Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the World is an action-adventure, Japanese role-playing game developed by Namco Tales Studio and published by Namco for the Wii and PlayStation 3 as a spinoff-sequel to Tales of Symphonia for the Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2. The Wii version was originally released in Japan and North America in 2008 and in 2009 in other regions and the PlayStation 3 version was released in Japan in 2013 and 2014 in other regions as well.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Awesome music, including the remixes of the two battle themes from Tales of Symphonia.
 * 2) Great graphics for the Wii standards.
 * 3) Improved combat system, which includes several innovations from Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Innocence, such as the Free Run system which is used later on in the future Tales of games.
 * 4) Side-quests can be started at any time by interacting with the billboard, and they give you clear directions as to what to do, unlike many other Tales games (including its own prequel and Tales of Vesperia, which came out at roughly the same time)
 * 5) The game lets you visit the world(s) of Tales of Symphonia in the future, learning more about the consequences of the previous game's events. This is helped by the fact that you can carry over a save file from Tales of Symphonia to unlock special content.
 * 6) Original characters from the original game are back with more and improved movesets.
 * 7) Impressive art style, including the game's locations with different cultural art.
 * 8) Optional continuation storyline, because this game is a spinoff-sequel, you don't have to exactly play this game to continue on with the series but has a nice following to the story.
 * 9) Decent voice acting with Johnny Yong Bosh as Emil and Brian Beacock as Lloyd Irving.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Pointless motion controls, the game gives you an offer to point the cursor to where you want to move your character like a point and click game. This is useless because you can just use the analog stick on the Nunchuck. The cursor was also removed in the PS3 version of the game in which you play with a traditional control scheme.
 * 2) *Sadly though, you can't use a GameCube or Classic Controller in the Wii version, forcing you to use the Wii remote.
 * 3) There is no longer an open hub world, meaning that you can't explore the map but instead fast travel to a new location.
 * 4) The battle system is somewhat divisive between fans.
 * 5) While the voice acting is decent, Brian Beacock's voice performance as Lloyd isn't as great compared to Scott Menville's performance in the original game.
 * 6) The story isn't the very best as the original was, with adding a bit more cliched moments.
 * 7) Almost everyone is mean-spirited towards Emil as they consider him to be disrespectful to Lloyd and as his uncle and aunt abuse him as well.

Reception
In comparison to its popular predecessor, Tales of Symphonia, which was well-received and considered by many Tales Of fans to be one of the best titles in the franchise, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World on the other hand was widely criticized by fans and critics alike who panned its mediocre main protagonist Emil, its dull and dry storyline, the majority of the Symphonia English voice cast being replaced (especially Lloyd's voice actor Scott Menville being switched for Brian Beacock), and the amount of reused assets from Tales of Symphonia (and even from Tales of the Abyss).