Finally beat Dawn of the New World (spoilers)

[Kajitani-Eizan]

yeah but then you get to scroll through a long list of swords, or a long list of axes, or whatever, instead of a LONNNNGGG list of all weapons. and you have to go through each one individually anyway to look for new items to synth. it doesn't help at all, and as such i don't use it much. it's funny how these simple little things that should have been fixed with the tiniest bit of thought, or at least if it somehow got overlooked, a bit of playtesting, are not fixed.

i would have to say that being able to build a favorites list of skills would have been nice, too -- there are a bunch i never use, and a bunch that i will swap between depending on what i want to do. why should i have to wade through the massive sea of the former to get to the latter? also, ideally, one button press would clear all of the non-high priority skills (perhaps a few minor stat boosts that i allocate only if i have the points left over to do so), allowing me to change things up more fluidly.

or how about being able to open the world map from... the world map? (you could do it in abyss, iirc.) or look at a weapon in synthing and be able to jump to its entry in the collector's book so i know where to get it? or be able to jump BACK to the world map after using it to jump to the monster book, without having to re-find the area i was looking at? or how about being able to zoom in on my character models in the status screen? (i can rotate already, complete with inertial movements... why not zoom??)

or how about stopping with this idiotic need to magic lens every enemy you meet? it clashes HORRIBLY with boss battle tension build-up and those start-of-battle speeches.
Boss: "Now you shall face the wrath of--"
Yuri: "Here!"
*ret's check out the boss's stats! lolz!*
Boss: "--my... ... I forgot what I was going to say."
it would even help to just prevent you from using magic lenses until the speeches are over. the player will quickly learn not to try it until later, and voila, the mood is preserved.

i'm very curious as to how DotNW stacks up on issues like these.

</totally not a second hijack>

[Kogahazan]

DotNW has this weird synthing system where you actually select a material and it shows you what you can make. What would be great though is if it was combined with Vesperia's synthing system to allow two views, see weapons you can make and highlight them to see what you need to make them, or have DotNW style. Sometimes I wished Vesperia had the DotNW option, because I agree that finding new things to synth is a pain.

[Cless]

yeah but then you get to scroll through a long list of swords, or a long list of axes, or whatever, instead of a LONNNNGGG list of all weapons. and you have to go through each one individually anyway to look for new items to synth. it doesn't help at all, and as such i don't use it much. it's funny how these simple little things that should have been fixed with the tiniest bit of thought, or at least if it somehow got overlooked, a bit of playtesting, are not fixed.

My strategy was to just to look for things that I had 0 of. I never, ever sold anything. With weapons, I also looked for ones with skills I haven't learned yet.

or how about being able to open the world map from... the world map? (you could do it in abyss, iirc.)

I assume they quit doing this because you can get a full world map overlay by pressing X. I like that better than popping open the world map menu, at least...mainly because you can still move around.

or how about stopping with this idiotic need to magic lens every enemy you meet? it clashes HORRIBLY with boss battle tension build-up and those start-of-battle speeches.

Would be nice, but almost every Tales game suffers from this. Abyss doesn't have it because there's no Monster Book in that game. Fortunately, Destiny PS2 does do away with magic lenses.

i'm very curious as to how DotNW stacks up on issues like these.

IIRC DotNW doesn't use magic lens either, but it has its own problems. Enemy levels aren't static, and the Monster Book is extremely simplified. The only info you get in battle is the monster's elemental affinity and their HP. The Monster Book only displays their resistances and drop/steal items. They could have at least let you see the resistances in battle, because navigating the Monster Book is a bit annoying.

[Cyllya]

what, really? presea and raine, too?

Presea shouldn't be a surprise. I'd say the most romantically inclined ToS ending was hers (closely followed by Sheena's).

a real Tales of Symphonia 2 (which I still refuse to refer to it as), IMO.

I agree with your refusal to call it Tales of Symphonia 2, only because... that's simply not it's name.  I just call it "ToS2" because any other abbreviation takes too long to type. Maybe I should go back to TOSKOR (also not its name, but...).

But... while more polish would have been nice, I wouldn't want this game replaced with "a real Tales of Symphonia 2."

