Tales of Symphonia : Knight of Ratatosk

[LJkAze]

Tales of Symphonia : Knight of Ratatosk for Nintendo Wii

http://www.pici.se/pictures/xzFLcnBkC.jpg (big farking image of ToS:KoR's new mains.)

[Nae]

Getting a Wii.

[Cyllya]

Cool beans! I like the character designs. That's not Fujishima, is it? Looks like Inomata. Kinda.

I don't like the graphics, but they're 3D, so they'll probably get better. Too bad they seem to be going ToA-style though; even technical qualities aside, I wasn't fond of that.

Named "Tales of Symphonia: [subtitle]" + Inomata = spin-off?

[Kogahazan]

Cool beans! I like the character designs. That's not Fujishima, is it? Looks like Inomata. Kinda.

I don't like the graphics, but they're 3D, so they'll probably get better. Too bad they seem to be going ToA-style though; even technical qualities aside, I wasn't fond of that.

Named "Tales of Symphonia: [subtitle]" + Inomata = spin-off?

The artwork looks Fujishima to me. It looks similar to Abyss artwork, especially the girl. Or maybe I'm getting juvenile senility, which ever is the case.

[Cless]

Okay wait a sec. That battle screenshot looks awful graphically. That seriously looks like something you'd expect from... the DS. Maybe it's just a REALLY badly placed screen. The non-battle one in the famitsu scan looked a lot better.

I'm sure it'll be good fun, if it's by Team Symphonia...

[marational]

They have a lot of time to work on the game. I'm hoping this is just an early shot where they just began to incorporate the characters and monsters into the TotA engine.

[Cyllya]

I don't think they look DS-like though. It's hard to tell with so few graphics shown, but I think they look about on par with ToA. Which is not good, but not DS-like either.

[Cless]

The monster looks REALLY low poly to me. It looks very blocky. Also, that lump in the background looks like it's made of two triangles and two rectangles. Overall the entire battlefield doesn't look very detailed.

The only character we can see looks decent I suppose, but man that sword is jaggy.

[Cless]

okay honestly. The DS game looks better in battle than ToS:KoR (in its current form), at least in stills. Let's hope they tighten it up. That's kinda embarrassing. Aside from being from an early build, there is no excuse for this looking worse than Symphonia GC.

[Dimentionalist]

Surely I'm not the only one that misses ToS's cell shading? I personally think that ToA's look was a bit... bland...

[Cless]

Okay. that looks about 50 trillion times better than that other shot. (what gives?)

Surely I'm not the only one that misses ToS's cell shading? I personally think that ToA's look was a bit... bland...

my main problem with ToA visuals was the bland palette. It also suffered from crappy low res textures like Symphonia PS2. but I thought overall art direction was a bit better in ToA.

[Dimentionalist]

Ahhh! That screen looks MUCH  better... especially the backgrounds.

[throughhim413]

Personally, I have to say that what I'm most interested in is how the story will unfold and more importantly, how it will fit into the Aselian timeline.  Symphonia was done in such a manner that it really seemed like from the start, Phantasia was created to make subtle references to Symphonia before it even existed.  So I hope they can capture that feeling with ToS2. 

[Cless]

Moving on to the Wii Tales of Symphonia Knights of Ratatoskr, the Spring 2008 (Japanese release) title is, as mentioned in our initial update, a direct sequel to the GameCube and PS2 Tales of Symphonia, painting a new story three years after the events of that game. While story details are scarce, Bandai Namco did announce that the game's main character would be named Emil, and the heroine Malta. Lloyd and other characters from the original will also appear in the game.

Bandai Namco is working on some updates to the title for the Wii. Visually, the company claims that the graphics have been improved, with higher texture resolution. This is true of new dungeons and towns, and those that you might have visited in the original.

Gameplay is also seeing a few updates. The game will feature Wii-mote direct controls, allowing players to move around by pointing at sections of the map. While not strictly Wii related, the game will also include the ability to capture and breed monsters for use as allies in battle.

I still want to hear about battle controls.

[throughhim413]

That monster breeding sounds kind of gimmicky...  But no point in judging it before I can try it myself I suppose.

[Cyllya]

I think the artistic design of the battle field is the big difference compared between those screenshots. Compare this screenshot from ToA (taken by me, so it's not a beta).


And I think the art of the first screen is so much uglier than the second because the first depicts a generic lava cave, and there's only so much you can do with a generic lava cave without making the dungeon itself something other than a generic lava cave. ToS has a ruined subterranean lava town instead of a generic lava cave, but here's a (not-so-good, since it's mostly obscure by the monster) screenshot of a generic dirt cave, which is also not very nice, imo, compared to this, this, or this.


As for the monster, it's made out of rock, so I think it's supposed to be blocky. The floating swords and the hammer/hand part of the rock monster don't look blocky. And I think the jaggedness is a result of the screenshot.

Surely I'm not the only one that misses ToS's cell shading? I personally think that ToA's look was a bit... bland...

I agree. There's the bland palette (+ no outlines = stuff blends together) and low-res textures like Cless said, but I didn't like visual design of stuff much either. (You know, some of my favorite character designs in the series are random ToS NPCs XD.) I'll give it credit for towns looking as big as they logically should be, graphics not conflicting with the plot, and characters having necks, but I liked ToS much better otherwise. I wish they'd use something ToS style except ToA proportions (or ToL battle proportions, which are like ToS but the characters have necks).

Do you think the forest screenshot is representative of the color palette ToSKoR will have, or is it inaccuracy of the screenshot? Because I like it better than ToA-like colors.

Personally, I have to say that what I'm most interested in is how the story will unfold and more importantly, how it will fit into the Aselian timeline.  Symphonia was done in such a manner that it really seemed like from the start, Phantasia was created to make subtle references to Symphonia before it even existed.  So I hope they can capture that feeling with ToS2.

I think it would be hard to do something like that with this since it's set after ToS instead of before, and only two years difference. Well, I guess it can expound on random ToS backstory tidbits. Or even random ToP backstory tidbits.