May 10 2009
Initial Impressions - Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
Now that I have a few more hours under my belt, I can safely say that I like my first experience with the Tales franchise. The whole business of recruiting monster partymembers like Pokemon is still a bit of a mystery to me, but I get just as happy when it happens. I don’t care if it is all by accident. I’m having a blast.I also like the methods the game uses to help you level up. There are stations of the Katz Guild all over the world, and if you check in you can opt for additional quests. I have no idea what treasures the quests offer, but my eyes are spinning with additional levels like a cartoon character’s would for dollar signs. If this saves me the trouble of doing nothing but bare bones leveling for a few hours, it will be more than worth it.
I’m still a little disappointed with the motion controls. I haven’t learned enough Artes to attempt to elicit the use of the motion-controlled shortcuts, but the motion controls have been implemented in other, weak ways. It’s almost as if the developers realized halfway through production that they were making this game for the Wii so we better damn well put in some motion controls. As of now, this game could have been produced just as well on the PlayStation 2.
But it’s still early, so they can always change my mind…
