We added Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (also known in GameStop's e-mail flyer as Tales of Etc.) to our Wii library the other night. My wife sort of surprised me by insisting she wanted to play alongside me; we haven't really been doing that with Big Games since the kids starting eating up our lives. But, I digress.
Going in, there was quite the wave of negativity to contend with. Import impressions were iffy, to be charitable. IGN's review—while, well, IGN's and thus expected to be unreliable in some regard—was pretty rough. GameTrailers put out a pretty good-sounding review that suddenly (and I do mean out-of-the-blue) ended in a litany of complaint. I obsessed over whether it still made sense to buy the game.
I'm not so certain that the ragging was deserved. The game is a little rough, there's no doubt about that; but it's been fun thus far. It's got a solid battle system without any obligatory waggle (though you can map a few extra special attacks to shakes, if you want), and the monster party members are more interesting than I thought they'd be. I'm going to miss it this weekend as I put it back on the shelf while my wife's out of town.
If you were on the fence like me, wanting to play this game, but afraid of the negativity, let me assuage your fears. I'm not exactly a series vet—I've only played Symphonia and Phantasia besides—but I think it's a rather enjoyable title. I definitely don't expect to get to the end thinking I've been bilked out of $40.
Going in, there was quite the wave of negativity to contend with. Import impressions were iffy, to be charitable. IGN's review—while, well, IGN's and thus expected to be unreliable in some regard—was pretty rough. GameTrailers put out a pretty good-sounding review that suddenly (and I do mean out-of-the-blue) ended in a litany of complaint. I obsessed over whether it still made sense to buy the game.
I'm not so certain that the ragging was deserved. The game is a little rough, there's no doubt about that; but it's been fun thus far. It's got a solid battle system without any obligatory waggle (though you can map a few extra special attacks to shakes, if you want), and the monster party members are more interesting than I thought they'd be. I'm going to miss it this weekend as I put it back on the shelf while my wife's out of town.
If you were on the fence like me, wanting to play this game, but afraid of the negativity, let me assuage your fears. I'm not exactly a series vet—I've only played Symphonia and Phantasia besides—but I think it's a rather enjoyable title. I definitely don't expect to get to the end thinking I've been bilked out of $40.