Tuesday, April 22, 2008                                                                          6:41 PM

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World Preview

Notice: This article will make "not so much sense" if you haven't play the original ToS.

Hola, people. It's once again time for an article by one of the world's foremost egotists, Jonathan Broom (seriously, I'm awesome). This time around, the topic is a sequel to one of the greatest RPGs of all time: Tales of Symphonia. If you haven't played this amazing game, stop reading, go to a store, and buy it because I'm not avoiding spoilers. This new game is for Wii and called ToS: Dawn of the New World. It picks up about two years after the first game ends in new Sylvarant (or whatever the fused world is called) where a drastic climate shift is occurring. Because of this or something else I don't know about, some of the alliances made in the first game are crumbling like your granny's powder-dry cookies. Lloyd and the others are considered heroes, though the story doesn't appear to focus on them. Instead, you play as a typically metro lad named Emil who blames Lloyd for killing people in Palmacosta, and a girl named Marta who appears to have "The Ratatosk" (god of the monsters/animals) living in a red thing on her head.

Bad people are looking for the thing inside her holy pimple and that appears to be a source of conflict. Also, Lloyd apparently gets in your way and opposes the Church of Martel and its new matriarch, Collete. (I for one am intrigued.) As far as upgrades from the prequel go, this game has plenty: more realistic character models, new skill systems, possibly voiced skits, and a new monster collection system. Emil and Marta make up the human portion of your team (with various returning charactes and others filling temporary spots) and the rest of your team is made up of monsters obtained using a system similar to that of Poke'mon. Personally, I think this game sounds better than chicken flavored ice cream, but decide for yourself whenever the notoriously sluggish developers decide to bring it to the rest of the world. Good day gentlepeople.

-Jonathan Broom