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[Proven]

Collette is Collette. I hated her voice as well, but more like it was more part of the person I hated. Then she kicked a dog. I hope it's like Soul Calibur Legends where they put out a pretty good older version of her voice. Lloyd looks older as well, so the new voice doesn't bother me much at all.

 

[Arde5643]

Emil's strange to me. In some of the videos he sounds really shy, and in others he puts on a tough voice.

This is actually also apparent in the JP voice-over, during normal times (outside battle), Emil sounds shy and timid, but in battle, somehow he becomes tough.

In the English VO, it seems that Bosch is using Renton's tone as Emil outside battle and Ichigo as Emil during battle.

 

[Prax]

Marta sounds like a Marta. Richter and Tenebrae sound alright too.

I hope Emil at some point changes from wussy-voice to battle-crazed voice permanently at some point through the game.. or at least an approximation between the two.

 

[Jiggy]

Well, I wasn't saying that Emil's English voice acting specifically is strange, just that as a character I find it strange that that's what he's like. I realized it was intentional since it happened in all of the videos, but yeah.

 

[Hero of Legend]

http://wii.ign.com/articles/909/909872p1.html

IGN has a hands-on with the game, new screens, along with the video of the intro cinema, and direct-feed footage from the first two hours of the game.

 

[Ydahs]

with the game running in a full 16:9 aspect ratio (no black bars), and 480p resolution.

Yay.

so be sure to check back for those updates as we continue playing through Wii's first serious RPG since Baten Kaitos Origins.

wut

Anyway, a good hands on and it's nice to see that they didn't cut out any voice acting. Bozon seems to like it.

New Videos

IGN screens:

 

[Anasui Kishibe]

the beauty

and the first step into the gigantic world that Namco has created.

yes, man, YES

 

[Jaded Alyx]

Sigh..I knew it was going to happen, but I'll say it anyway:

What the hell did they do to the intro music?

 

[Volcynika]

Sigh..I knew it was going to happen, but I'll say it anyway:

What the hell did they do to the intro music?

I wasn't sure what you meant, so I watched it.

......seriously, what the hell.

 

[bbsting120]

Ugh, that battle video doesn't look fun AT ALL. It looks majorly slow and clunky. Graphics are not great either, especially since I'm in the midst of Vesperia right now.

BUT I did love the Symphonia world. So if the story is decent, I might pick it up.

 

[Hcoregamer00]

EDIT: Oh, fuck... Johnny Yong Bosch is the VA for Emil. Couldn't he have at least done his Guy voice, which was somewhat decent? Ugh.

:lol

No wonder he didn't do any voice work in Vesperia.

 

[Jiggy]

The English intro seriously sucks. It actually sounded kind of promising for twenty-six seconds with its build-up, but everything else went straight down to Ludicrously Inappropriate territory. Not that I'm surprised or anything, but I'll mention it every time it happens. Japanese intros or bust! Even if it has to be instrumental, I'd take that so much sooner.



Also...

After watching through the first three hours or so in fifty minutes of skimming through Japanese YouTube videos, all I'll say is that more than ever I can't wait for this release--and you can decide whether I mean that as a positive or negative. But whether I love or hate this game, I guarantee you all that the only way you aren't getting a Jiggy Wall of Text© about it is if between then and now I get permabanned or afflicted with a crippling disability. Guarantee!

So buckle up, girls and guys. I think we're gonna have fun in a couple months.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

One of these days I may eventually finish the first game. That is of course, if it does actually finish.

 

[xero273]

Should have used the instrumental from misono cd as the intro...

 

[Black-Wind]

Sigh..I knew it was going to happen, but I'll say it anyway:

What the hell did they do to the intro music?

. . .Son of a {BEEP}!

Comeonnnnn! Everyone knows this is a Japan made game. . .why the hell do they feel the need to fuck with the Opening Theme Song?

Sounds. . . OK. . .but not nearly as good.

And Yay! New vids?