If anything, the game gets kinda stupidly easy after awhile. The beginning IS a little rough, though. That Wolf you get in the first dungeon will seriously carry you through the entire game. It gains levels fast and can eventually evolve into a ridiculously powerful Fenrir. I also recruited a bear from the tower of mana, which also gets ridiculous.  I pretty much stuck with them and the two main characters for the rest of the game, and it worked out. Thankfully, because the monster raising system in the game seriously sucks.

One other balance issue: ToS took the "hi" and "ou" parts of hi-ougi seriously, and so it appropriately made hi-ougis really uber powerful. In TOSKOR, you can pop them out like ToV (Burst Artes) or ToA. TOSKOR has some of the same characters and same hi-ougis as ToS. They didn't adjust the power.

I also continued to use my starting wolf. (He wasn't always in my party, but I used him regularly and against the last, er, third-to-last boss.) Not sure why that's a bad thing. I think it'd be worse if the wolf couldn't become strong enough to last the whole game.

Maybe you and I just play different. I think if you went and found my old Pokemon Red save, you'd see Venusaur, Pigeot, Butterfree, Raticate, etc... >_> I think I tend to do that for all games that give you a large and/or infinite supply of new characters. Final Fantasy Tactics, FFT Advance, Pocket King, etc. I remember being annoyed that it didn't work well in SamoRine.

other than that it's pretty awesome in every possible regard. how could ToSKoR *possibly* compare?

ToV's not bad at all; I love it! It's just not omigoshawesome.

Some things that cause my love of Dawn of the New World to eclipse my love of ToV:

- For me, the quality of the battle system is all about being able to move the character when I feel like moving him. (You might recall that I can't stand to play ToP-PSX.) ToV is like ToA to a more extreme level in that it ties your characters' movement speed, attack recovery, etc to your agility stat and some skills. So at the start of the game, everything is slow and clunky, and it gradually gets better. TOSKOR never has that problem. And while I don't think of myself as a big Tales-should-have-aerial-combat proponent, going back to ToV after playing as Emil for a while felt like going back to a Tales that was a few years old after playing something recent. So... despite all ToV's fancy features, I like TOSKOR's battle system more. It doesn't have any downsides to me. The monster system is kind of bland, but it doesn't detract from anything.

- I agree with your complaints about the story, Kaji, and in general I just felt like it... meandered. I've already forgotten the specifics unfortunately, so I can't make a half-decent argument. I just remember feeling annoyed at stuff like that. It also felt like it had more mysteriously disappearing subplots and whatnot, but I don't feel comfortable criticizing a plot for something like that until I've poured through it (including all skits and sidequests) at least five times, which I probably won't do anytime soon for ToV. A related plot complaint: Team Symphonia's tendency to hide tons of plot content in obscure optional scenes is starting to grate on me too. Great in ToS, good in ToA, fine in TOSKOR (not TS, I know), lame in ToV. Well, I still kind of liked ToV's plot. I was emotionally moved by Ba'ul's situation toward the end.

Both games had mostly lame villains, but I liked Richter.

There were some things I disliked about TOSKOR: The impostor thing was cheesy (not Lloyd being framed; just the magical disguise being responsible). I'm confused about Emil's aunt and uncle, and Clara remembering him. Also confused about Ratatosk's semi-sudden change of heart. Those cutscenes with the subtitles at the bottom also annoyed me. Can't pause them, skip them, or speed them up, and they ignore the changes to the volume settings you made (the music sometimes drowns out the voice). Well, at least there are subtitles.

ToV has prettier graphics.

or how about being able to open the world map from... the world map? (you could do it in abyss, iirc.)

I totally agree ToV needed that. It bugged me so much.

it would even help to just prevent you from using magic lenses until the speeches are over. the player will quickly learn not to try it until later, and voila, the mood is preserved.

Or not have those in-battle speeches. Put them in the scene before the battle or in a scene on the battle field (unless they just rehash whatever was said in the scene already, in which case, remove them). They could still have one after a little scene in the middle of the fight by not requiring another magic lens. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time understanding those background conversations.

You don't need to magic lens the monsters in TOSKOR, but it would be nice to be able to get info on a boss while fighting him, rather than waiting until after you killed him.

