also am actual romance that isn't off screen like asbel and cheria who while I enjoyed a lot could have done more
@@ivanbluecool exactly
I found Symphonia to work better combat wise despite being the older game mainly because its hit detection wasn't as spotty, however, good point; Emil and Marta get bonus points for actually kissing. They dance around that stuff WAY too much in many other games. XD
@@theoaremevano3227 I don't hate the older games combat. I just love to move a lot. When the teacher got her photon skill I just loved it so much as she is one of the best healers in tales.
Combat wise Graces is tops with abyss vesperia and xillia near second.
I need to replay this game
Even though this is my least favorite entry in the series out of the games I've played so far, I don't hate it by any means. Like was said here, I like watching the story, and think Emil and Richter really do well. I don't really mind Marta either. Her trait of mainly just being someone who tries too hard and is basically the antithesis of the word 'subtlety', is a pretty vibrant aspect to her character. I actually think Richter is a great villain and the game's ending, with what he was planning to do elevates him quite a bit. He's also one of the only good fights in the game. XD
Gameplay does weigh pretty heavily with me, so that's the main reason this game struggles. My main issue is the hit detection. Everything in this game feels like it has invisible padding around it. You can really feel how out-of-sync the hitboxes are with what you can visually see, some of them even just feeling lazy. Enemies doing a forward attack have damage waves coming out of their asses; attacks that spray the arena with fireballs don't actually register as individual hits, instead registering one massive hit on an entire hemisphere of the battlefield.
Unfortunately, that's a big deal in combat. Having hitboxes that don't match well with what you're seeing on the screen is a huge headache because you can't just untrain your combat skills to adjust to the game. I avoid attacks by tight margins where possible, so when I'm dodging around attacks, I'm obviously skirting the edges of the visual hitbox. If the ACTUAL hitbox extends outside of that area, I'm inevitably going to spend most of my time getting hit by invisible attacks. I can't readjust my gameplay to account for something I can't see at all. This issue extends to the mystic artes of enemies too. No warning = nothing to do about it. You're just expected to not get hit, ever... I think.. assuming enemies even need to hit you to use them.
I have to say though, I don't think all of the issues with this game's combat are unique to it. Tales has some issues with combat that radiate through most of the 3D entries I've played, and I think this one just has a couple of things that make it feel worse, but it's also not the only game to have a profusion of lame "It's just a big enemy" boss fights. This game actually has a bit of focus on the monsters and their biology and features particular specimens as plot elements and boss fights, but overall is can definitely feel like they just don't matter that much.
Is there something I like? Yes. The monster party members can actually be pretty fun. The returning characters largely feel pretty lame compared to the first game, my favorite, Sheena suffering the most due to not having any of her primary mechanics. The devs just ignored the fact that being fast is one of her main benefits, and appear to have run out of time to add in her spirits as battle elements, modeling only one of them into the game at all. BUT, I had fun with some of the monsters, the good ones anyway. For one, you can have a Sword Dancer in your party. It looks more samurai-like than the original game, but it's pretty darn cool, just hard to get. However, one monster that's EASY to get right from the start is the Demon line. Demons ROCK. They can learn almost any spell they want, making them very useful as monsters CAN be ordered to use magic on command. He's also pretty responsive and actually really cool looking. I rarely think Tales monsters look that cool, but these guys are awesome and it's a crying shame they weren't copy/pasted into every future game unlike basically every other Tales enemy. The mechanics surrounding monsters are awkward and it's dumb that cooking for them between levels is so important, yet cannot be done in the field even though cooking was done in the field in the first game. But if you pick a good one and raise it, monsters can be good. My final boss party was Lloyd, Emil, Derleth the Demon and Frank the Sword Dancer... (You can't name monsters yourself too, which is very stupid.)