 

[JaMarco]

Ill give this game a chance since I liked the first one a lot

 

[Jiggy]

One of these days I may eventually finish the first game. That is of course, if it does actually finish.

If you're 83 hours in or so, don't worry. Only 49 left to go!

 

[vareon]

But whether I love or hate this game, I guarantee you all that the only way you aren't getting a Jiggy Wall of Text© about it is if between then and now I get permabanned or afflicted with a crippling disability. Guarantee!

I'll wait :lol

Loved Symphonia's settings and characters so I'm definitely getting this. Looks like it's a game I will enjoy, whether it turns out good or not.

 

[Anasui Kishibe]

If you're 83 hours in or so, don't worry. Only 49 left to go!

this is bollocks, I finished it at 127 hours total!


loved every minute of it. Man, i'm pumped

 

[Blader]

If you're 83 hours in or so, don't worry. Only 49 left to go!

Jeez, did you go for the full 100% completion or something?

I only played through the main story and it only took me a little over 40 hours.

 

[Jiggy]

Jeez, did you go for the full 100% completion or something?

I only played through the main story and it only took me a little over 40 hours.

Spoiler

I did everything and it took 79. Just having some fun. <_<

Edit: And I eventually built up to 280 hours played via the power of later playthroughs.

 

[Prax]

Ugh.. That intro.. it seemed like it could have built up to something good, but since it didn't even mesh well with the predetermined scenes (they kind of tried.. but failed), it just seemed like nonsense!

Plus, was it just me, or did the english opening music make the opening seem longer than it actually is? XD

They should have stuck with an instrumental version of Three-legged Race or even get it "englishfied" with another singer.--Speaking of that song, WHAT ARE THE TRANSLATED LYRICS. This has been bugging me for months!

Okay.. I know my brother didn't want me to spoil myself, but WHO SAYS THIS in the original ToS? "Courage is the magic that makes dreams come true"? Argh! It seems pretty familiar and will probably reveal many delicious secrets~!

 

[grandjedi6]

Oh dear, the opening video. It seems they are pulling a Symphonia on us, except this time it sucks horribly. Was it really that hard to pull another Abyss on us? Three legged race was actually good

Also I have a feeling the battle system will make or break this game. And let me just say, things aren't looking good.

 

[Jiggy]

Also I have a feeling the battle system will make or break this game. And let me just say, things aren't looking good.

I

Spoiler

in not a single way

disagree, and I'm buying it no matter what because

Spoiler

if a miracle happens

it'll be good. And if it's bad, well, then at least I can justify an impending wall of text trolling--as opposed to a wall of text praise

Spoiler

which won't happen

. Just you people wait!

 

[icecream]

I'm not sure what the problem with the opening is. It seemed to fit nicely.

 

[grandjedi6]

I

Spoiler

in not a single way

disagree, and I'm buying it no matter what because

Spoiler

if a miracle happens

it'll be good. And if it's bad, well, then at least I can justify an impending wall of text trolling--as opposed to a wall of text praise

Spoiler

which won't happen

. Just you people wait!

Its strange, the more I see of Sonic Unleashed the better it look while the inverse is true of DotNW. Perhaps the Sonic Team curse has transfered to this game? :lol

But honestly I don't understand what I'm suppose to be excited about. Everytime I rail against this game I'm admonished for it. But when has anything truly good been said about this game? The GAF impressions were mediocre, Bebop's was awful, the Tales of Forums' impressions were disappointing, the battle system looks weak and the game is filled with glitches. Like I said this game is going to live and die on the battle system but videos paint a sad picture.

I'm so disappointed :/

 

[Jiggy]

I consider it the Wii curse. I'm not getting into specifics, but several Wii games with predecessors on DS or Gamecube ended up disappointing me by leaving out numerous key things that made those predecessors work...

 

[Black-Wind]

the Tales of Forums' impressions were disappointing

Ohhh, thats not sounding too grand. . . will wait for this to hit $15 before I pick it up. (Thats how much I paid for ToS anyway soo no harm there)

I consider it the Wii curse. I'm not getting into specifics, but several Wii games with predecessors on DS or Gamecube ended up disappointing me by leaving out numerous key things that made those predecessors work...

