The worthy sucessor to Tales of Symphonia, but a worthy game?
If you haven't played any of the tales series games before you might want to give this game a miss.
If you have, well people it's a solid RPG on the Wii! What the hell are you waiting for, this genre is about as desolate and empty as the sahara on a sabbath in terms of the Wii. Fans of the genre who mistakenly bet on the wrong console are going to want this little number in their collection.
Now it's not a 'Main' title, you've got to realize that. Namco haven't pumped much funding, time or effort into really making this idea shine, and I feel a little peeved that they used Symphonia's popularity to try and make this game idea sell instead of spending the necissary resources for it. I know that this team is scrapped together by whoever was lying around the NamcoTales office from all of 'Team Symphonia' 'Team Destiny' and 'Team Legendia/Etc'.
Emil will annoy you for a long time, you'll be begging for Lloyd to show up and stick a sword in that grating little emo child, and prance along happily with the dear old happy-go-lucky idiot again. Only problem is, most of the cast of the Old symphonia seems to have been bitten with the angsty-bug and alot of the story just feels...'tired' until much later when a prickly little girl called Alice makes her grand entre.
The game play is noticably Abyss-style, employing the refined Multi-flex linear motion battle system, which unlike the first game allows the player to move all around the battle field, instead of just back and forth with varying camera angles. It works well and theres really no hiccups to report, it's your standard RPG battles, with namco's own little sprinkle of fighter-esque style combat. Beats standing in a row contemplating in what way you'd like to beat up your enemy the worst and how flashy you want to make it. Skills are optional with the nunchuck or Wii motion censor.
The tales series does a marvellous job of making you think quick while fighting and that's always been it's merit. This game is no exception to that.
The sound. 'Yawn'. Rehashes of the old music, not very artistically done either. Somthing an extra solid weeks worth of work could have fixed.
Fans of the old cast might want to take a few deep breaths before they take the big step into the 'new world' because you're going to be seeing alot of recasting. Except for Colette. And Heather Hogan sounds noticably less annoying than she did in the first. Points for that but it won't save the rest of the cast. So be warned all ye ears who enter here. Scott Menville missing is the biggest blow to the game's cast and Brian Beacock just isn't up to par despite his previous attempts at Lloyd in Radiant Mythology and Soul Caliber Legends. However there may be a surprise return or two in store so don't loose faith entirely.
The graphics are a step up from it's predecessor but honestly, I quite like cell shades. What was stopping Namco from making them 'Better' cell shaded models I'll forever be in the dark about, they look almost stiff in a way... less flexible models than the first tales and I almost mark that as a step down, but alas they work very well for the ingame cutscenes. Some gorgeous work with some of the fight scenes and some truly epic oneliners but this game just doesn't rise to the Symphonia occasion.
The monsters. Well frankly, I played too much pokemon in my youth to de-vole back to that stuff now. I couldn't stomach it and used the cast characters as much as possible. They're far more integral and interesting to the plot, so at least while using them theres an element of empathy you don't get from the monsters.
There's a 'reason' that trick worked for Pokemon Namco, it's because you can ONLY use pokemon in Pokemon. Did anyone ever honestly like using Cait Sith in Final Fantasy 7 or Quina in 9? I didn't think so. There's a reeeason. Human characters will automatically recieve more empathy from the players than monsters. And this case it just. Doesn't. Bloody. Mix.
The idea was stupid, should have been scrapped and this should have been given the 'Main title' treatment it deserved.
However it didn't so take caution both fan and neophyte, it's up to you to take the plunge.