Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alas, Poor Villain: Alice and Decus. Alice is actually quite sadistic and has the appearance (and voice!) you'd expect to be in your party in a game like this, while Decus is just...madly in love with Alice and pretty evil regardless. Despite this, you can't help but feel this way after their final battle where Decus Takes Emil's sword for Alice, causing Alice to go into a rage and admit she really did love Decus back...then Marta finishes her off, and Alice finally dies holding Decus's hand.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: Emil gets a lot of criticism from the western fandom for being whiny, feminine and spineless. In the 2009 Tales Character Poll (an annual survey of Tales (series) fans in Japan), Emil came 10th out of every single Tales (series) character, and was ranked 12th in the 2010 poll. And this is a series that has Loads and Loads of Characters in each of their respective games alone.
  • Anvilicious: The constant usage of the infamous phrase, "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality." So much so that this has actually become a joke in the fandom, at least when it's combined with another of Emil's statements. However, the use of it in the not-so-final battle is actually pretty good, because Emil is trying to use it to make Richter stop fighting him. Doesn't work, though.
  • Anticlimax Boss: The final boss. Despite the Crowning Music of Awesome and the sheer amount of damage he can do in one combo, the fact is that the game's difficulty can't really keep up with just how broken Emil and Marta are.
    • Special mention to the battles directly before and after the "final boss" - Aqua's monster form, while having plenty of HP, is basically just a punching bag with little means of actually harming the player. Ratatosk himself only has the same base artes that you do to use against you, and has one of the lowest HP of any boss ingame.
  • Badass Decay: "Ratatosk Mode" seems sillier every time it appears; in its first major appearance, Emil flips out and beats the tar out of a group of soldiers. After that its cameos get less and less dramatic. Seafood gels? Really, Emil?
    • The characters themselves start to worry about "Ratatosk Mode" getting out more and more often with less and less provocation; with good reason, as it seems to hint that that personality is starting to overwrite the other.
    • Although the Seafood Gels thing comes before that scene where he beats the tar out of another group of soldiers, this time doing a Neck Lift on one over a bottomless pit. Definitely dramatic again.
  • Common Mary Sue Traits: Emil. He's wimpy enough to get annoying, but can still hold his own against Lloyd in a fight, all of his morally questionable actions and moments are the result of a semi-malevolent second personality; just about everyone comes to love him fairly quickly; Even monsters like him and he's secretly a God. Who, depending on your ending, may be Too Good for This Sinful Earth.
  • Contested Sequel: Opinions are heavily split over the sequel. Some feel it's a dumbed-down waste of time, others think it's a perfectly fun sequel.
    • Most of the criticisms of the game come from problems arising from most of the effort at the time focusing on Tales of Vesperia. You only get Emile, Marta, and whatever monsters you can recruit for most of the game, and other characters you acquire can't gain levels, and the removal of the traditional free-roam overworld of the series is removed. Probably the biggest sign of a lack of effort on the game is its soundtrack, which aside from a few Crowning Music of Awesome bits, is largely synthesized remixes of Symphonia's. One other problem someone can have is that the game has WAY TOO many Hopeless Boss Battles, having one at the start with Lloyd (which the player will likely lose in a matter seconds), THREE with Ritcher, and one with Brute.
  • Die for Our Ship: Richter/Emil fangirls remain in denial that their slash pair was never meant to be even though Marta/Emil is painfully obvious since the beginning, and hate Marta for it.
    • Though some people may ship Richter/Emil because Marta is, well... A bit of a scrappy, as noted below.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Even the haters of this game think Alice is a pretty cool girl.
    • In all honesty; Alice actually is the type of character you usually expect to join the main party in a Tales (series) game given how she's a little girl with healing powers...but then reveals herself to be rather sadistic.
    • Even fans that disliked the game as a whole generally found Tenebrae's snarks funny.
    • Richter, who has a considerable fandom (Japan and English).
  • Excuse Plot: Most of the side quests are excuses to have the characters run around and beat up monsters.
  • Foe Yay: Emil and Richter. Possibly Alice and Marta. Decus initially assumes Emil got a crush on him at first sight.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Why does Richter have a Mystic Arte that is the opposite element of his character element? Because he's trying to be something that he's not. He's actually a kind and caring individual, but he is resorting to cold-hearted evil as part of his Batman Gambit to resurrect his friend.
    • Yuan is the new caretaker of the Giant Kharlan Tree, which contains Martel's spirit. He and Martel were planning to marry before she was Stuffed in The Fridge. Where else would he be?
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: Emil's mancrush on Richter goes from hilarious to creepy once their full backstories are revealed and you consider how it must look from Richter's point of view.
  • Game Breaker: The most notable is Speed Cast Marta. Marta gets a total of 3 (stackable) Speed Cast skills, and equipping all 3 enables her to be able to instantly cast any spell. Using this with Photon, a multi-hit move, and you can trap any enemy in an infinite combo.
