Tales of Symphonia: Chronicles
Score: 95% ESRB: Teen Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Developer: Namco Tales Studio Media: Blu-ray/1 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: RPG
Graphics & Sound: I have always been excited to see any new Tales game come out. While Tales of Symphonia: Chronicles isn’t a new game, it is nice to be able to play both Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World without hooking up my old consoles. These two games were originally developed in 2003 and 2008 respectively, so please do not expect the best of graphics. The cut-scenes are still amazingly beautiful, but the gameplay graphics aren’t quite as good. While they were gorgeous in their time, the characters look a bit like characters from the LEGO Movie, blockish. There is an improvement in Dawn of a New World, but even that still has an outdated look. Of course, I love the fact that they did take the time to make all of the characters unique. Even the monsters are quite varied and well designed. The background graphics have held up a bit better. They’re not mind blowing, but let’s face it, technology has improved a lot over the years. I would love to see another sequel done on a modern system. The sound has retained all of the amazing qualities. Your characters speak out loud in cut-scenes in both games and in the second one, they speak even more and even in the skits. It felt to me like the monsters make a lot more noises in the second one. There is one bear in particular where the growl lingers a second or two after the fight and it is quite a creepy sound! I love the background music as well. While it’s not something that you’re going to go download to listen to in your car or anything, it’s still quite perfect for the game.
Gameplay: First things first, Tales of Symphonia is the first game, so I recommend starting there. You will meet the majority of your playable characters in the very beginning of the game. Lloyd Irving lives in the woods outside a small town, Iselia. He goes to school in town with his best friend Genis and the Chosen One, Colette. From birth, the Chosen One has known that one day she would have to take the journey to regenerate the world. When that day arrives, things aren’t as easy as they’re supposed to be. The town and temple are attacked. Colette has to go with their teacher Raine (Genis’ sister) rather than the priests that were supposed to accompany her. Lloyd and Genis decide to follow them and help in the journey. I’m not going to go into everything about the story because I’m not going to spoil it for you. I can tell you that every time I thought I was about to get bored of the story, a new twist threw everything for a loop and I was dying to know what would happen next. Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World opens with a very different Lloyd, thanks to the results of the ending of the previous game. After an introduction scene, you’ll wake up as Emil. He is obviously an outsider in the town. It doesn’t really matter though because Emil’s life is about to drastically change. He has been chosen to be a knight of Ratatosk. He will be adventuring with Marta to try and gather monsters to wake up various sleeping ancient creatures. In Dawn of a New World, you only play with a few human characters. The rest of your party you will fill with monsters that you have befriended along the way. This is a bit different, but I like both games. Both games in Tales of Symphonia: Chronicles are non-turn-based RPGs. You will visit various towns, talking to everyone as you go. Some locations are dungeons where you will fight monsters. Everywhere you go, you need to look for chests as they contain items that will help you on your journey. In Tales of Symphonia, you will have to look for your locations to visit on the world map. Town characters will tell you which direction to go, but sometimes they are a bit difficult to find. You can see a small dot for town locations on the world map. In Dawn of the New World, you will simply select the town that you want to visit from the list of places that are available. It’s not as much fun as roaming around the world map, but it is much easier to know where you need to go.
Difficulty: In both Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World, I would say the difficulty is about normal. They feel pretty much the same as the last time I played them, so I don’t think anything has really changed. I did find that I went a bit too quickly through Dawn of a New World and got to a point where I couldn’t beat a boss. At that point, the easiest thing to do is go back and take some quests to level up your characters. Quests can be accepted from the Katz Exploration Agency (which is a bit different from their function in the first Tales of Symphonia). The quests show a "recommended level" to take them on, but I found you can do them a level or two below that. The items you get as a reward can be quite helpful, if you do the quests early enough for them to be useful. Some of them are also a great place to collect materials for synthesizing. Of course, you don’t ever have to do the quests and you can just kill more monsters to level up a bit if you get stuck. In both games, you also might find that you run out of money to buy new equipment. New equipment of course makes the game easier. You can always earn money killing monsters, but you can also get it on quests in the second game. In the first one, there are little side things you can do, like waitress in a café, to earn money if you get bored of just killing monsters. I don’t think that you’ll find the game difficult to play, but they are both very long games with a complex storyline. If you’re looking to find all of the hidden sub-quests and get all of the trophies, you will need to put in some serious time, but it’s fun!
Game Mechanics: The controls in both games are more or less exactly the same, which is nice because once you have the hang of it, there’s not much to relearn. They are more or less the same as the rest of the Tales games, so if you’ve played any of them, you have the gist of it. The one major difference is that in Tales of Symphonia, you use (Square) to fire your sorcerer’s ring. In Dawn of the New World, you have to hold down (R1), aim, and them press (Square) to fire. This makes it much easier to get a more accurate shot, but a bit clumsier than before as it’s not just one button press. Cooking is also different between the games. In the first game, cooking heals your party or recovers things or boosts you. It’s an effect on your characters. In the second game, cooking alters your monster’s stats and possibly triggers their evolution. It does not affect your human characters at all. These are just minor differences though. Little known fact, in both games you can actually have a second player join you in battle. Simply turn on your second controller and change another of your party to Manual or Semi-Auto controls. Obviously, only one of you will control the character on the world map and in towns, but it’s still nice to have a second player to help in battle, especially some boss battles! You can even have up to 4 players in the game. I absolutely love the Tales series and the Tales of Symphonia games are some of my favorites. Yes, the characters are a bit blockish, but LEGO’s are in fashion now anyway. The storylines are amazingly well done; they’re something that you just need to experience for yourself. If you like RPG’s, do yourself a favor and go get Tales of Symphonia: Chronicles today!
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
Related Links: Game Vortex's Review of Tales of Symphonia Game Vortex's Review of Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World Buy Tales of Symphonia: Chronicles on Amazon
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