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John Harker · Dec 8, 2008

john tv said:
Can you play Dawn of the New World with the Classic Controller? Never considered that.

I can't stand the Wiimote for real games. Too imprecise.

I just checked the back of the box. Naw, you can't.

But I think there is 0 gestures controls in the game. Ive never seen/used any and im 12 hours in. The pointer plays a role with the Sorcerer's ring, so that's a small enhancement in terms of precision.

The game is underrated, if you ask me. I've said this, but I think it's actually a more entertaining experience, at least so far, than the beginning of ToS1 was. While the production values arent as high - the games a bit graphically uneven, for example, some places pretty but plain - but the tone is very serious and the pacing is excellent. They've cut a ton of "fat" out of the game and it's literally one scene into the next. It plays out nicely.

And the two main characters have a pretty great dynamic. As long as you can get passed the fact that the main guy - at first - is a bit of a puss and the girl is the strong one, she aint no thing. I suggest playing it, don't need to have played ToS1, but it helps.

Rpgmonkey · Dec 8, 2008

Official site has some battle videos up (finally...) that show off Shing and Kohak's Hi ougis.

http://toh.namco-ch.net/

Things seem to have turned out pretty well.

And despite the delay, the soundtrack still comes out on the 10th, guess the songs are gonna get spread around before the game even comes out.

Mr.Wuggles · Dec 8, 2008

i can't even watch the videos because the streaming is so terrible...

is there any way i can rip the vids off the site/download them?

Firestorm · Dec 8, 2008

I'll YouTube them for you.

JoeFenix · Dec 8, 2008

Looks solid, the sprite work is pretty good, nice animations!

I'm thinking Namco made the CG version because they intend to actualy localize this one for a change, of course we're gonna be stuck with that lame version but it's better than nothing at this point.

We should be getting review scores of this next week right?

Firestorm · Dec 8, 2008

Shing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE3sJ6R6ADI
Kohak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrFpKtD7Ffg

Delio · Dec 8, 2008

I really hope this makes it over. Watching those vids gets me really hyped for it.

Mr.Wuggles · Dec 8, 2008

Firestorm said:
Shing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE3sJ6R6ADI
Kohak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrFpKtD7Ffg

thanks man

kind of bugs me how the monsters move in the Shing video... they don't move their feet, they just sort of... move

JoeFenix said:
Looks solid, the sprite work is pretty good, nice animations!

I'm thinking Namco made the CG version because they intend to actualy localize this one for a change, of course we're gonna be stuck with that lame version but it's better than nothing at this point.

don't even suggest such a horrific possibility

Firestorm · Dec 8, 2008

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FDNP41LW
Download of the videos if you want it less choppy.

duckroll · Dec 8, 2008

The animation is pretty decent, but I really hope the monster AI was totally gimped for the purpose of a Hi-Ougi video. There's almost no reaction from the enemies at all in the videos, which is a little disappointing even for Tales.

Datschge · Dec 8, 2008

duckroll said:
[W]hat I'm simply saying is that it's not surprising that people consider ToV a "Team Symphonia" game since that's the general term used to describe it. The driving forces behind the overall design and the planning of the game as a whole ARE the same people.

Except the battle design/system/programming staff. Ok, ok, I'll stop now. =P
(Fun fact: even though TotT's story and battle system is supposedly based upon ToR, the series veterans credited in "Special Thanks" are all what I'd call major "Team Symphonia" member including several leads.)

duckroll said:
On the other hand, all the other recent and upcoming Tales games that we know of have people that have not led on the lead planning and direction of main Tales games before.

I'd still make a difference between series veterans and totally new staff. ToSR had new leads from outside with veterans in non-important positions. ToH, as far as we have credits so far, are all veterans except for the scenario writer (which changes regularly anyway).

duckroll said:
It's just a sign of Tales Studio getting the most bang for their buck in terms of staff(...)

Interestingly enough when the Tales Studio site updated recently the number of employees stayed the same (132). So whatever new staff was hired just joined to fill space left by others.

duckroll said:
They made animes for ToE, ToP and ToS and didn't really do anything with those franchises at the same time or right after.

To be fair ToP and ToS only got OVAs, and such direct-to-video series target existing fans more than reaching people not familiar with the games. The ToE anime was aired on TV only two months after the game's release, covering a side story-esque scenario not mentioned in the game itself. The TotA anime being a full length TV anime series covering the full game story, made by a popular animation studio, and aired nearly three years after the game is different (as can be witnessed by the sudden rise of the TotA budget release in the Japanese charts).