    • Next is Emil. With the skill Accelerate (which he can only get from two weapons, the Echo Tracer and the Nether Traitor, the former being forgable as soon as you reach Triet Ruins and strong enough to be Emil's best weapon in stats until the Lightning Temple, and the latter being Emil's best weapon, after a lengthy sidequest), the lag on his moves is significantly reduced. What this means is that Emil can now pull off incredibly long combos (and two separate infinite combos) with ease, or just spam Havoc Strike until the enemy dies.
    • Finally, Lloyd. While not even close to being as powerful as he once was, he also has an infinite combo which you admittedly won't be able to use without a lot of TP restoration items. Even without that though, he's fast, outrunning everyone in the game but Emil with Fiend Fusion.
  • Genius Bonus: A little squirrel appears when you start solving a puzzle in the Ginnungagap. Seems random, but this is because in Nordic mythology, Ratatosk, the guardian of the World Tree... is a squirrel. Knowing this also makes every mention of "the demon lord Ratatosk" a Crowning Moment of Funny.
    • As well, although the name of the World Tree is never revealed, people with passing knowledge of Nordic mythology will also have no problem guessing that it is Yggdrasill. (Or people who played the prequel and/or sequel games.)
  • Goddamn Bats: Actual bats too. The Were Bats attack very quickly and come in packs, and tend to swarm around your characters and deplete their health before they can retaliate.
  • Ho Yay: Watching Emil and Richter interact for most of the game is a little like watching a high schooler's first awkward romance.
    • There was a bit of this in Flanoir wen you first meet Decus, with his "You must have a crush on me too!"
    • How about Zelos being the first one to figure out there's a fake Lloyd going around... because Lloyd doesn't smell like that! Not to mention that even Emil noticed he "worships the ground Lloyd walks on".
      • That's actually not at all strange. Zelos's powers of observation are on par with Raine's. He's just Obfuscating Stupidity most of the time.
    • Emil also thinks Regal would look dashing in a suit, holding a rose between his teeth.
  • I Knew It!: Everybody who played the first game, even for fifteen minutes, knows that there is absolutely no way in hell that Lloyd Irving would ever become a villain.
  • Most Annoying Sound: "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality." By half an hour in, most players get a bit twitchy whenever they hear that.
    • "You're using too many items/Artes!" Shut up. Maybe I want to heal people or hurt my enemies, huh?
      • Lampshaded by Emil, who growls "It's my choice!" in response (but ends up only adding to the annoyance)
      • Also lampshaded by Marta, "But, this is more fun."
    • "Oh healing power..."
  • Narm: "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality." As noted several times on this very wiki. It's just such a lame phrase; as Arc Words they do not fit into the story very well; but everyone keeps saying it with such seriousness.
    • Not to mention the game flashing back to that conversation every five minutes for the first hour of play, then having next to no flashbacks for the rest of the game, even when they might actually be helpful.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Remarkably well disguised with cutesy graphics and humorous skits
    • One of the fights the player must lose is interrupted by Commander Brute laughing as the screen goes blank. If the player performs Marta's special attack at just the right moment, he starts laughing contemptuously over her appeal to the god of healing, interrupting the animation with a fade to white.
    • Emil's origin story. Identity of one dead kid, body of another dead kid, animated by an ancient spirit bent on genocide.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Emil for some.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The way the game automatically adjusts the party lineup and which player controls what would be just fine... if Marta could stop leaving the party for just ten minutes.
  • That One Boss: The Light-Frog Nasdroviae. Get it down to less than a quarter health and it will automatically perform two healing spells to bring itself right back to 50% health. Plus it's guarding while it's doing all this, so unless you pull off a REALLY well-coordinated combo you're not going to stop it once it starts. It's no pushover in combat, either, and your only chance is to whittle it's health down just above 1/4 health and then break out the best combo you can manage, ending it in a Unison Attack, and hope it's enough to kill it in one go.
    • The final battle with Alice/Decus in the Final Dungeon: you're fighting both of them at the same time, they both have Mystic Artes, Alice can heal for about half of their substantional health, they have a lot of stun resistance (which makes that heal even more annoying) and you don't have any Guest Star Party Member at the time, so if you've been neglecting Monster raising, you're in for trouble. Unless you forged the Echo Tracer of course.
  • The Scrappy: Marta, who is a worse case than Emil. Being a demi Faux Action Girl, plus the Clingy Jealous Girl factor is considered annoying in the fandom.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The "a shapeshifter did it" explanation of "Lloyd"'s actions in Palmacosta is a big letdown. There were orbs that cause insanity as a plot point, giving us an excellent opportunity to examine the darker side of Lloyd's character and give his fairly cliche character some interesting development, yet nothing was done with it.
    • Lloyd's contrived explanation for keeping his friends in the dark doesn't explain his initial failure to deny responsibility for destroying Palmacosta.
  • The Woobie: Emil, who would normally be put under Wangst, but Crosses the Line Twice and goes back to just being The Cutie.
  1. ↑ That links to an omake, which is, of course, not canon.
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