On the whole, I'd still tell people to give this one a shot just to see if they like it. I'm not the kind of person that refuses to say anything nice about it or take people seriously when they say "I like this game". I think that's cool. I'd still play it over. (You get a cool bonus appearance from a character you can't meet in a first playthrough if you do replay the game.) I get frustration with the elements from the first game being VERY hit or miss, but I don't find it to all be bad. :) I don't think the game's that great overall, but I think it's still quite likeable and a lot of the hate, especially on the story feels overblown. :)
oh? Loved this game as a kid.
I have yet to play DOTNW, but based off of this video, I swear Emil is me in a nutshell.
I think it says a lot about the Tales of series when the first title I ever played was apparently the worse one, and it STILL got me hooked into the series
I respect your opinion though, I get that this game has its flaws and it’s not for everyone
They all have flaws though, not just this game.
i loved the monsters in this game you can have and alot of them are pretty broken like sword dancer fenia ravenous are some of my favorites and all really good
Well I'm glad I have been playing a certain app game that has combat like this game,I made my account centered around this type of combat,so...sweet.
Only thing I gotta worry about is prep.
"never plays it safe" I agree with Sol there, DotnW is far from my favorite but tbh I find it way more interesting than basically anything post graces, every game since then feels very samey and safe... yeah it is flawed, but I really find annoying that a lot of those very same flaws are ignored on other entries (for example, super armor being WAY WORSE in berseria yet that one is "good"?)
Also, while I agree the og cast feels forced at times, I think this still works better as a sequel, for once it resolved certain plot points from the original that had to be resolved since Phantasia is a thing... you guys mentioned how the game kinda contradicts the ending of the original by making people still being assholes, but guess what? even 4000 (or so) years latter, people still were asses in Phantasia... it is depressing, but it also shows that racism is not something someone can magically fix, no matter what Lloyd did (or even Mithos) he is not enough.
But anyway, I liked the review, refreshing to see two different points of view and, again, DotnW is far from my favorite, but I do feel a lot of hate is unwarranted, I even doubt most people hating it actually played it.
I think the super armor thing got worse in later games because they lifted rules on combo order for the player and started putting rules onto the enemies instead. In their effort to keep the player from walking all over the enemy, despite making character control easier and easier, the rules for how you're supposed to start and maintain a combo got more and more jumbled. In their tutorials, the games just say "Hit when the enemy's open and use the moves they're weak to" but it seems like there are a lot of additional factors the games don't bother to let you in on.
In all honesty I like this game
Dawn of the New World wasn’t my first Tales of game, but it is one of my favorites as it was a game that the young me became infatuated with, and to this day, can return to enjoying myself every time. It has its flaws for sure, but I still love it
I want the monster capturing to come back
Tales of Symphonia best game ever.
DOTW fun times genuine fun times!
Abyss... lost and needed an lp because the game told me where to go but not a direction to get there. I swear I put in more hours being lost than I did actually playing the game.
I really think that Motoi Sakuraba did a great job for a escort title title The more that I try, With courage, Richter theme and even the cutscenes themes are really well composed, not the best, but I don't think it's bad in general
I played like 90% of the way through, right to the final dungeon, then bam I had all of the characters from the first game taken away and Emil and Marta were absurdly under leveled because I hadn't used them in combat since I unlocked the full original cast.
But, even if I never finished it, I still overall liked it, even if I was picking it up exclusively wanting more Symphonia, and I was like 11 so I didn't even mind the weird plot detours
Its been a while since I played so I dont have the best memory but you guys have an interesting view of Emil's character. I never liked him when I played but I might have to replay this to get a more accurate opinion. Great review Zaffre and Sol!
First (only) Tales game I completed. Was under no illusions that it wasn't urinating all over the previous entry, so I wholeheartedly agree with "it would have been a better game without Symphonia."
I appreciated the skits as a way to remind me of my motivations over the course of a 30 hour game. Marta was a bland-ard anime female.
