Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World

(This image is from animecrazy.net.)

I have been playing this game called "Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World" on my Nintendo Wii lately. It has been an interesting role playing game so far. I think I am almost done it, but I am not entirely sure. I had to rent it from Gamefly, so I want to return it as soon as possible so that I can cancel my membership and save up for the new car.

I admit, I didn't think I would like the game that much at first. The characters seemed to have the same emotionless expressions during the first few cut scenes, the humor was a little weird at first, the game-play seemed difficult though that may have been because I didn't have a manual, Emil the protagonist seemed like a wimp, and his relationship with the girl Marta is weird. For some reason, I felt like continuing though.

As I continued to play, I discovered some interesting abilities of the characters you meet and the monsters you befriend as they all fight beside you. There is a large cast of characters who you become friends with in this game and the numerous monsters you find are actually capable of evolving into completely different creatures.

The monsters sometimes reminded me of Pokemon or Digimon, but since you fight alongside them you feel less cheap of training monsters to fight battles for you. When the human and half-elf characters use weapons and magic to fight monsters with monsters, you get more of a sense that you are all in danger and it becomes more fun. I mean, I have only watched the shows of Digimon and Pokemon, so I don't know how the games are. I am just going on how it looks to me.

I had no idea that this is a direct sequel to the GameCube game called "Tales of Symphonia" until very recently. I mean, I did know it was a sequel, but I didn't know that all of the other characters, aside from the two main ones, were all from the previous game until I saw a picture that the other characters were on the cover. It makes me wonder what the previous game was like, considering the side characters tend to share a little of their back stories at times, but it seems as if you are still left out on a lot of information.

Some of the monsters in this game are really cool and are helping me a little to get some ideas of my own.