I think it's more the "Wii bandwagon curse" (when devs try to rush things out just to HAVE something out on the Wii).
This game started devilopment back in summer 06 and was going to be just a fast spin off but than they saw what was happening with the Wii and they tried to shoe-horn in enuff stuff to call it a "part 2/ spin-off?" with the ToS characters from what I remember. . .

But Namco. . . I expect better from the Wii 09 MAIN LINE "Tales of" game. . .as well as the "Swords of" title.

 

[Firestorm]

I gave up hope on this a long time ago. I'm hoping the story saves it. The graphics will be shit going from Vesperia. The music is horrible if the intro is any indication (haven't seen any videos, I'm on media blackout). The gameplay's gotten crappy reviews from j-GAF. Symphonia ranks as one of my top 5 games so for the love of god this better be one hell of an epilogue.

 

[Jiggy]

The truly depressing thing is that no matter what, I still need to buy this game because if I don't then I'll never know whether they ruined a certain character I like, and if I didn't know that then I couldn't continue to be the self-proclaimed official Archivist of the Colette Defense Forse.

(And if they did ruin her, by the way, then I assure you the ToS: DotNW thread will know my vengeance.)



I guess, if nothing else, they can at least redeem some small value for me if the casino in Altamira is playable this time. Which it had better well be! Joker Colette and Zelos, Ace Lloyd and Sheena, King Emil and Regal, Queen Marta and Raine, and Jack Genis and Presea, please. (Not listed in order of preference, or Lloyd and Regal wouldn't show up here at all. I do love that my two by-far-favorite Symphonia characters have the perfect personalities for the best card, though. <3)

The music is horrible if the intro is any indication (haven't seen any videos, I'm on media blackout).

I'm not on blackout and I can say the intro isn't any indication. So that takes ToS: DotNW to a grand total of three things I'm looking forward to!
...But when the other two are 1) playable poker with Symphonia character card faces and 2) the official NeoGAF thread, we're in trouble. ;_;

 

[clay_ghost]

When is the release date again?
I am playing TOV now but will still buy this game so that the next wii tales games can reach the US(esp if is it 2d , what are team destiny doing anyway?)

 

[EmCeeGramr]

I consider it the Wii curse. I'm not getting into specifics, but several Wii games with predecessors on DS or Gamecube ended up disappointing me by leaving out numerous key things that made those predecessors work...

So how do you REALLY feel about Brawl?

 

[Jiggy]

So how do you REALLY feel about Brawl?

~429% more positive than the other examples I had in mind, at least.

 

[grandjedi6]

When is the release date again?
I am playing TOV now but will still buy this game so that the next wii tales games can reach the US(esp if is it 2d , what are team destiny doing anyway?)

Tales of Hearts...... maybe

 

[clay_ghost]

Tales of Hearts...... maybe

Who is making the next wii tales then?
ANd i check gamefaqs release date : 11-11-08?

 

[grandjedi6]

Who is making the next wii tales then?
ANd i check gamefaqs release date : 11-11-08?

Good Question. There is supposely a new 3rd Tales of Team thats been created so perhaps they are making it

EDIT: Duckroll in the other thread thinks the Wii game is by Team Destiny, so who knows

 

[Stormbringer]

Interesting impressions from IGN. Doesn't sound too bad actually, though they are admittedly still at the very beginning of the game. I'll have to wait for way more impressions before making up my mind on it though.
Anyway, here are some other impressions that can be found on japanese boards, which are apparently from a special issue of Famitsu, "Famitsu User's Eye Special", in which the readers give their opinions on games. Here is what they had to say about ToS Wii :

Top 3 Pluses :
1 : Good Story (23 votes)
2 : Battles are interesting (19 votes)
3 : Characters are cool (6 votes)

Various pluses (number in parenthesis is the overall rating awarded to the game by the quoted reader) :

