I think it's a better game than the first one, but it's obvious that DotNW is not a real sequel, but more of a spinoff (and Namco said as much). The main storyline is quite short and padded with quests to hide that shortcoming. The engine is subpar with frame rate drops occuring despite simply geometry and a lack of advanced textures and effects.

But the battle system is well done (improved from the first Symphonia), many cutscenes are skippable (making the obligatory New Game Plus feature less of a hassle), dungeons on the whole are less annoying (making NGP again less of a hassle) and Marta > the entire Symphonia cast (in terms of character AND usefulness in battles).

And the best part, the game doesn't lie to you like the first one. Back then, if you bought 10x EXP from the shop it would decrease to 5x EXP after about a dozen of battles which made no sense at all. I hated that so much. On the other hand, reaching the max level in DotNW is actually too easy with those insane combo EXP bonuses, allowing you to earn more than 1m EXP in a single boss battle (you only need 10m EXP to reach level 200).

I looked at the title and saw Tales of Symphonia 2 and I almost screamed fuck yeah since I played the original like 15 times XD, then I remembered DoTnW/KoR and got less excited. I think it was a decent game but they shouldn't have messed around with and ruined the original great characters and their voice actors. They needed more than 2 actual characters in the party at a time and IMO Emil and Marta are terrible characters (Ratatosk is pretty good though) Tenebrae is amazing too, even though he has the same personality and I think has the same voice actor as Jade Curtis so that's why he's so great XD. I agree though the ending is absolutley amazing.. the true ending is kind of lame and the bad ending is decent but the normal ending is great. The original game is still the best in the series  and the best game ever made IMO (Abyss is great too, Legendia is good and I haven't played Vesperia :( ) I think if they are going to make another Symphoia it needs to either be a prequel, to expand on the lore of the game with Mithos, Martel, Yuan, Kratos and their whole journey, aswell as maybe a game to bridge the gap between Symphonia and Phantasia. Long post is long so ending it here D:

every time a game has a bad rating its fans say  that game is really underrated and underapriciated . why we even bother at the rating then?

Yeah, this game is pretty underrated, but at least not forgotten like Arc Rise Fantasia :/

Yes Emil is pretty whiny but I agree he matures really well. Although I also wish he sounded less girly after his big resolution late in the game. He could've sounded less agressive than Ratatosk but with the same voice.

The overall story is pretty good though and worthy of being the sequel to ToS's story. But the game could've definitely been better if Team Symphonia had it as their big game instead of ToV (ToV would be done after it) or they could've left it after ToV. Doesn't matter to me though.

As for the battle system, I think it probably is better than ToS. But I think it feels stiffer compared to Abyss which came out before DotNW which had a really smooth battle system I thought. Only thing I didn't like about it was Emil's bad reaction time in the beginning of the game. It gets better with the Accelerate skill but why not just ditch that skill and have Emil be fast enough from the get go? I had to get used to that when I started playing.

Btw how come we didn't get EU sales?

It's not. The beginning was definitely faster for me (thanks to fast reaction time)...and later in the game it gets crazy. Crazier than DotNW for sure.

Really? I really liked Marta and I felt that Emil, while immature and whiny at the beginning, really matured throughout the game. I think they're far from terrible.