Of course following that up with a Wii port of the game is still a too logical decision of NBGI to make.

duckroll · Dec 8, 2008

Hahahahahaha: http://blog.bngi-channel.jp/tohblog/

Wow, that's a pretty interesting post by Tanaka about stuff he wanted to implement in ToH's battle engine but got rejected on. Personally I'm glad they were all rejected lol.

Hero of Legend · Dec 8, 2008

I have a hunch that the developer COULD be Alfa System for the Wii game.

They've made a Mothership game before (Innocence) and the DotNW, Vesperia, and Hearts teams seem to be the primary teams at the Tales Studio and they just finished up their games.

Alfa System is currently making Radiant Mythology 2 and already made CSIII on the Wii so they have Wii experience.

It's purely a guess, but it's certainly a possibility, and it's not a bad one mind you, as Innocence was great wasn't it?

Sagitario · Dec 8, 2008

duckroll said:
Hahahahahaha: http://blog.bngi-channel.jp/tohblog/

Wow, that's a pretty interesting post by Tanaka about stuff he wanted to implement in ToH's battle engine but got rejected on. Personally I'm glad they were all rejected lol.

What does it says? Touch screen battles?

Kyoufu · Dec 8, 2008

Firestorm said:
Shing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE3sJ6R6ADI
Kohak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrFpKtD7Ffg

I'm suddenly reminded as to why I love 2D Tales battles. Looks rad.

cw_sasuke · Dec 8, 2008

Kyoufu said:
I'm suddenly reminded as to why I love 2D Tales battles. Looks rad.

Same here - but i will never be able o play it :-/

duckroll · Dec 9, 2008

Rpgmonkey said:
And despite the delay, the soundtrack still comes out on the 10th, guess the songs are gonna get spread around before the game even comes out.

I see the track list is out too: https://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/2795334

2 discs, 76 tracks in total.

duckroll · Dec 9, 2008

Website updated. There are 4 new movies on the site now. Hisui and Innes have their battle videos up, and there's a dungeon video and a cutscene event video.

mms://221.243.119.235/ds_hearts/pv/btl_hisui.wmv
mms://221.243.119.235/ds_hearts/pv/btl_innes.wmv
mms://221.243.119.235/ds_hearts/pv/dungeon1.wmv
mms://221.243.119.235/ds_hearts/pv/deai.wmv

There's also this victory pose pic from the blog:

Cedille · Dec 9, 2008

It appears the score is handled by Sakuraba, Aoyama and another Tamura who has previously been responsible for sound effects in several Tales titles. Considering the fact Shinji Tamura revealed months ago he was working on DS, Hibiki Aoyama is most likely to be the same person as the true Tamura.

RpgN · Dec 9, 2008

duckroll said:
Website updated. There are 4 new movies on the site now. Hisui and Innes have their battle videos up, and there's a dungeon video and a cutscene event video.

mms://221.243.119.235/ds_hearts/pv/btl_hisui.wmv
mms://221.243.119.235/ds_hearts/pv/btl_innes.wmv
mms://221.243.119.235/ds_hearts/pv/dungeon1.wmv
mms://221.243.119.235/ds_hearts/pv/deai.wmv

There's also this victory pose pic from the blog:

Shingu sure doesn't hesitate to kiss a cute girl he barely met XD And we have a protective brother to add some comedy. At first I wasn't sure about TOH, but it's shaping up to be nice. Now which version to get? Hmmm....

BluWacky · Dec 9, 2008

cw_sasuke said:
Same here - but i will never be able o play it :-/

I wouldn't be so sure. I don't think it's a massive leap to think that they've done the CG edition for a potential US release, as essentially that makes the game on a par graphically with World Destruction (2D sprites, 3D backdrops, CG movies) and that's heading West. If previous sales figures of Tales games hasn't put them off in umpteen years I'm sure they'll at least consider it - it's not like it's Sony we're talking about here.

And there may always be a translation patch down the line. I never thought I'd get to play Soma Bringer in English, but it still happened!

Datschge · Dec 9, 2008

Movies in one pack as the download speed is absolutely awful.

Cedille said:
Hibiki Aoyama is most likely to be the same person as the true Tamura.