- "Controls feel fresh." (8)
- "You get to team up with Symphonia's characters." (10)
- "You can team up with monsters." (7)
- "The free-run system is welcome." (10)
- "Game has a good tempo. Progression is tight." (10)

Top 3 Minuses :
1 : Load times are long (16 votes)
2 : Controls are bad (9 votes)
3 : Difficulty is too high (7 votes)

Various Minuses :

- "No World Map." (8)
- "Enemies are too powerful." (6)
- "Insufficient volume." (9)
- "Side quests are too similar." (9)
- "Battle system is bad." (9)
- "No data linking with the GC game." (9)

Overall ratings :

Famitsu reviews average : 7.75/10
Reader's reviews average : 8.69/10
Out of 68 votes ->
- Between 0 and 4 : 0 votes
- Between 5 and 7 : 7 votes
- Between 8 and 10 : 61 votes

And that's pretty much it. I thought it would be interesting to share these, especially given the relative lack of impressions on this game.

 

[duckroll]

Ah I see the staff speculation has spilled over here as well. Here's why I strongly believe the upcoming Wii Tales is "Team Destiny".

Kazuya Ishizuka (lead planner/designer), Ryuichi Ishizawa (System programmer), Tatsuro Udo (Battle programmer), Toshihiro Kimura (Map programmer), Yasuyuki Sawadaishi (Design Director), etc were the core staff of ToR, ToD2 and ToDr. None of them are working on ToH. Instead several support members of Team Destiny like Aki Sawadaishi (2D art), Mayumi Sato (map design) and Yoshimasa Tanaka (battle planning) got promoted from their support roles to the main roles in their same field for ToH.

This means the core members of Team Destiny have not been doing anything since ToDr (okay, there was ToDrC, but that was just an expansion re-release). Since Team Destiny is known for 2D Tales games, I think it's highly probably that they'll be working on the Wii instead of a HD console for now, simply because it would make their work.... sane.

 

[Kilrogg]

I think it's more the "Wii bandwagon curse" (when devs try to rush things out just to HAVE something out on the Wii).
This game started devilopment back in summer 06 and was going to be just a fast spin off but than they saw what was happening with the Wii and they tried to shoe-horn in enuff stuff to call it a "part 2/ spin-off?" with the ToS characters from what I remember. . .

I think this kind of behaviour is peculiar to publishers rather than devs themselves. Unless the devs aren't professional at all, I think they'd rather polish the game and fix the bugs than release a mess of a game. Namco must have been pressuring them, which is "understandable" (huge double-quotes here), as Namco can't help churning out Tales of games as if they wanted to break the world record or something.

 

[vanguardian1]

Just out of curiosity, what are the bugs?

And is there any chance that may be a reason why Dotnw is taking so much longer to localize than vesperia did?

 

[Mockingbird]

English intro > JP intro. That song three-legged race sucks.

 

[Brandon F]

English intro seemed fine to me. A bit too bombastic, but hardly as bad as let on.

I'm surprised the game lets you control the character 'stylus' style using the wii remote pointer on field areas. Please tell me you can also use the analog stick?

 

[jrricky]

YES.

 

[flipping_heck]

Can't wait for this game, i don't like the intro that much tbh, Japanese is slightly better but that doesn't say much.

can't remember but did IGN confirm that all skits will be voiced?

 

[Black-Wind]

I think this kind of behaviour is peculiar to publishers rather than devs themselves. Unless the devs aren't professional at all, I think they'd rather polish the game and fix the bugs than release a mess of a game. Namco must have been pressuring them, which is "understandable" (huge double-quotes here), as Namco can't help churning out Tales of games as if they wanted to break the world record or something.

Yea, your probly right.

A wow @ the Famitsu thing.

