tales of symphonia: dawn of the new world

woohoo!!! finally completed my replay of dawn of the new world!! 😌❤️ it had been over a decade since i last played this game, so my memory was a bit fuzzy on certain story aspects and i wanted to refresh it. plus, after i finished the original symphonia for like the nth time, i was aching for more of its world and its characters. yeah this game is far from perfect and is definitely not the sequel a lot of us were expecting, but still, it has its good moments. more long rambling junk thoughts below (lmao this turned out longer than expected but i just have so many feelings about the symphonia series so i have to spew them out somewhere)!

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so let's start with the good things!

the original symphonia cast (bare with me here). this is probably like 90% of the reason why i wanted to replay this game cus my god do i love these characters so damn much. the first time colette appeared i screamed of joy and even more so when i heard her use the iconic angel feathers in an in-game cutscene. i've said it before but if we were only able to get one VA from the original main cast (yes i know kratos is back too but he's not part of the main party), i'm glad it was colette. i know i said earlier this year that colette wasn't in my top 5 fave tales of characters, but you know what? past dany is a FOOL because with my replay of symphonia 1 and now with this, has shown me that colette is a magnificent character and must be loved and protected at all costs!!! like her accepting right away in front of marta what she did that caused the destruction of palmacosta without any excuses whatsoever? HURT my heart to the core the pure look of sadness she had but also was interesting to get a glimpse of all the accusations colette (and maybe the rest of the party?) have had to deal with, and seeing how she chooses to deal with them is like DAMN...that's *my* chosen!

other than colette, i must state the obvious that it was great having sheena aka my fave from symphonia 1 in the party for the longest out of the og cast, and getting a taste of her fulfilling her duties as chief of mizuho was refreshing from her other duty of babysitting marta and emil. also i have to give credit to her VA, she really did a decent job at channeling some of that energy that made jennifer hale's performance so iconic in my mind. i didn't care much for regal in symphonia 1 but also his new VA (which I much prefer to the original...sorry!) and having him around for much longer in this game to act as a father figure to emil made me like him even more. it's a shame that we got presea so late into the game but her story is so tragic so it was nice seeing her thriving making charms and whatnot for regal's company. overall whenever someone from the og cast would make an appearance it would warm my heart cus i mean what else can i say!!! that game and its characters were my childhood!

the music. again i know i've ranted about this before in my other tales of posts but i've yet to play another tales of game that has music as good as the symphonia titles. symphonia 1 has such fantastic music, and hearing some of it remastered was just a pleasure to hear. like...water symphony aka the luin theme? ugh that song just pierces through my heart...i think i might even like it better than the original! others songs that i didn't give much thought in the original but shone this time around for me were "in a shadowy woods" (god it's so damn haunting!) and underground passage (this version is so much more intense!). of course it also has some good original songs like "with courage" (what a fantastic battle theme!) and the "wilderness of sadness". OH AND WHO CAN FORGET the *beautiful* orchestrated english opening from the wii?? hearing it along with the opening scenes still gives me chills to this day!! ANYWAY THE POINT IS that symphonia 1 has a fantastic ost and this game did a great job honoring it.

the new main characters. emil was whiny and too much of a coward at the beginning, but seeing him grow throughout the course of the journey and accepting his role in the fate of the world was very luke fon fabre of him and a joy to watch. same with marta, she was overly clingy and just kept pushing emil to be more like she kept imagining him to be, but seeing her grow to love emil just for who he was and like...not gonna lie, the girl was NOT afraid to speak her heart out and that is SO refreshing to see. like she knew she loved emil and would not hesitate to say it to him (which was kind of eugh at the beginning but as both emil and marta grow together, it's just right!!), unlike a lot of other female love protagonists who don't say anything until the end of the game and are all =uwu= about it. but here the long-awaited kiss between the two is done before you even go into the final level of the game, and it's like THANK YOU for not making me wait until the ending rolls around!! i actually really like this main couple pairing and thought the story did a great job at making you root for them. might even be one of my favorites out of the games i've played. just two kids in love!

