Tales of Symphonia Chronicles Launches in North America Today

I liked it as well, I thought the combat was worse off for having monster companions but I enjoyed the story for the most part.

Am I the only one who likes Dawn of the New World? Yeah, it was clearly lower budget (unfortunately) but I enjoyed it.

Symphonia is one of my favorite games of all time, but Dawn of the New World tried to shit all over it. Play Symphonia. Don't touch that sequel.

Also, Tales of the Abyss is another great entry, for those of you have only played Vesparia and Symphonia but disliked Xillia. I've actually got a blog from a long while back that somewhat collects my thoughts about the series in general, if anyone's interested.

Fuck Dawn of the New World, though. Seriously. It's awful.

@dan_citi: Agreed! Loved Vesperia so much, it's been hard to enjoy any other Tales game in comparison.

I remember really loving this game back in the day but I've never been able to get into a Tales game since. I doubt I'll pick this up, just not enough free hours in the day to play the games I want to play as it is.

@petiew: Hard to tell.

I think Symphonia is the best in the series, Vesperia being a very close second. I couldn't make it through 4 hours of Xillia. It was just too weird and generic for me. If you kinda dug parts of Xillia and have any desire for a JRPG I think its worth a shot.

Vesperia is definitely my favorite JRPG of all time. Having said that, I had a great time with Xillia. I never played Symphonia so I preordered this. So far Im a little bummed out that the skits arent voiced and Im not crazy about the chibi style art. However, I have only played a couple of hours of it, hopefully the action and story will pick up soon.

That sounds an awful lot like "here is my fixed opinion, now present your contrary opinion just as bluntly so that we may continue to disagree, potentially argumentatively."

Vesperia is probably the best jrpg of the current(past?) generation, but the other tales releases since then seem to be a step back in a lot of ways. Graces VA's sounded like they took the first take on every single line, and while I thought Xillia was ok the plot was missing something, some sort of spark or twist to keep me interested. Gonna grab this at some point, but my hopes are not super high.

I remember that first game being pretty solid. I totally lost interest in the story by the end of it though.

For some reason they went to 30FPS when the original games on the GC and Wii were 60FPS.

I bought Xillia, played maybe 12 hours and couldn't torture myself with it anymore.

Is there any point in getting Symphonia, or would I just feel the same way? I played Dawn of the New World when it came out and didn't utterly despise it, but my tolerance for games has really gone down since then.

My sentiments exactly. Graces and Xillia were a step down after Vesperia.

I loved the first Symphonia (HATED the second), but I feel no need to go back to it after Vesperia. ToV ended up being a much better game.

@angethedude: I hadn't heard that!

Symphonia and Vesperia are my two favorite Tales games, but Dawn of the New World's pretty mediocre. If you haven't played Xillia, it's really good and on sale on PSN right now. I'd go with Vesperia, but this collection is worth getting as well (or get the standalone version of Symphonia on PSN!).

I heard shit got really wonky when the dev team tried to run the game at anything higher than 30. I can't remember where I heard that so it could be horseshit.

I'm playing Tales of the Abyss right now and enjoying my time with it. Is this collection worth picking up or should I just go straight to Vesperia?

Bought it ASAP. I remember playing Tales of Symphonia as a kid and never finishing it. Dawn of the New World however... now that'll be a new adventure I'm not too excited about.

Got my CE today, one of the best CE's...

Oh man, I had no idea this was coming out, and I was already planning on playing through the Gamecube version again for the first time in years. This timing seriously could not have been better.

What a package. One of the best JRPGs of all time paired with one of the worst.

Vesperia was much better, easily my favorite JRPG of the last 5 years.

I remember liking this game back when I played it on the Gamecube. Don't really have the desire to play it again, but I do admire the game for naming it's main protagonist "Lloyd."

Only bummer about this collection is the port of Symphonia not running at 60 fps. It runs at a solid 30 (like the PS2 version it's based on), so it's not too big of a deal. Although it'd be nice if it ran at a higher framerate than the original (like MGS 3 HD, the high water mark for HD rereleases as far as I'm concerned), it's still an excellent game.

Symphonia was the first and last Tales game I played to completion, having only dabbled breifly in Phantasia and Eternia before and since. I remember it somewhat fondly, probably because it was one of my first encounters with its brand of jrpg tropes. Still, I have no desire to replay it and didn't hear good things about its sequel.

@taku128: it was my first "tales" game and I enjoyed it at the time. No idea if I would feel the same way now.

As someone who doesn't like a lot of JRPGs, Tales of Symphonia may be my favorite of all-time. With Vesperia not far behind.

@taku128:

You've never played Star Ocean 4, huh? That game's main character has to be among the absolute worst of all games, not just JRGPs.

The vibe in this trailer is real weird. It's like this is a trailer for some big-budget kids movie or something.

You can, $20 each. Just did it myself, don't want to deal with Dawn of the New World ever again.

This narrator and orchestral song make this trailer seem like it was made for theaters.

I'm seriously considering getting this, Graces was fun from what I played of it, and I remember this game had some really cool characters. Like Crispin Freeman as a dude who kicks monsters in the face.

Too bad Dawn of the New World is almost forgettable.

Hopefully PSN will give you the option to buy each game seperately

Some people don't think the characters are annoying as shit and think the battle system is pretty fun. Whoa!

I don't understand what anybody sees in this game, so I'd love if somebody here could explain it to me. The characters are annoying as shit, the battle system is extremely simple and shallow, and the story is just a giant ball of JRPG cliches. Vesperia at least has a decent protagonist, Lloyd is the absolute worst protagonist in a JRPG I've ever seen.

One of my most favorite games of all time. The only way this could be any better is if they fixed the shit voice acting in the sequel.

@bakkelun: You should, and it won't.

Never got around to play it on the original console. Hope it comes to PS4 as well.