I assume they quit doing this because you can get a full world map overlay by pressing X. I like that better than popping open the world map menu, at least...mainly because you can still move around.

You can't see that map overlay too well though. Well, I couldn't. (Using an HD TV, nearsighted but wearing my glasses.)

[Team Rocket Elite]

I'm confused about Emil's aunt and uncle, and Clara remembering him.

There was a original Emil in Palmacosta. He has one or two lines in the starting cutscene. He nevers appears on screen and presumably looks nothing like Ratatosk Emil. This is the reason no one in Palamacosta recognized Ratatosk Emil. It's unknown what happened to the original Emil but most people seem to think he died during the blood purge. After Marta released Ratatosk from the orb, Ratatosk took the form of Aster. He wandered off and eventually met the original Emil's dying mom. Original Emil's mom could no longer see at that point and mistook Ratatosk Emil for her son. She told Ratatosk Emil to go she Flora in Luin. Ratatosk Emil formed fake memories and pretended to be the original Emil from this point on. The original Emil never met Flora so Flora didn't know what Emil was supposed to look like but she probably knew Clara had a son named Emil.

[Kajitani-Eizan]

one thing that ToV did pretty nicely with is burst artes. they're kind of pseudo hiougis. not sure if you noticed, but they level up depending on the overlimit level you used; the level 2 burst arte is a longer/bigger/stronger/etc. version of the level 1 burst arte, and so on. for example, divine wolf 2 gains a fly-through/back slash (like ghost wolf) at the end, divine wolf storm 2 gets a few more hits and a cooler/longer tornado at the end, etc. that's pretty neat, i think. and at least where i am, it actually takes a (short) while to fill up the gauge 3 levels to be able to use a mystic arte, and even then, only one character can use it. (not to mention i only have special for yuri and karol right now.) plus you actually have other things to do in overlimit rather than just spam MA, so there's a greater chance of missing your window. whereas in ToA all four of your characters can spam MAs left and right.

i don't recall ToV being particularly slower or sluggish when i first started playing compared to now, though. obviously i have more skills and artes now, but that's about it. is AGL really tied to your attack speed/recovery? i think it was in ToA but was only really noticeable when you level to 100+ with tutti, i.e. on a second playthrough. arte usage led to faster arte recovery in ToA, not sure if it does here... the only artes i have hundreds of uses in are azure edge/storm (which do fly faster with more uses...) and i think shining fang, which doesn't seem particularly broken outside of overlimit. i tried sticking some mythril boots on karol to raise his miserable AGL, but i'm not sure that really changed much.

[Kevassa]

I rarely leave a game unfinished, so it's likely that I'll go back and try to finish it at some point. So I wouldn't say my opinion is set in stone, but I was rather disappointed. Perhaps I just hoped for too much and a little break will do me some good.

Beleive me, the game´s story gets a lot better after Kohak gets her emotions back, plus the better dungeons appear.
I wonder if your lack of power ended up in the wrong usage of Soma evolve? That happened to a friend of mine, who always chose the green path, which is a terrible mistake, it ends up to having a soma with many support skills and many artes, but no parameters.
I am not forcing you to play it or anything, just some tips to make battles easier, thats all, hope I didnt bother too much

[throughhim413]

Oh man, all green? Who would do... Okay, yeah, that's exactly what I did. I guess I ended up making the game a lot harder than it's supposed to be. Perhaps I'm just an idiot when it comes to these sorts of things. I just never thought about it beyond Artes = good. *Sighs* I feel really dumb now, though I guess that's to be expected since I apparently am. I suppose I don't really have the right to complain about a game that I've been playing wrong. It's like complaining about Pokemon being hard without ever buying Pokeballs...

[ForceCube]

Oh man, all green? Who would do... Okay, yeah, that's exactly what I did. I guess I ended up making the game a lot harder than it's supposed to be. Perhaps I'm just an idiot when it comes to these sorts of things. I just never thought about it beyond Artes = good. *Sighs* I feel really dumb now, though I guess that's to be expected since I apparently am. I suppose I don't really have the right to complain about a game that I've been playing wrong. It's like complaining about Pokemon being hard without ever buying Pokeballs...

lol. That explains A LOT.