The fact there's another Tamura makes for a nice excuse for a name change, huh?

Additionally to what Cedille wrote someone on 2ch "leaked" the comments from the OST, Sakuraba seems to recall the limitations of the SNES. Some people called it sounding like in "wolfteam" days. Imo the "deai" movie above sounds more like something out of Golden Sun tho.

Vargas · Dec 9, 2008

What are Mystic Artes? Are they in all of the Tales games?

Datschge · Dec 9, 2008

Vargas said:
What are Mystic Artes?

That's the (since TotA) new English name for the flashy Hi-Ougis. Those are usually the most powerful battle technique a character can gain and are accompanied with a cut-in (as well as adding a pause to the action). The cut-ins first appeared in ToE and have seen a rise in popularity since. ToDr makes the most excessive use of them so far.

Rpgmonkey · Dec 9, 2008

Seems to have taken a note from ToDr and made everyone fun to make combos with.

Voiced scenes seem nice. Hopefully there's a nice amount of them, and the music is actually okay (better than boring I guess). As long as the enemy ai is fine (or that's just an easy difficulty for the sake of showing off stuff) this should be pretty good.

kiryogi · Dec 9, 2008

The dungeon video does certainly remind me of Phantasia in terms of composition. Well BGM wise.

Firestorm · Dec 9, 2008

I don't like voices in sprite based handheld games. Always feels odd to me =/

kiryogi · Dec 9, 2008

Firestorm said:
I don't like voices in sprite based handheld games. Always feels odd to me =/

You mean on the DS? They were fine as far as I know in ToD2j and ToR.

Firestorm · Dec 9, 2008

kiryogi said:
You mean on the DS? They were fine as far as I know in ToD2j and ToR.

Well last two I did were PSP actually. Tales of Eternia and Star Ocean. I turned off the voices in ToE a few hours in. Haven't found the option for Star Ocean though. I read faster than they can speak, not a fan of the VA anyway, and it doesn't really add to the immersion because it's a pick up and play handheld game which means I wasn't immersed in the first place.

SilverLunar · Dec 9, 2008

I saw some gameplay videos for ToH.

Man are the characters a chatter box

, They almost never shut up for a second! It is always like that in Tales games???

kiryogi · Dec 9, 2008

SilverLunar said:
I saw some gameplay videos for ToH.

Man are the characters a chatter box , They almost never shut up for a second! It is always like that in Tales games???

It's a key part of the personality and charm for Tales.

Datschge · Dec 9, 2008

SilverLunar said:
They almost never shut up for a second! It is always like that in Tales games???

Yes. That's the soil which bred the in-game skits as well as the endless array of drama CD releases as well as preorder drama DVDs. It's a major Tales selling point together with the J-POP themes and animated FMVs.

SilverLunar · Dec 9, 2008

I was more refering to battles, they pronounce EVERY SINGLE MOVE they make! on and on and on! @_@
I am interested in this because the battles looks fun, but the only game game I can get from the series is the Wii one.

kiryogi · Dec 9, 2008

SilverLunar said:
I was more refering to battles, they pronounce EVERY SINGLE MOVE they make!
I am interested in this because the battles looks fun, but the only game game I can get from the series is the Wii one.

Yes, at least ones that are capable of a good amount of voice anyway. It's again part of the personality of the series. Having that mad fervor during battle and screaming out moves!

Firestorm · Dec 9, 2008

SilverLunar said:
I was more refering to battles, they pronounce EVERY SINGLE MOVE they make! on and on and on! @_@
I am interested in this because the battles looks fun, but the only game game I can get from the series is the Wii one.

Get a GCN controller, GCN memory card, and Tales of Symphonia.

Datschge · Dec 9, 2008

SilverLunar said:
I was more refering to battles, they pronounce EVERY SINGLE MOVE they make! on and on and on!

That's the Tales series (and by extension also tri-Ace's) oldest voice feature, even the first entry in the series, ToP SFC, had voices for moves in battles.

But you needn't worry, usually the games allow you to turn it down/off as well.

SilverLunar · Dec 9, 2008

Firestorm said:
Get a GCN controller, GCN memory card, and Tales of Symphonia.

I have already said that i can't in the Wii thread, it is not possible, and buying online isn't an option for me.