I felt the combat was anemic/sluggish, until I Emil gained enough skills to really juggle. It's definitely weak, but mostly works. Couldn't tell you what my team looked like for most of the game but at the end I was running around with a Simurgh and a leech. Extra-Large birdfriend would spam his tornado move, keeping a couple enemies busy. The leech would provoke while being too tiny for some attacks to even hit. Overall the monster system demanded too much work for _very_ little return, but there was fun to be had with it.
DotNW would be well described as a discount Tales game.
Are you going to do Tales of the Abyss?
that's not the next review in general, but next tales review for sure!
As pokemon being one of my favorite franchises, when I got this game for my 12th birthday I fell in love with the gameplay. I wasn’t into the story bc I was fuckin 12 but I like being able to tame monsters and fight with them. Shits sick even to this day 🔥
Hey mind if I ask why you didn’t like Lloyd in this one?
I think the monster system is really good but extremely unclear, there are a good portion of monsters who can really help you in battle but most people end up picking the wrongs ones which hinders their experience, there should’ve been more sense of direction, also this game is actually a lot more fun on hard mode for your first round because of the exp boost really helping your journey along, and the combat, yeah it could be better but it’s not the worst thing ever and Emil’s combos can be fun, also I’d say all the new characters were great minus Hawk and Magnor sense they had no screen time, I love Decus’s strong love for Alice and in the side quests you see his love make a lot of sense, Marta also had a character arc even if it did revolve a lot around Emil, her development with Brute and Alice was well done, if somehow you read till the end, why did you guys not mention Brute
Great review and video both of you. Nailed my feelings regarding the battle system and the character locked levels. Will still defend the story though. At least the parts focused on Emil.
From the first 4 or 5 hours I played from the game I thought Emil was okay & did kind of felt sorry for him but the other character Marta to be really annoying. I'm not a fan of female characters who just constantly gush about the one guy and gets all hissy towards other female characters. I think my first experience with the game didn't go well especially since I immediately played it after Symphonia (like the next day). I liked how you & Sol had very different opinions on the game while both agreeing on some bits & getting to understand the other's perspective. You two bounced off each other well.
Not as good as the first Symphonia for sure or even close but still good. and I kinda like how it closes up plot holes and shows that while our heroes saved the world, there was still a lot of work to be done, and still people who want to mess it all up.
Great review, very in-depth. For such a short JRPG the storyline sure was hot garbage in this one. I wonder what went wrong in the writing team.
Solid review, I may hate this game but I really enjoyed hearing both perspectives! Misc. thoughts below.
I'm not a big fan of Emil but I totally agree with you two on people calling him annoying and whiny. He's literally an abused, traumatized kid that everyone hates and while I'm not nearly as big of a fan on his development as Luke's I do think the comparison is very warranted.
I do partially disagree on the neutral/good ending though. I'm not sure for the specifics of not getting the good ending, but I've heard that the very first choice in the game about pledging loyalty to Lloyd gives you a bit more than half needed to pass the no good ending threshold and that the lightning bolts in the lightning temple add to the counter as well. I'm not sure how true these are, especially the 2nd, but either way that's pretty wack. In general I just hate that in a 25-30 hour game you can be locked out of the good ending at all.
i do believe you get pretty heavily penalized for pledging to lloyd at the beginning but honestly dodging the lightning is suuuuper easy. bs that it's something that can lock you out of the true ending regardless, but thankfully it's pretty easy to avoid. idk why they would put such a mechanic in the game anyway, but i'm lucky in that it's never really gotten in the way of both of my playthroughs but it is a problem all the same. glad you enjoyed the review man :)
@ZaffreRevolution Yeah it's easy but... I idled there for a bit since I could just heal off the damage and I had a mini heart attack after learning that. THANKFULLY I got the good ending but holy crap it was terrifying.
Who the artist?
