Customer Reviews

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World Official StrategyGuide (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames))

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This guide is straight-up not even worth purchasing, although it does have a thorough bestiary and a highly complete items section. However, along with minimal side quests and no "go out of your way just to get a legendary item" hints, all that this guide is pretty much useful for is a common-sense type walkthrough. If you truly want to achieve 100% within this game, I DO NOT recommend using this guide to achieve that goal. I have experience with playing most of the Tales series along with other games AND I've had my fair share at purchasing various guides for some of my games. By far, this guide happens to the worst issue of them yet.

-This guide does an incomplete and minimal inprofecient job at filling in side quests... there's not even a separate section for it like there usually is.

-Inadequate information for training your monsters (which happen to be one of the most essential tools for playing though this game) to be at their highest tier of ability.

-Great for art and taking in the great talent of Kosuke Fujima

-I would only recommend it if you're stumped on where to go or if you want to look for random treasure within a dungeon.

-Also, there is much more information missing that I still haven't noted, but if you purchase the guide today, you'll find out for yourself what exactly is missing.

-Not suitable for 100% achievement.

This guide is not the best Tales guide I have seen-and I have played most all of the games. Yes it has a basic walkthrough, and gives you some of the quest information. Many of the sidequests-most notably the ones with Richtor-have been omitted from the guide. There is not even a separate quests section-which is how it was done for most of the other Tales games. While the bestiary does contain all of the monsters, there is no information on the evolution of these monsters. The guide would have been much better if it included the evolutionary paths for the various monsters in the game-as the evolution of these monsters is an important factor of the game. Get the guide if you want tips on boss battles, help with the game's various puzzles-it details those out fairly well-or if you want to be able to check on where to go next. Otherwise it is not that helpful.

We bought this guide expecting that it contained useful information about the monster evolution. Or that it contained useful synthesizing tips, or more information about what the different effects symbols meant, or that it contained more detailed spell/artes/skill information than the instruction booklet that came with the game, etc. It proved to contain just as much information about the mechanics of the game as the instruction booklet, plus a walkthrough. A real waste. The Monster guide had all of the monsters, but wasn't arranged in any useful order, and didn't contain anything except their basic stats. Nothing about monster evolution paths, recruitment tips, probable locales, etc. Don't waste your money on this (very) incomplete guide. We returned it the next day for a refund, and found more complete guides on the web for free.

The Tales series usually have some fairly big games. While Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a spinoff of sorts, it is still a pretty immense game. One has to wonder why the guide doesn't really do any justice whatsoever for the game.

All the preliminary stuff isn't so bad. Getting through the basics is almost something a guide has to try to fail at. Bradygames doesn't falter at all. If you're having a bit of trouble understanding the game's mechanics, this section can help you out. Soon, however, this is where a lot of the helpfulness goes away.

The walkthrough, the meat and potatoes of any strategy guide is where the first big issue is. There's a walkthrough that is, for the most part informative. You'll get from Point A to Point B fairly easily as there's actually quite a bit of information. The walkthrough does the step by step thing BradyGAMES has done for nearly a decade now. Where the walkthrough fails however, is providing the player with any sort of detailed maps for the area whatsoever. Not only that, but most boss strategies aren't that great either. The boss strategies being useless isn't that big of a deal, but the lack of maps really is. The screenshots are often really big and blurry as well. On the whole, the walkthrough gets you through the game, but it is definitely not going to help you master it by any means.

Another really big problem with the guide is that there's a total lack of optional content here. There's really nothing about sidequests or anything, and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is quite a big game that has quite a few secrets. The guide doesn't even mention most of them. It's rather disappointing in that respect. There is data on the monsters you can capture at least, but even that lacks a lot of substance. There is data on the monsters you'll fight. There are also several appendices with info on items, weapons and the like.

Unfortunately, the guide is useful for one thing and one thing only: Getting you through the story. Other than that this guide isn't going to help you with much of anything. Much of the content such as extras is completely forgotten about and there are no maps. The screenshots are also very blurry.

In the end, it's hard to recommend this guide. The walkthrough, while informative isn't going to be of that much help considering that Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is a fairly straightforward game. On the other hand, it is rarely, if ever, worth purchasing a strategy guide for an RPG for the walkthrough alone. Without adequate tips for training monsters, secrets and sidequests, the guide is about as useful for conquering the game as the instruction manual the game came with.

Pretty much all this is is a walkthrough. If you have a question about the game or need help, just type it into Google and look for forums of others asking about the same thing. Or join an online gaming site that has free walkthroughs and/or post your own questions, response time is generally pretty good. I recommend gamefaqs.com.

It's in very good shape for a used guide book, but the price was a little high, just recently my boyfriend bought a much larger hard back strategy guide for about $15 less...

I like getting guides to go with the Tales games because they usually have a lot of side-quests and things to do. This game does not have many extra things to do. This guide is also filled with spoilers which makes it kind of unpleasant to use. You really don't need a guide for this game anyway because it is really easy. The puzzles are a joke and as long as you take some time to level up your characters as you're playing, it's easy to beat. It's a waste of money.

It's not really that great. It does an ok job of the main story line, but not the side quests. Shows the items though, and the bosses and monsters

If you're stuck in the game, this guide will certainly help, especially when it comes to the monsters of the game. And while it does show evolutionary paths, per say, it's pretty easy to figure out which monster belongs to which family. The artwork intermixed throughout the pages is also a nice aesthetic touch.

Es en realidad una guía directa y sencilla sin muchos preámbulos pero si lo piensan bien el juego es del tipo de juegos secuencial y sencillo, donde se supone que no deberías estar perdido buscando por donde seguir como los RPGs de los tiempos de FFVII que por cierto es excelente...