Release Dates

11/11/08

06/26/08

TBA

TBA

"The sequel to one of the GameCube's biggest RPGs.

While the dungeon crawling component of the game didn't seem all that different from past Tales games, get into battle and you'll find some dramatic changes. This latest update to the Linear Motion Battle system keeps your character attacking on a single 2D line in a full 3D battle field. You lock yourself into a single enemy, pressing the minus button to toggle targets, then simply press A to make your character attack, or B plus a direction on the analogue stick to perform a special attack. You have the option of free movement over the battle field, although this usually isn't necessary.

Outside of a super attack move, activated with the Z button when you've adequately built up a super move gauge, the biggest addition to the battle system appears to be the ability to make monsters join your party. You're occasionally asked if you'd like to woo a beast that you've just defeated onto your side. Beasts who have made the conversion can be added to your battle party and used just like any other character during combat.

This Symphonia follow-up makes only minimal use of waggle, allowing you to shake the Wiimote and nunchuck in various ways to achieve special attacks, something that's probably better left to button presses. Instead of tapping the Wiimote, Bandai Namco has apparently decided to tap the Wii's added graphical abilities, as Knight of Ratatoskr looks quite a ways better than its predecessor.

The first Symphonia game was a huge hit amongst RPG-starved GameCube owners, and we expect no less from Knight of Ratatoskr amongst RPG-starved Wii owners. The game hits Japan in Spring, with an international release hopefully not too far out from there."

It has now been announced that in North America, the title will be known as Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World.

Source:
IGN

Release:
Fall 2008 (U.S.)