the voice acting. laura bailey as marta was perfect and just made me glad that we got voiced skits for this game because wow, the og casting might have been subpar but with her and johnny yong bosch's performances...oof, just beyond fantastic. especially jyb, he literally had to do three different voices for emil and the way he handled it would just continuously blow my mind every time there was a switch between the three. i also really liked alice's VA but i mean i liked alice's character overall :) (was heartbroken you have to kill her at the end though...especially considering her background!) anyway i could have played this in japanese but laura bailey + heather hogan are worth it to play the english version instead :)

the ending. and everything leading up to it, actually. like, aqua defending richter with her literal life out of the love she had for him. emil pretending to be ratatosk so no one would find out his plan. being given the choice to defeat both marta/lloyd. marta figuring out emil's plan. and just...i forgot how nicely it explains into phantasia's setting about there not being a need for mana any longer and how it would take...1000 years for the laws of the world to be rewritten. also seeing the og cast say goodbye to emil....ahhhhh my fucking heart! like PRESEA...CARVING A WOODEN BEAR FOR EMIL TO REMEMBER HE'S NOT ALONE...*that's* the presea i love!! and of course, marta and emil getting the happy ending (and NOT ambiguous like ABYSS'S!!!) that they deserve!!! love truly does win!!!! :) none of this bittersweet ending stuff like berseria or zesteria where it would have been like oh no emil will never leave the ginnungagap and will never get to live his life as a human being with the person he loves. and then they both get the perfect partner title?? shionne and alphen could never.

alright, now for the things i didn't like about the game :)

the original symphonia cast. like...i swear it was either a high or a low for me with this. seeing colette literally do anything? "omg i love this game so much it's not as bad as people say it is!". having them run a character joke to the ground (raine's ruin mode, zelos's constant pervertedness, sheena falling into pits, colette's klutziness, regal's shackles, presea and paw pads)? lloyd shunning his friends and unwilling to explain just A BIT of what he was doing (no, the reason he gives sucks and that's not lloyd)? "god this game sucks why did the writers do this why am i even still playing this". also what the hell was up with presea's obsession with paw pads this time around?? i THINK i remember a symphonia 1 skit about this but it's like..that's all she would talk about during a lot of her dotnw skits, cutscenes, and even one of her battle quotes is about it? also isn't presea supposed to be like 14 years old (appearance-wise) now? why is she still dressed like she's 10? SAME THING WITH REGAL and his jail clothes like JUST....why. ALSO couldn't they have at least re-drawn the og cast's skit drawings so they wouldn't have to come up with a dumb reason why regal still wears his jail clothes?? also my god why does lloyd's in-game model look so BAD...they mostly did a decent job with the rest (not a fond of raine's either) but lloyd's just looks terrible and i couldn't take him seriously. like...lol i could rant more about this but just a lot of things about the way the og cast was handled seemed to be out of pure laziness and actually keeps me from enjoying this game to its fullest.

the pacing. honestly sometimes the pacing of the game just felt so wack, especially when you're just trying to track down lloyd. at the beginning it really does feel like you're just jumping from town to town just so the game gets its nostalgia points in. the whole bit in izoold and the gels was a snoozefest, same thing with the remoras in that one place near palmacosta. and then you suddenly get spit back out near iselia?? oh look it's the hometown of the chosen and just lakjdflasjfladsf i know the game is short compared to other tales games (i beat it at 30 hours when usually tales games take me 50+ hours) but i just felt like the first 4? 5? chapters or so (and there's only 8...) are just all over the place and rather...uninteresting. it's not until you stop following lloyd that things start to get a bit less dull, which is when i finally started enjoying the game and its characters.

and speaking of lloyd... i know i mentioned it above but my god was this part of the story awful and deserves its own call-out. props to zelos for quickly figuring out that there was a lloyd impostor because SHEESH they really butchered his character up to make it seem like he was truly evil and thus create some more conflict on top of the vanguard stuff. like oh look, lloyd, the fallen hero, who refuses to speak to his friends and is drawing his sword at them!!! that first skit you get of him where the og cast is trying to talk to him and he's just like "i've got nothing to say". worst lloyd. like just. get out of here.

alright i think i'll stop here cus it looks like my main problems with the game are the pacing and the way they handled certain aspects of the og cast inclusion. because i mean, the original story itself (ratatosk, the centurions, why the vanguard rose) is actually not that bad and is actually pretty interesting, but if you've played symphonia 1, it's hard to enjoy this game to its fullest. i didn't mention the monster system because i mean, yeah it's kinda of weird but it's not so terrible that i actively wasn't enjoying the game because of it. so I MEAN, definitely not the best tales game out there, but it's certainly not that bad if you just focus on the new cast and story. :)

but well, enough with the symphonia gameplays (that is, until the symphonia remaster comes out lol) cus up next in the list isssss FINALLY tales of xillia!!! beyond EXCITED to start playing it, so we'll see how that journey goes! :)