There are things that I agree with Sol about: the gameplay is a definite improvement with how it feels and it had good ideas in the overall experience. But this is not the game for me. I tried it out, mainly going through the main story and I didn't like it that much. It made too many weird decisions.
Some of the decisions like the free running method I got used to. But the way they handled the returning characters was pretty bad. I often stuck with Emil since he felt the most fun playing as. And Lloyd's character was butchered so much! The inclusion of the previous entry's side quests tying into the main story didn't help either since if people didn't go back to go through them, that when they were brought up they didn't make sense on how they happened.
I can bring up more of my issues but they were already mentioned in the video. But I can say that Dawn of the New World isn't as bad. If you really want to explore the combined world, check out Tales of Phantasia instead.
This game was my introduction to JRPGs in general and made me fall in love with the genre. Having played all other Tales games now, I objectively say it has clunky mechanics, an unwieldy battle system and rather barebones content. I still think however that Emil's story is one of the best overall plots Tales has done, particularly with the plot twist at the end.
The fact that I started with DotNW was definitely a positive because I did not have any preconceived opinions on the world or other characters. Emil's hatred for Lloyd felt perfectly justified and helped connect me to his story. I also didn't feel like DotNW 'undid' the positive ending of Symphonia, because I did not play it yet (I agree however that sequels should never ruin closed happy endings of previous entries to generate new drama, it's parasitic). I guess that supports the argument that this game would have been better off as a stand-alone.
Anyway, I play almost exclusively JRPGs now, so DotNW definitely did something right.
While I don’t hate emil but his character have like 4 origin
The one die at the ruin(don’t remember the name)
The one die by fake Lloyd (true emil)
The emil we play
Ratatosk
And only emil in game have character development while all other persona is just a plot point, ratatosk do something at the end,
It just bug me a lot
i only used monsters my emil and whats her name was so weak.
This game is a lot of really cool ideas but it was put together in a really messy way. I agree with what you said at the end I think this is a really good game but a really bad Tales game. I've talked to some friend about how I think this game could have been made better by splitting each chapter into two parts. 1: Where you play through Emil's journey where you go through his growth and learning to adapt with the world and how things work, and 2: Lloyd's journey with Colette at this point where you have him behind the scenes doing different things and pushing a more shadow narrative compared too Emil's and you watch both sides going on and also as the first Symphonia's cast, you (as the player) pass those characters around and it changes conversations and different scenes and such, as I said there were so many good ideas but it wasn't presented well I feel.
The original Tales of Symphonia has been my favorite ever game since I played it as a teenager and I thought DotNW was great, only real gripes being the voice cast changes and loss of a world map. Both broke my immersion that this was the same world as the first game.
This is my frist tales of game
31:53 that happened to male characters too like Tuxedo Mask.
I’ve only played 4 tales games, being DoTNW, Berseria, Zestiria, and Vesperia. I believe DOTNW blew zestiria and vesperia out of the water
This was the first and only "Tales" game I've played. Because of that, I love it. I don't know anything about how it ruined the other game's ending or how the characters from the last game just popped in. Before playing, I had no idea about the story and took Lloyd as a face value villain.
Some of the monsters you can train in this game were fucking busted. The lv200 cap monsters can easily carry through the gunnungagap, and some monsters could cast resurrection.
I feel like this game took character romance in the right direction. Granted, Marta is obnoxious for most of the run time.
Also Emil in battle could be seen as a foundation for aerial focused characters like Judith, Leia, Ludger, or other playable characters that have a higher skill ceiling than (basic combo ->1->2->3) or (basic combo ->base arte ->arcane arte).
Zaffy might say that other characters get in the way in combat, but Symphonia's multiplayer was way worse. Being 2P to my wife playing Symphonia for the first time made me realize this. "can't attack through Lloyd"~ I kept saying.
/Rant
I've yet to play DotNW, and I doubt I'll be getting to it any time soon since I ain't that into Symphonia's combat system, but I love Marta from what I've seen of her. Her mannerisms, facial expressions and that corner fang are all absolutely adorable. That's my take on the game thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I beat Dawn of a New World 3 times. I love the game though I played the ps3 port.
