@MANUELF

I know this is really really late, but I remember you played Final Fantasy VI.

How would you rank that awesome gem in your list of JRPGs?

No. 1 I presume?

Play a bit more. Here's a spoiler: You kill him. He even begs to be spared.

Anywho, I thought DotNW was good. I actually liked the gameplay in it. Emil is ridiculously easy to get a high combo on.

I feel bored having to play DotNW a second time just to go to the hidden dungeons. It's fun the first time, but I muted the game after I first beat it. I had past 9k of GRADE after the first completion because I grinded my monsters' levels. So now I got like 10x the EXP from fights and Emil and Marta were already Lv200 after the 2nd chapter :S

One thing I REALLY hate about it is that your monsters don't keep their physical Artes but only their magic Artes, which is a total shame...

Yes, it is

I miss Yggdrasil (sp?)

Is he in part 2?

No but you can see Yuan and Kratos.

Bleh.

I never played the original Tales of Symphonia, but Dawn of the New World is one of my very favorite Wii games.. so no, I don't think you need to play the original.. From what I understand, the main characters in DotNW don't appear in ToS anyway.

No, you don't need to play ToS to play ToS-D, but if you have any intention of picking up ToS again (which you should, you didn't even get anywhere in the game...) and want it to be a fresh experience, you should hold off on DotNW because it's pretty much going to throw every major plot point and spoiler in your face at one point or another.

Symphonia is a more complete package because it's a mothership title, but I think DotNW addressed a lot of the things I felt were off about the first, like voicing skits this time, a more refined battle system, a few more of the Tales traditions and less tedious dungeons. There are also some other pluses, like more humor in general and the monster recruitment system. I'm actually spending more time with DotNW (on my second playthrough) than I did with Symphonia because of the monsters.

Why would you buy the sequel to a game you don’t enjoy?

I remember feeling similar at that point in the game too. There’s cliché and then there’s ToS’s first 1/3. The only reason I stuck with TOS was because there wasn’t anything else to do that day. Obviously glad I did – think it’s a great RPG.