Not too long ago I reviewed Tales of Vesperia and mentioned that I just couldn't put the controller down. The newest Tales game, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, is just as addictive, after you give it a little bit of time to get into it.

The graphics are quite pretty in Dawn of the New World. They aren't quite as good as the graphics in Tales of Vesperia for the 360, but that's to be expected. I am amazed at how well they did working with the Wii engine actually. I don't think I've heard my Wii chug that hard ever! The characters look like the Vesperia characters. I would swear that the cutscenes all came straight out of an anime. The backgrounds scenes are just as beautiful too. A large part of the game, especially at the beginning, is mostly story, so it's a good thing that everything is so much fun to watch.

The music is just as nice to listen to. The background sounds are calming and pleasant. When you get into battle, things do pick up. The one complaint I have is the hero Emil is the absolute most annoying hero from any game. He whines so much in the beginning that I wanted to mute the sound every time he spoke. Other than that, the rest of the characters are fine. The hero does get better and less whiney over time. I'm not going to promise you'll like him or anything by the end, but at least I stopped cringing when he spoke.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World takes place two years after Tales of Symphonia. We're not exactly sure what has happened during that time, but it seems like Lloyd is no longer acting very heroicly. In fact, according to Emil (the hero of this tale), Lloyd killed his parents. Emil meets Marta, who is trying to stop Lloyd from collecting the cores of Centurions. She is also trying to collect the same cores with the help of Tenebrae, one of the Centurions who has already awoken. Working with Emil and several other people they meet along the way, the group is determined to collect all the cores so that they can awaken Ratatosk, king of the monsters. Ratatosk isn't a bad monster king. He supposedly is good in that he can control the monsters and help stop the current monster problems that villages and cities are having. They even recruit the help of Colette, who was Lloyd's partner in the previous game.

Since you probably already know that Dawn of the New World is an RPG, you can imagine that you'll spend a lot of time talking to people and going to various places. In the beginning especially, there is a lot of story going on and not much action. You'll find most of the people to talk to in the cities. You can also buy (or synthesize) supplies, equipment, and anything else that you might need for your battles. When you leave the cities, you'll be on the world map. It is really easy to get from place to place. You just choose the place that you want to go to and the hero will travel there. There are no monsters on the world map. The only place that you fight is in the dungeons. The battles aren't random. The monsters are clearly visible on the screen, so you can choose when you want to fight them. This is good in that you can get on with the story when you want to, but I recommend fighting at least some. Otherwise, you'll never level as much as you need to.

If you run straight through avoiding the monsters and trying to get the story over with, you might end up having some trouble with some of the bosses. You really need to take your time, level your characters and work on your skills. You'll also need to work on training up your monsters. In Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, you can befriend monsters to fight with you on your travels. These monsters make great additions to the team, but you will need to take care of them. At the Katz Guild, you can cook food for them to raise their stats. You can also get quests from the guild to help you level up some. If you spend all your time fighting monsters and leveling up though, you can end up making the game too easy on yourself if you're not careful. Make sure to balance your time between story and fighting.

Learning how to play the game is quite simple. I was impressed at the way they used the Wii-mote and Nunchuk to make it feel more like you were using a classic controller. It is very easy to get used to the controllers and learn how to play the game. Overall, it is pretty easy to figure out where you need to go too. After talking to people and triggering the cutscenes, someone will tell you where to go to next. Since you only have to select the location from the world map, finding your way there is most simple.

As I just mentioned, the mechanics in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World are most simple to use. You will need both the Wii-mote and the Nunchuk to play. Your movement is controlled by the stick on the Nunchuk. Feel free to move in any direction when you're in the cities and dungeons. On the world map, you can use the D-pad to select the location you want to move to. If you want your hero to move faster on the map (trust me you will), you can use the (B) button to make him run.

There are a lot of controls for battle, but the game is nice enough to do a really wonderful job explaining them when you need to know. I did find it odd that I fought a few battles at the beginning before they even told me how to, but I'm guessing that I couldn't have lost those even if I tried, so it was no big deal. I think I was almost an hour into the game before they explained the battle system, so be ready for a lot of story time first. The one thing that was irritating at times was that you can't pause during cutscenes. If you've got to leave the TV for a minute, you'll just have to miss something. You also can't skip those cutscenes, so be prepared to deal with that.

I really enjoyed Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, so much so that I went out and bought the first one to play as well. I would have been nice to have already beaten it since you can import a completed game from Tales of Symphonia into Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World when you start a new game and get a bonus item, but I'll just have to find out what that is after I beat the first one. If you have enjoyed any of the Tales games or enjoy RPG's in general, then I highly recommend you go pick up Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World today. It is definitely the best RPG I have played on the Wii yet!