I’m bias on this game because, believe it or not, it was my first ever Tales of game. Yup, i had no knowledge of the series beforehand, so this was my first time ever playing a tales game. It was definitely a bad move for story reasons since I hadn’t played the first Tales of Symponia game, and new nothing about the other games. So you can imagine my confusion when characters mention events i never saw before. It also led to my disappointment when i heard that this was actually the most hated entry for a lot of people. I played this game all the way back in high school when i was still getting into anime, and was looking for games to play on my Wii and the game just looked really interesting to me. The stuff with Marta also never really bothered me back then because, and I’m not afraid to admit this, i was, and still kinda am, a huge shipper back then, Emil x Marta forever goddamn it, but i can understand why her infatuation for Emil can be annoying for allot of people. It never bothered me though and it still doesn’t honestly. Emil gets allot of hate from Tales fans and maybe if i played the other games id be signing a different tune but i actually liked him. I’ve always been a stickler for characters of his nature.
Now i should be honest with something right now. I never actually finished this game. Yes you heard right, and the was for two reasons. One, i was never able to beat Decus or Alice, they're so fucking cheap i swear to god, but also because……. I found out that I unintentionally locked myself out of getting the good ending of the game. See, there’s a section in the game where you enter a cave and need to get a jewel before Lloyd does. However i realized i was low o resources and….. LEFT the cave to restock, without realizing that there was a merchant INSIDE the cave (goddamn it) and it turns out doing so leads to a couple of events. One being that if you locate the cave then Lloyd will interrupt what you’re doing and steal the jewel you’re trying to get, and if you do what i SHOUD’VE done and stay in the damn cave then he somehow DOESN’T get the steal the Jewel from you which is very weird but whatever. So yeah i locked myself out of getting the good ending and never touched the game again since and had long since contemplated on wether or not i should just restart the entire game or not. Right now I’m leaning more towards doing just that since that was a long ass time ago and I’m bound to forget most of the minor shit that happened. That and it would give me the chance to do all of the side missions with Richter since i skipped all those on my first play through. But this time id play the first game……… OR just be a lazy bum and watch the anime instead even though it cuts out allot of minor things from the story……. But who cares about that really.
I did find this game fairly fun but it had a few Massive flaws. The worst for me being Marta as a character in her entirety. I hated her from close to the start and I still can't stand her, even in crossovers, which means I can't play the game again because she's so prominent. I Did love Emil and his personal growth!
I really love Tenebrae... Nazdrovie thing was my favorite skit
Anyway story is very easy to read.
Alice and Decus doesn't deserve forgiveness as the game let them live too.
You mean, "Light Frog". 🙃
@@emilcastagnier391 NAZ DRO VI E !! said Tenebrae.
The first tales game i owned was tales of symphonia chronicles, but i didn't finish ether games. The first tales game i finish was berseria. P.s. great video Zaffre, i hope you do more guest stars in the future.
oh don't you worry, i will!
The biggest problem with DotNW is that it feels too much like a proper attempt at a sequel instead of a spinoff. It comes across more like a mainline game with a ton of drawbacks and limitations than as a smaller side story set in a familiar world that goes above and beyond in some of its elements.
I love the game and that the main characters are flawed but grow so much throughout the game. I can see why Symphonia 1 fans were annoyed on how the returning cast weren't really represented and for gameplay reasons, but I quite liked the story and the Pokemon aspect. I'd say its themes also are a great continuation of the original, from an arrogant main character who needed self-control to a cowardly one who needed courage, from racism to nationalism, from friendship to love.