I thought battles were being shorter for me because I leveled up a lot, but now that I think about it, I always tried to use all three colors as evenly as possible when Soma evolving. Including the red one, when I felt I had enough Artes to last until the next level.

Anyway, I'm glad you found out what was wrong. And as for the story, depending on how well spent these 35 hours were, maybe you're yet to see the more interesting parts of it. I thought there were a few very well executed ideas in there, at least.

[Kevassa]

Oh man, all green? Who would do... Okay, yeah, that's exactly what I did. I guess I ended up making the game a lot harder than it's supposed to be. Perhaps I'm just an idiot when it comes to these sorts of things. I just never thought about it beyond Artes = good. *Sighs* I feel really dumb now, though I guess that's to be expected since I apparently am. I suppose I don't really have the right to complain about a game that I've been playing wrong. It's like complaining about Pokemon being hard without ever buying Pokeballs...

I recommend  that (if you are willing to replay) take the blue path always, unless you see a good support skill for the green path, most support skills sucks, a lot
10% less stagger... so useful... when you get Damage Break for yourself you wouldnt care less about stagger :p THERE IS EVEN 10% LESS RUN AWAY P_P who would run away (I dont like having low grades )

[Kajitani-Eizan]

i've been alternating between blue and green, will probably grab a red eventually (probably when the stat boosts seem best and/or i have plenty of unlearned artes).

[FSLink]

Just beat this game today, was surprised that it turned out not too bad.

I have to say, the skits have to be some of my favorites in the entire series. The voice acting was all right for the most part, I don't mind Lloyd's new VA at all...only one I disliked was Zelos'...and I even like new Regal's VA a bit better than his old one, but that's probably because Regal is less angsty in this game, so the voice didn't annoy me as much.

Difficulty wasn't too bad, just died on a few bosses on Hard mode, I kind of felt the random encounters were too easy for the most part.

ToS took the "hi" and "ou" parts of hi-ougi seriously, and so it appropriately made hi-ougis really uber powerful. In TOSKOR, you can pop them out like ToV (Burst Artes) or ToA. TOSKOR has some of the same characters and same hi-ougis as ToS. They didn't adjust the power.

I also hated the sound effects for a lot of them...all of ToS's sounded fierce and mean when you used them, ToS2's sound effects aren't very great...also disliked how Presea's hi-ougi looked and sounded terrible. And Ain Soph Aur? Hardly did enough damage for its crazy TP cost.

or how about stopping with this idiotic need to magic lens every enemy you meet? it clashes HORRIBLY with boss battle tension build-up and those start-of-battle speeches.

If they fix that permanently in a future game and stick with it, they could also at least stop making us earn random stuff that you should have from the beginning...like Manual mode, Item Thrower, even viewing Grade (wtf ToH). Not really fond of the battle system being too gimped at the beginning of each newer Tales game.

[jajaswipo]

yea but didnt tos (original) have manual unlocked from the start? i cant remember clearly because i always started off with it in new game +? the tales series has made a lot of progress in terms of battle since then though. double jumping is becoming a common tool in the arsenal, gaurdian is unlocked from the beginning now etc....

[Shinryu]

Unfortunately, I don't share your love for KoR. Or rather, I don't think I even like it enough to finish it. The game felt like a chore to me, battles weren't fun and I constantly felt underleveled at boss fights. The exact same thing happened to me while playing Tales of Hearts - I just got tired of going though the motions in what felt like a wholly unbalanced game. Despite the fact that I would love to see all of the plot goodness, KoR is one of my least favorite games in the series.

I feel like I really should give it a try, but the feel the battles gave me in videos/trailers and the whole idea of Ratatosk's story has turned me off from even trying the game.

yea but didnt tos (original) have manual unlocked from the start? i cant remember clearly because i always started off with it in new game +? the tales series has made a lot of progress in terms of battle since then though. double jumping is becoming a common tool in the arsenal, gaurdian is unlocked from the beginning now etc....

You could always use Manual in Tales of Symphonia, yes, but the current trend has reverted back to requiring an item for it. They've been taking a lot of things lately and turning them into "extra" abilities when they were simply givens in the past. Some things are nice, some are annoyances...