Weren't there plans for a prequel to Tales of Symphonia?

[AtmaWeapon]

I played through Dawn of the New Age which gave me a craving for ToS. I just wrapped that game up again, and both me and my wife agree that there's a significant chunk of backstory surrounding Mithos and his companions.

A long time ago I remember seeing an article and screenshots that was announcing a sequel and prequel to ToS. Obviously the sequel is out, but I'm remembering the article had a picture of Kratos and Noishe on a hilltop. I was really excited about the concept of a prequel, but I can't seem to find anything about it.

I'm aware that there's a general consensus that Tales of Phantasia is a distant prequel to ToS, but I believe what I read was information about a direct prequel that followed the events of the war. I can't remember the timeframe I saw this or the magazine that I think I saw it in.

Did anyone else see this, or was it just my imagination?

[vegeta1215]

Yeah... I've never heard anything about a prequel in the works. If anything, some of the mythology might be found in Tales of Phantasia (so I've read), but that's about it.

btw, how is Dawn of the New World? There seems to be mixed feelings about it, with the majority of people saying it was a disappointment overall. What do you think about it?

[DarkFlameWolf]

Its fun in its own way. Its nothing outstanding, mind you, but it gets the job done. The monster collection/evolving aspect may delight some, deter others.

[AtmaWeapon]

Yeah... I've never heard anything about a prequel in the works. If anything, some of the mythology might be found in Tales of Phantasia (so I've read), but that's about it.That makes me sad. :(


btw, how is Dawn of the New World? There seems to be mixed feelings about it, with the majority of people saying it was a disappointment overall. What do you think about it?This I can answer with a bit of detail.

The graphics were the first part that had an impact on me. Instead of the "I want to look like an anime" style of ToS, this one uses a more Wind-Waker style. I didn't like it. It made the character models of the returning ToS characters look horrible, and the graphical style of ToS was one of the reasons I liked it so much. The graphics are otherwise what you would expect from a Wii game; nothing spectacular but then you don't really buy an RPG for the graphics.

Next, the sound. Did you like the music and sound effects in ToS? If so, you'll love hearing them all again in DotNA! The music is mostly remixes of ToS versions, and most sound effects are identical. They couldn't afford most of the original ToS voice cast, so if you're really used to them (I was after 4 playthroughs) then little things about how they speak will grate on your nerves. They don't even pronounce words like "mana" and "Palmacosta" the same as in the previous game. The actors aren't bad, but they are different and it upset me. Overall, there is much more voice work than there was in ToS; very few scenes aren't voiced.

What about gameplay? I'll divide it up into several portions: world map, dungeons, combat. Then I'll spill my guts on overall gameplay with comments about the storyline (spoiler-free!)

The world map is seriously gimped in this game. Instead of a sprawling map that you walk around on, you get a SMB 3-style map that makes the reunited world seem smaller than the split world of ToS. There's no random encounters on the map; all random encounters take place in dungeons.

Dungeons work as they did before with few enhancements. Now monsters appear on the dungeon map as a representative model instead of one of a small set of models (i.e. in ToS monsters were either a skull, worm, flower, cat-thing, or dragon). Since the locations are recycled, you'll already be familiar with some of the puzzles you'll face. Each seal dungeon from ToS gets visited, but there's now a 2nd half that makes the experience arguably worth it.

Combat is somewhat different than in ToS. You've still got techs (now called Artes) but the EX Skill system is different. You get skills at certain levels, and you have a limited number of "skill points". Activating a skill takes skill points. There's an "elemental grid" that is more important than the game made it seem. Every elemental attack you make changes part of the grid. If the grid is dominated by the element of your enemy, the enemy gets stronger attacks and regenerates faster. Also of note is the notion of capturing monsters and having them in your party; I'll comment more on this later. Unison attacks are somewhat distilled since you won't always have 4 party members that can participate; now you push the button and monsters/party members join in based on the state of the elemental grid.

In general, I feel like gameplay can be challenging or broken depending on how you want to play; most of it hinges on how well you manage your monsters. You might envision a Pokemon-style game where you mix-and-match monsters so that you are prepared for the element you are facing. This might work, but the monster system is so broken that it isn't worth the hassle. Monsters gain XP at an accelerated rate that varies from "unnoticeable" to "ridiculous"; at one point I was level 30 with a level 85 monster, and I hadn't even been leveling. Monsters range in usefulness from "useless" to "why do I even have a controller". The level 85 monster I mentioned above generally flew around the battlefield and looked awesome while contributing maybe 3 or 4 hits per entire battle that did less damage than my sword. On the other hand, towards the endgame I picked two monsters with high strength, leveled them to max and evolved them 3 times, then noticed that at level 20 they did more damage per hit than my full combos. By the time I got to the final boss, there wasn't much to worry about: my monsters had 2x my HP, 2x my defense, and did 3x my damage. I'm about to do a 10x exp run and I want to see what happens when I make a beeline for these monsters (which, strangely, are among the first few you encounter!)

Finally, the story. The game tries really hard to have a plot full of twists, intrigue, and deception like ToS had. There's a pretty good central mystery to the game, and unlike ToS the game leaves you guessing until maybe the last 2 or 3 hours. (I feel like ToS gives away one of its biggest "secrets" in the first hour of the game, and hints so strongly at the rest I had to pretend I didn't see things to stay surprised.) The ending is somewhat interesting, and what you have to do to get anything but the "bad" ending requires you to do something you might not expect (especially if you can ignore the hints the game starts dropping in the last 30 minutes.) I didn't like Emil (the protagonist) or Marta (his companion). However, I liked the adventure they were caught up in and I was able to put up with them in order to get the rest of the story.

There's still "skit scenes". I feel like they happened waaaaaaay too much. In some cases, it would take me 10 minutes to make it through a hallway because every third step there was a new skit scene. Most of them are optional, but you bought the game for its plot and half the character development happens in them; skipping these scenes is like seeing the game through Cliff Notes.

Overall Comments
It's worth a play, particularly if you can rent it for long enough to beat it. It should probably take about 30 hours to beat the game, much less if you abuse the monsters and much more if you complete every side quest. I'm not a good measure of the game's length though, I bought Fallout 3 when I was about 20 hours into the game and ended up playing that for 3 months or so instead. I found this game's gameplay compared to ToS to be annoying. I felt very much like I wasn't controlling the characters, and in many cases I wished they'd have just made a movie out of the story so I wouldn't have to push A at the end of every line. Whereas ToS saved the 10-20 minute cutscenes for significant events (and even then had breaks where you could choose who to talk to,) this one uses them frequently. Once you're done with the 20 minute cutscenes, you get 5 or 10 minutes of skits to go along with it. I'd say that at least 40% of my 30 hour estimate is spent not playing the game but watching cutscenes; this may be a good or bad thing depending on what you want. It's great for story development, but aggravating if you like action.

If you liked ToS, this game is worth a play. If you found something about ToS aggravating enough that you wished you hadn't played it, this one will be quite frustrating. Supposedly this is a low-budget Tales of game, and it shows. I wish they'd have waited until they had a budget.