"The Wii sequel to every GameCube owners favorite RPG."
"Thirty minutes into the start of the Jump Festa event on Saturday over at the Makuhari Messe just outside Tokyo, lines for the new Tales of Symphonia game reached ninety-minutes, and never looked back. Waiting that long to play a game for a few minutes is usually a drag, but we didn't have too many qualms about getting an early first chance at the sequel to one of the GameCube's biggest RPGs.
Bandai Namco had Tales of Symphonia: Knight of Ratatoskr, as the game is titled over in Japan, set up for play in eight kiosks, using a demo that was specially prepared for the Jump Festa event. Following a brief chat amongst main characters Emil and Malta, we were asked to explore a dungeon and arrive at a boss within five minutes. Five minutes may seem short for a demo, but the counter thankfully stopped when entering battle.
While the dungeon crawling component of the game didn't seem all that different from past Tales games, get into battle and you'll find some dramatic changes. This latest update to the Linear Motion Battle system keeps your character attacking on a single 2D line in a full 3D battle field. You lock yourself into a single enemy, pressing the minus button to toggle targets, then simply press A to make your character attack, or B plus a direction on the analogue stick to perform a special attack. You have the option of free movement over the battle field, although this usually isn't necessary.
Outside of a super attack move, activated with the Z button when you've adequately built up a super move gauge, the biggest addition to the battle system appears to be the ability to make monsters join your party. You're occasionally asked if you'd like to woo a beast that you've just defeated onto your side. Beasts who have made the conversion can be added to your battle party and used just like any other character during combat. In our play session, we managed to convert four beasts over to the good side; any more, and you're forced to clear out an older monster from your stable.
This Symphonia follow-up makes only minimal use of waggle, allowing you to shake the Wiimote and nunchuck in various ways to achieve special attacks, something that's probably better left to button presses. Instead of tapping the Wiimote, Bandai Namco has apparently decided to tap the Wii's added graphical abilities, as Knight of Ratatoskr looks quite a ways better than its predecessor.
The first Symphonia game was a huge hit amongst RPG-starved GameCube owners, and we expect no less from Knight of Ratatoskr amongst RPG-starved Wii owners. The game hits Japan in Spring, with an international release hopefully not too far out from there."
This is one Game I never owned for Gamecube. Did anyone else buy it? Should I consider the sequel for Wii?
I never owned the game, but I knew it was an underrated GCN game. I've haven't played many rpgs other than Pokemon so maybe this one would be worth checking out. It's also good to hear that it's graphically better than the previous game unlike FE:RD.
waaaait wait wait wait wait! in that video, why was Lloyd attacking the guys that i thought were gonna be the good guys? wthhhhhhh!
its good to see that the entire cast is returning. i <3 regal and kratos. mmm mmm good. when i first started watching the video i thought it would be like...10 yrs in the future, with Lloyd now a village elder or some carp, but i'm glad that it looks like it takes place soon-ish after the events of Symphonia, and the original cast still has roles to play. if only i knew japanese so i could figure out what theyre talking about...i wanna know the storyyyy ):
i'm a little iffy on whether i like the 3-d models during a few of those sequences though...
I didn't see Kratos in the trailer but I saw Zelos, makes me wonder which of the endings they followed. Hopefully they keep the 4-player battle feature and cooler specials and team attacks.
Snake Wrote:
This is one Game I never owned for Gamecube. Did anyone else buy it? Should I consider the sequel for Wii?
You should definitly consider buying the original too.
There is no overworld map in the wii sequel. That is the reason I'm not buying yet, unless that is changed. That's like taking free skate mode out of Tony Hawk. ah, ah AHDOWNHILL JAM ahem, excuse me.
I'm a kinda stickler about linear progression. The freedom to explore the world at your own pace is the whole idea of RPGs, and taking out something as huge as the world map kills that kind of openess and immersion is what RPGs are built around.
It's a wonderful game. There are many secrets in it, LOTS of gameplay, lots of leveling up to do, many things to find. Very well done RPG. I even missed a few things and I am a completist.
