I just finished(literally 10 minutes ago) Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World and I have absolutely no idea why this game has such a low average? The ending was beautiful. The gameplay was phenomenal.(I believe the battle system was greatly improved over the original. Being able to free roam is AMAZING and the Mystic Artes were so cool!) The story, albeit a tad cheesy, was a great expansion to the original game and makes sense. 

== Begin Potential Spoilers ==

At the end of Tales of Symphonia, the two worlds (Sylvarant and Tethe'alla) combine to become one world. It is ridiculous to expect both worlds to get along right away, and given that Tethe'alla is far more advanced than Sylvarant, it's expected that they would probably see themselves as the superior people. The whole idea of the Vanguard makes sense.

== End Potential Spoilers ==

I enjoyed the story. This game had a lot of plot twists, just like the original. Seeing all of the cast of the first game was a nice touch, too! It was great that instead of giving you all of them at once, they were spread out, which made the time you spent with them much more meaningful, in my opinion.

The voice acting, while not amazing, wasn't bad in my opinion. I didn't enjoy that Lloyd's voice was different. That was a shame :/

I liked the characters a lot. Emil and Marta are just TOO cute and Tenebrae is by far one of the funniest characters I've seen in a game before. Every skit with him was amazing, witty, or just downright hilarious.

The thing that did bother me was the unnecessary framerate drops and the horrible load times. I just felt like the team developing this got lazy.

Overall, I'd say that if you were a Tales of Symphonia fan, you'll love Dawn of the New World. If you haven't played the first, I'm not sure how you'd feel about this game. It definitely is a game that only fans would truly enjoy.

I enjoyed it more than the original but thats because the gameplay is so much better

haven't played this game for a couple of years, but i remember being let down by it.

the wimpy and tough emil thing was annoying, and i didn't like how there were level caps for loyds party. the monsters were pretty cool i guess, but they can become so ridicously overpowered all you have to do is let them fight.

the voiced skits were nice, and that cat was also pretty funny. i guess since it was the sequel to synphonia, i expected to be just as good.

Tales of symphonia is my favorite game so of course i love the second one. but it in no way is better than the first. Its a great game though with alot of stuff going on the voice actors were okay but like you said not having lloyds original voice actor was a shame. All in all its a really good game that alot of tales fans didn't like because of its budget and the lack of the orignal team developing the game.

I loved the original but haven't got ToS2 yet, it came out within weeks of NSMBWii so I didn't get it at launch.  My cousin has it and says that it is underatted but is inferior to the original in every aspect bar battle system.  He also says that it is pretty much graphically the same as the original.

well the graphics arent the same. also the characters are more scaled to their real sizes instead of being semi-chbi like the first one.

Pretty much this.

Both stories were meh, the characters boring aside from few. I like the voice acting in skits (wasn't there in ToS), but they also removed some awesome tracks like Fighting of the Spirit and Fatalize.

I loved the original but the sequel just never found its way onto my rotation, and now i'm looking ahead to Graces (one way or another), and not back towards this

I liked it a lot, but I don't think you can call it underrated. It's just not a complete game. It's like... the Tales version of FFXIII. It doesn't have all the features you look for in a tales game or in a RPG in general. Plus it's really short. Gameplay is solid but that's it. Can't really give it more than a 7/10.

everyone says the game is not that good because the 1st one was so much better...

i mean, you don't give a 6.5 (IGN) just because the 1st one was better, it's still an awesome game, and for me, they best battle system ever in an RPG

i give a 10 to ToS, and a 9.2 to ToS:DoTNW

Tales of Symphonia is one of my best games ever, and i would be very happy if Namco could even make 3rd one