 

[Jiggy]

Responses to everything from Famitsu:

Top 3 Pluses :
1 : Good Story (23 votes) - Okay then. I don't play games for story, so that won't help me much.
2 : Battles are interesting (19 votes) - I hope so, although that's a vague term.
3 : Characters are cool (6 votes) - Though I just said I don't play games for story, I do at least want characters I don't dislike (which, incidentally, is often easier to accomplish without a story than with one because it's such a low bar to set), so hopefully this is true.

Various pluses (number in parenthesis is the overall rating awarded to the game by the quoted reader) :

- "Controls feel fresh." (8) - Eh, I'd rather have functional than "fresh," but we'll see what this means.
- "You get to team up with Symphonia's characters." (10) - Too bad they don't gain levels. :/
- "You can team up with monsters." (7) - ...
- "The free-run system is welcome." (10) - I pretty much never used free-run in Abyss or Radiant Mythology. I'm sure this won't surprise anyone who's familiar with my posts and opinions.
- "Game has a good tempo. Progression is tight." (10) - This would be a welcome change versus Abyss, where the last ten freaking hours are padded with practically infinite backtracking for no greater purpose than to trigger a single cutscene and leave.

Top 3 Minuses :
1 : Load times are long (16 votes) - I have the sinking feeling this'll be the greatest killer for me, if they didn't fix it. And I'm really hoping they fixed it for the NA release, considering how long it's taken to get here and how much respect Symphonia holds. Load times killed the Abyss world map for me to a point where I simply never wanted to explore it, but it's even worse when the load times affect battles in dungeons--which they do, at least in the Japanese version.
2 : Controls are bad (9 votes) - But at least they're "fresh!" ...
3 : Difficulty is too high (7 votes) - From watching videos, I didn't get the impression that the difficulty is too high but that enemy HP is too inflated--I mean, I was watching videos of literally the first dungeon and battles with two monsters were taking like 97 seconds to finish. I don't expect to be happy about this. D: Edit: And I don't mean, like, big golem monsters. I mean wuss-level tiny monsters.

Various Minuses :

- "No World Map." (8) - Nah, I'm fine with that. Maybe even happy about it.
- "Enemies are too powerful." (6) - See what I said about the difficulty. If that holds up through the full game, I fear for it.
- "Insufficient volume." (9) - Well... it's better than padding, at least.
- "Side quests are too similar." (9) - I'll see what this means.
- "Battle system is bad." (9) - Yet the guy gives it a 9? Must be one of those I-play-RPGs-for-story types...
- "No data linking with the GC game." (9) - Well, yeah, it would have been nice, but that's pretty minor compared to everything else.

 

[grandjedi6]

Just out of curiosity, what are the bugs?

And is there any chance that may be a reason why Dotnw is taking so much longer to localize than vesperia did?

There are various ones as you get near the end of the game. I haven't seen a full out list yet but one or two of them are even game breaking

 

[ivysaur12]

Were J-GAF impressions that bad? I thought it was just Bebpo that didn't like the game?

 

[Hero of Legend]

Ah I see the staff speculation has spilled over here as well. Here's why I strongly believe the upcoming Wii Tales is "Team Destiny".

Kazuya Ishizuka (lead planner/designer), Ryuichi Ishizawa (System programmer), Tatsuro Udo (Battle programmer), Toshihiro Kimura (Map programmer), Yasuyuki Sawadaishi (Design Director), etc were the core staff of ToR, ToD2 and ToDr. None of them are working on ToH. Instead several support members of Team Destiny like Aki Sawadaishi (2D art), Mayumi Sato (map design) and Yoshimasa Tanaka (battle planning) got promoted from their support roles to the main roles in their same field for ToH.

This means the core members of Team Destiny have not been doing anything since ToDr (okay, there was ToDrC, but that was just an expansion re-release). Since Team Destiny is known for 2D Tales games, I think it's highly probably that they'll be working on the Wii instead of a HD console for now, simply because it would make their work.... sane.

Isn't Team Destiny working on Hearts?

Edit: Misread.

 

[The-Switcher]

While the intro music is lack-luster, the animation itself is gorgeous, especially when Marta is doing all those backflips. Fucking awesome.