I know It's controversial but this is in my top 4 tales games but I didn't have the internet I didn't know about the actual sidequests but I do agree on the new characters sucking for the most part
I personally still like this game overall, but I ended up agreeing with both of you for a big part of this video, particularly with the gameplay
While I do remember having fun with the game, especially with Emil, I agree with Zaffre that the combat overall feels somewhat off when compared to most other entries and doesn't have quite same oomph + the monster mechanic was pretty terrible
And while I really love the story and most of the new characters, I will say that the og cast was done major dirty here both in terms of their roles in the story and in terms of the gameplay
It's weird because I do agree with Zaffre that this is probably one of the series' weakest entries, I still find myself focusing more on the things it does really well like Sol does
It's definitely a strong 6/10, maybe a weak 7 on a good day, but at the end of the day, I guess I just feel too sorry for it to really rag on its negatives too much
i kinda feel sorry for it too lol. like it's not this awful plague on the series like people say it is, regardless of how low i'd rank it in the series anyway. guess that kinda speaks for tales' quality as a whole? this is a weird game lol
Dawn of the New World might give you a worse party, but it gives you a bigger selection, if you're the type of person who likes to create good builds in RPGs, this is the game to do it, in other tales games, you get like 6-12 chars and they can all be pretty good when built up, but a lot of the choices aren't yours to make. In Symphonia 2 you get a lot more options, even if they might be worse.
Weirdly enough I didn't care about the party setup. Doing air combos with Emil was more than enough for me.
This makes me want to try DOTNW even tho every thing people say
Its a good game not as great as the first but its so good
I actually had more fun playing DotNW than Symphonia because several of Symphonia's dungeons frustrated me to the point of nearly rage-quitting several times, ultimately looking up a walkthrough on numerous occasions to keep from just quitting the game altogether. If I ever play through Symphonia again, I'm going to use a walkthrough for the dungeons because I despised them so much.
Well Tempest and DotNW are respected as main line titles in crossovers so...it’s not a spin-off anymore (kinda? It’s like Destiny 2 but not like destiny 2...? Damnit I confused myself!)
i remember people thought tempest was so bad that it got demoted to a mainline entry which is kinda hilarious. can't wait to play that one
@@ZaffreRevolution Tempest is pretty divisive mostly for the fact it’s a DS game. Beyond that I think it’s like DotNW level of quality and that it has Rebirth’s “3 lane system”. That’s all I know
There are no such thing as mainline/mothership titles anymore. They are all original titles or crossover. It’s the same tier as abyss and etc now.
Its not as good as the original Symphonia, but I do think its underrated.
its a bit ironic that it seems to match up so closely to Final Fantasy 13-2. Two new characters, with the same color schemes, sidelining the original cast, AND monster catching? In 13-2, I was disappointed that the old cast wasn't party members... but this game kinda showed why it was a good idea because it breaks the monster system.
Symphonia was my first Tales game, I played it at the perfect time and I loved it. Since I had the PS3 collection, I jumped right into DOTNW. I remember this being the first game to ever make me... angry. Like angry at how the world and characters were put together. I like Emil, I think his arc is pretty good. Marta was the killer for me, I HATED her for the half of the game. My memory is a bit fuzzy but I feel as if she was way too clingy and got the party into more trouble than good. That and I felt as if she was laying it on way too thick with the flirting. To the point where it wasn't cheesy or funny, just annoying.
Lastly I felt as if the original Symphonia cast were basically just put in a big fanfiction. Everyone felt like their tropes rather than being well developed like they were previously.
Tenebrae is cool though I will say.
I did enjoy the game very much, but I could have enjoyedi t a lot more. I wish Emil wasn't such a colossal wimp (tone it down just a bit), and I wish the original cast's levels weren't capped so low. Playing around with the monsters was cool but they have no character... They just felt like pieces of equipment.
Dawn of the New World didn’t respect what fans loved about the first game. As a stand alone game it’s fine. But it’s definitely soured and undermined what was so amazing about the first.
If Nintendo would release the game in Hd for Switch, will people buy it.