Dawn of the New World Strategy Guide Review
BradyGames' Guide for Tales of Symphonia Sequel on the Wii
Jun 18, 2009
It's difficult to separate the strategy guide of Tales of Symphonia Dawn of a New World from the video game, because it's hard to tell if the guide's shortcomings are solely due to the guide or if the game itself is to blame. The game's dungeons have practically identical puzzle elements and all of the bosses—not to mention enemies—seem to require the exact same strategies to defeat.
Taking all this stale gameplay into account, the guide's usefulness is almost doomed from the start. While the guide acknowledges this, it still has very few elements that make it worthwhile for purchase.
Where the Guide Does Help—Dungeon Puzzles, Story Progression, Appendices
Dawn of a New World's dungeons aren't complex labyrinths or difficult to wade through, but they are riddled with rather complex puzzles that force players to continually revisit rooms and trigger specific events that may not be inherently obvious.
Most of the time, players don't need to explore every nook and cranny of a puzzle to traverse through it, unless they want to find all of the treasure chests. Players can count on the strategy guide to not only lead them through the puzzles in the fewest number of steps, but also find every treasure chest.
The puzzle solutions are the most helpful elements in the entire guide, but they aren't the only useful aspects. The guide includes detailed walkthroughs of each village to show where the players need to go to progress the story and therefore, the game.
The guide also has heavily detailed appendices about every monster, arte, item, piece of armor, weapon, recipe, and accessory available. The appendices list where each item can be found and its attributes or statistics, making it incredibly easy for players to research where a wayward item is located or what monsters would be best to recruit for their party.
Guide Does Little Else for Dawn of a New World
If the guide included maps of every village and dungeon, it would have been far more useful. But no such maps are available. It does include a beautiful, two-paged map of the overworld, but there is no real use for such a map.
Players cannot freely roam the overworld at any point in the game, so players do not need to know exactly where they are and what direction they need to head to next. Since players do freely roam around villages and dungeons, maps of these regions would be extremely helpful. Not to mention, maps would help cut out a lot of extraneous and at times confusing exposition in the walkthroughs.
The strategies for boss fights offer some advice on the stats and elements of each boss, and they prepare players for all of the boss' attacks. However, the strategies are mostly the same, telling players to keep Marta safe so she can heal, keep Emil attacking and blocking, and be ready to hand out the Apple Gels for healing.
However, it's probably unfair to fault the guide for this as the blame probably goes to the game. At the same time, if practically every boss strategy is the same, then what's the point of needing a guide?
Final Word
While the guide has its uses, these uses are too few to really recommend purchase, especially when so many guides are available online for free. Normally strategy guides provide features one cannot find online, but this guide unfortunately does not. Everyone would be well advised to leave this guide on the shelf and seek help online as needed.
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