Besides I can't get more games for the rest of the year, already spent too much on Wii games, the last i got two days ago was pretty rare to find,I had to choose between Fire Emblem RD, De Blob and Tales Wii.... and Fire Emblem won out, It is a break time until three or two months later(I just bought a Wii 4 months ago)

Hero of Legend · Dec 9, 2008

SilverLunar said:
I have already said that i can't in the Wii thread, it is not possible, and buying online isn't an option for me.

Besides I can't get more games for the rest of the year, already spent too much on Wii games, the last i got two days ago was pretty rare to find,I had to choose between Fire Emblem RD, De Blob and Tales Wii.... and Fire Emblem won out, It is a break time until three or two months later(I just bought a Wii 4 months ago)

I also can't find the original either in Toronto.

Buying online is a possible option for me, but I'm not willing to pay nearly full price when I don't even know how good the game's condition is.

I had my cousin buy Billy Hatcher from Amazon for me, the person claimed it was brand new sealed... it wasn't, and the box wasn't even in that good condition as well as the disc. :/

Luckily it was only $25 and my cousin paid it for me for keeps, I didn't have to pay my cousin back for it.

Error · Dec 9, 2008

SilverLunar said:
I was more refering to battles, they pronounce EVERY SINGLE MOVE they make! on and on and on! @_@
I am interested in this because the battles looks fun, but the only game game I can get from the series is the Wii one.

How can you not like that hotblooded awesomeness?

duckroll · Dec 10, 2008

Rpgmonkey said:
Voiced scenes seem nice. Hopefully there's a nice amount of them, and the music is actually okay (better than boring I guess). As long as the enemy ai is fine (or that's just an easy difficulty for the sake of showing off stuff) this should be pretty good.

From what I've read, there will be 5-6 times the number of FMVs from ToI - about 10 mins worth. The voiced script will be about 3 times that of ToI, with 3 script books this time (volume 1, volume 2 and extra scenes). It's still about 1/3 the size of a normal modern Tales game in terms of voices, but it would be unreasonable to expect a DS game to have as much voice as a DVD game.

kiryogi · Dec 10, 2008

More gameplay vids!

http://toh.namco-ch.net/playmovie/index.html

This time Kunzite and Beryl footage, and more field stuff from what I can surmise. *Currently busy on SMT online XD

duckroll · Dec 10, 2008

The texture quality in the backgrounds is pretty high for a DS game...

Rpgmonkey · Dec 11, 2008

More video updates.

Guess they're doing this the whole week.

The castle pic on the blog looks nice.

duckroll · Dec 11, 2008

Early update today. Pics from the blog:

New videos (4 skits today): http://toh.namco-ch.net/playmovie/index.html

john tv · Dec 11, 2008

Today's haul. Special nerd edition.

Haven't listened to the soundtrack yet, but I hope it's decent!

Magicpaint · Dec 11, 2008

That Castle structure looks nice

I really really hope this has multiple 'normal' battle themes this time. That's one thing that for some reason really irked me in ToI.

kiryogi · Dec 11, 2008

Magicpaint said:
That Castle structure looks nice

I really really hope this has multiple 'normal' battle themes this time. That's one thing that for some reason really irked me in ToI.

Actually based off the videos, there's definitely at least 2 battle themes. Unless one is the boss, but none of the battles shown seem like a boss.

Magicpaint · Dec 11, 2008

kiryogi said:
Actually based off the videos, there's definitely at least 2 battle themes. Unless one is the boss, but none of the battles shown seem like a boss.

Do the Kunzite and Beryl videos have a different theme to the Shing/Kohak/Innes/Hisui ones? Those are the ones I haven't watched, but nice to hear anyway, hopefully there are more as well. ToD2 rocked the way ther battle themes constantly changed (along with different victory tunes for certain Grade levels)

kiryogi · Dec 11, 2008

Magicpaint said:
Do the Kunzite and Beryl videos have a different theme to the Shing/Kohak/Innes/Hisui ones? Those are the ones I haven't watched, but nice to hear anyway, hopefully there are more as well. ToD2 rocked the way ther battle themes constantly changed (along with different victory tunes for certain Grade levels)

ToD2j had like the most battle themes ever in tales history. Loved the grade lvl thing too in the TD games. I'm amazed I never got to hear the best performance one in ToR. And actually, I noticed it in the field dungeon video. IT goes into some encoutners, and its totally different from the Hisui/Kohak/Shingu ones.

john tv · Dec 11, 2008

So is that official thread getting made or what?

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