Tales of Mediocrity

I adore the Tales franchise. It’s been my “must-play” RPG franchise for years, even topping Final Fantasy (I’m more excited for Tales of Graces on the Wii than I am for FFXIII). The reasons for my adoration are many, but the two most obvious are the look and feel of Tales.

I remember spotting Tales of Symphonia in a copy of Nintendo Power back in ’03 or so, maybe a year before the game hit store shelves. I was immediately intrigued by its visuals, which were cel-shaded — an art style that, at the time, was new and shiny and awesome and all sorts of amazing to me. I’d also just come away from the sequel to Golden Sun, and for whatever reason I tagged Symphonia as “Golden Sun on a console” after seeing that first screen shot. For those who played the two Golden Sun games and enjoyed them as much as I did, that’s quite the thing to say about a game you just barely learned the existence of.

When Symphonia finally hit store shelves, I put around 65 hours into it before I was finished.  I didn’t net 0 completion like I did in Tales of Vesperia (an accomplishment I’m still pretty proud of), but I did put enough hours in to lose myself in its amazing little world, something I hadn’t done, truly, since the original Pokemon.

I loved its freshness compared to anything else I’d played up until then, how it felt so new while still managing to keep all of the things I love about the genre intact, like the overworld map with tiny cities (still my favorite way to get around) and the post-battle victory fanfare. The thing that impressed me most about Symphonia, though, was its battle system: I grew up on RPGs, almost all of them being turn-based, so when I was given complete control over my character on the battlefield, I was in love.

I loved the story too, and the characters, and the music, and everything else sans the terribly difficult boss battles.

And then they decided to make a sequel.

Similar to how I felt when I first saw Obi-Wan fighting some dude with a dual-lightsaber in a sneak-peek trailer so many years ago, I was incredibly happy and naive about getting a sequel to something I so thoroughly enjoyed. Who wouldn’t, right?  With so many terrible things happening in the world on a daily basis, you have to put a little faith in something — even if it’s just the quality of an RPG sequel. After keeping up with little bits of news on it for months while waiting for the game’s release, and then waiting even longer due to other games clogging my free time, I finally got to play Symphonia‘s sequel, Dawn of the New World. Sad to say, my dreams of a game as good as the original have been crushed.

Where to start? I guess the best place would be the new characters. That’s what makes stories great, right? Good characters? Vesperia has them, no doubt — Yuri, the Old Man, a pipe smoking dog — as does Symphonia (even though Lloyd Irving is still a silly name). Dawn, however, gives us one of the worst characters I have ever had the displeasure of controlling in my entire life.

Our lovely little protagonist’s name is Emil. What you should know about Emil is that he’s a very apologetic kind of guy. Not the “oh, hey, that kid’s pretty nice and humble” kind of apologetic, oh no; this guy is frustratingly timid. As 1UP’s Scott Sharkey so brilliantly put it, “If you’re wondering just how much of a wuss Emil is, be aware that Dawn of the New World‘s first mission involves gathering up the courage to thank someone.” He’s like this through 80% of the game, one that took me 32 hours to complete (without taking on any side-quests).

Hell, it isn’t until the last few hours of the adventure that he actually starts to become tolerable. Not good; tolerable. I had a little hope at the beginning of the game, as he sort of takes on a split personality where one side is timid little weakling Emil, and the other is “I’m going to be an asshole to everyone” Emil. My first thought was, “oh, thank god, I’ll get a little relief from his whiny side now and then,” but that didn’t last long, as Emil the red-eyed bad boy soon became much more hate-worthy than his nice guy counterpart. Two bad characters for the price of one!

Seriously. He is terrible, mind-numbingly terrible, the kind of terrible that makes you want to go bash your head into a wall. I know I’m spending a lot of time on this one aspect, but he is seriously that terrible. I rolled my eyes every time Emil came on-screen because I knew he was just there to apologize for something or “hrm…” and “er…” himself through the scene. I had to laughed at one point, somewhere around his 213th “I’m sorry,” because I knew this was going to be a long ride and I’d have to do something to keep my sanity.

I hate this character. I hate him. Even with all of Symphonia‘s characters returning; even with a somewhat decent second character in Marta, the “love interest” in Dawn; even with a bit of a turn-around with his personality later on, Emil simply cannot be appreciated in any significant way. He is that bad of a character. I don’t even mind timid, either! I apologize a lot myself, and being humble is usually a good character trait, but sweet merciful Jesus, this is just ridiculous. I wish Sephiroth was here for a bit of impaling. At least then the game would be pretty good.

In fact, other than Emil the game isn’t all that bad, really. Hell, it’s even enjoyable at times.  It feels like a Tales game should, with a decent battle system that falls in line with the series’ legacy in that area — even if the A.I. of certain teammates can be a bit wonky at times, mostly with monsters, which you can now recruit to your side. It’s a pretty cool little idea, really, though monsters can’t use items and are pretty useless because of that. Think of them like Pokemon: you do all the work, and they kill things. You’re better off just sticking with human characters, really, though that isn’t always an option as you’re split up so often. Though I did occasionally have a hard time getting the human characters to do what I wanted them to do; assigning their spells to certain presses of the d-pad led to me mashing the thing and them just wandering around and kicking things. The pre-set strategies you can choose for your teammates are a lot less detailed than in other Tales games too, sadly.

In terms of visuals, Dawn isn’t that bad of a game to look at, even though it’s a little stale compared to Vesperia or Graces. There aren’t even any nice animated cut-scenes to be found outside of the pre-start menu vid, which is unusual for a Tales game. I guess the devs wanted to focus their attention on the main franchise stuff so they didn’t really bother much with the presentation here (which would also explain the awkward overworld map, which is just a flat, scrollable world where you click on where you want to go).

The story itself isn’t too bad, and actually has a few shining moments as you try to unravel mysteries like “why is my old friend doing all of these horrible things?,” and “why is Emil acting like such an ass right now?” There are a few times where you think, “really? Really, game developers? Did you really just do that?,” but they’re few and far between. For the most part, the game is pretty enjoyable, even if it does become rather dull at times (even without the help of Emil, shockingly).

I’d like to say I enjoyed this game, as it’s part of the Tales series, which I love dearly. But I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t dislike the game or anything, but it’s completely average and by the end all could think was, “okay, it’s over; time to play something else.” No game should have you feeling like that by the time the credits roll. If you’re a fan of Tales like me and want something to tide you over until the next main installment, you might want to give this game a rental. Just don’t expect much out of it other than an average game with one really, really, really annoying hero.