TGS 2008: New Fragile Trailer

Oct. 15 10:27 AM by Alicia Ashby

The big thing the Wii lacks right now is a truly great RPG. Chocobo's Dungeon is fun but merely good at best, and as for Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World... well, I got my grubby hands on an early copy, and while it's an interesting game, I'm pretty sure fans of the original Symphonia are going to hate it.

The game I think most of you actually want to play instead is tri-Crescendo's Fragile, a story about a post-apocalyptic fantasy world where most of the world's population up and disappeared for no reason. You play Seto, one of the handful of "survivors", who searches the world's abandoned cities for clues and a mysterious girl named Heroine. There's no North American release announced for Fragile yet, but if Namco Bandai passes on bringing a game that looks this good over here, they're frankly insane.

Comments

Why will fans of the first Symphonia going to hate it? Also, will people who've never played a Tales game like it?

 

Regarding the Tales comment: what? If it's because of different voice actors, the old characters only being playable part of the time (and not being able to level-up to be equipped with items... sigh), or the lack of a true overworld, then I'm relatively sure that there is no real reason for me to hate the game. If it is something more, such as a major difference in terms of basic gameplay (other than capturing monsters), I might have something to worry about.

As for Fragile, I'm definitely interested. I love the visual and Namco+tri-Crescendo is a winning combination.

 

feanaro:

Dawn of the New World is really different in tone from Symphonia I, but the big thing is that it's incredibly dumbed-down. Symphonia GC wasn't a hard game, beyond the tedium of unlocking dungeon save points, but Dawn of the New World is an almost mindlessly easy game where winning usually amounts to putting the right monster in your party and then spamming Unison Attacks, which bosses appear totally unable to block or dodge.

Also, monster raising is really problematic. See, aside from stat gains from leveling up, the only way to raise monster stats is to a) find a Wonder Chef recipe they'll eat, and b) go feed them that recipe once per level. Unfortunately, you can only feed monsters at the damned Katz Guild, so optimal gameplay strategy in Dawn ends up making you leave the dungeon every time any of the... four monsters you're carrying around levels up, so you can do a feeding run. This gets really f'ing repetitive, especially since you only seem able to recruit monsters at level 1.

The difference between a regularly fed monster and one you've skipped feeding on is night and day, and your monsters are so much more important than your Artes or Equipment or anything else you're doing that you have to make them the centerpiece of your gameplay strategy. The result is gameplay that feels ridiculously passive.

@CashWheel:

I'm not sure. While the camera is mostly pointed at the new characters, who are mostly okay, there are a lot of really specific call-backs to things that happened in Symphonia. The game tries to explain the basic situation to you, and while that's easy to grasp, why a particular cameo is happening or why you should even care about a dude making a cameo isn't clear at all. Also, irritatingly, if you have no emotional connection to the Symphonia cameos, you can only mostly notice that they make your party much weaker than it would be otherwise. The Symphonia cameos take up a party slot that otherwise would be going to a more powerful monster that can level up, and thus far I've found no way to make them get the hell out of my active party.

 

Wow. Most of the people that I talk to who have played through the Japanese version say that it's actually harder than the original, but maybe they're just all doing something wrong.

I've been disappointed with the monster capture system since I first heard about it, so it's really no surprise to me that it's flawed. I've always planned on using monsters as little as possible, though.

 

@feanaro:

I could see this game being difficult in Japanese if you couldn't read the tutorial text, and if you were trying to play it like the first one. ToS Wii is from another planet compared to any recent Tales game.

I'm not sure playing ToS Wii without use of monsters is possible. Monsters get unique skills humans can't, and that are often the best way to handle a boss battle. On top of that, I don't think there are enough playable human characters who can level up in the game to fill out all four party slots.

Now, I say this noting I haven't finished the game yet, and it's possible you could eventually get more... but even the plot is about how the only way to save the world is to recruit and level monsters. I just kind of doubt it.

 

Yeah, the only playable characters that level up are Emil Marta; there aren't any other new ones throughout the game (except for Richter, who of course is only temporary). I am resigned the face that I will need to use monsters, though I hope to use the old Symphonia cast as much as possible.

Now, I've run some of your comments by the people I mentioned previously who have or are playing the game, and here are a few of the responses:

"Huh. Weird. I usually stop feeding my monsters once they've reached their optimal form. After all, if you feed them again after that, they'll return to their first form. And we don't want that. I don't find the monster training that difficult at all. The trick is to not feed them and let them level up properly."

"One of the comments is wrong though, you don't need to exit out the dungeon most of the time because there are Katz/Nekonin within dungeons for you to adjust your monster party or feed them."

"I don't know if I can tell whether the game is easy or not, but I got more game over in my first ToS-R playthrough than my first ToS one, which was twice as long, and my first Tales ever."
_________________

 

@feanaro:

I think your friend is confusing feeding with monster evolution. If a monster is ready to evolve you can choose to have it evolve by feeding it... or you can feed it anyway for the stat boost, and tell it not to evolve. It's sort of like Pokemon, only you don't have to hold down a button.

Your friend is right that Katz Guild reps are in most dungeons... toward the end, usually right before the final boss. This is not at all useful if your monsters are leveling up multiple times just by fighting the enemies around the entrance, and Dawn's lack of random encounters sort of forces that. If you wait until you reach the Katz Guild at the end of the dungeon - especially if you pick up a new level 1 monster along the way - you're going to miss several levels' worth of opportunity to feed monsters and get them better stats.

If your friend really wasn't feeding monsters save when he wanted to evolve them, then I would suggest that's why he saw a lot of Game Overs. Your monster selection is the most important thing about your party in Dawn, and a monster who has been fed once per level for stat boosts is amazingly more powerful than one who hasn't.

Another possibility is that Namco Bandai has altered game balance for the North American version of Dawn, which would be unusual but not unheard of. I can only vouch for the version I'm playing in English, and for all I know the Japanese version your friend played had slightly different mechanics.

 

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