Wii Game Review: Tales of Symphonia II

I am a huge fan of RPG games but as I have grown older I don’t seem to be able to stomach poor English translation and weak story lines like I used to as a teenager. Tales of Symphonia II was a game with lots of potential that was crushed by such poor voice overs and weak story and writing early on that I just couldn’t stomach playing the game more than the first few hours. The game is so slow paced with forced recaps of what characters have previously said with no way to skip past that even my six year old who was watching me play kept saying how boring it was.

I do enjoy role playing games with depth, storyline and don’t mind slower paced ones that hold my interest, but Tales of Symphonia was just lacking from the beginning. The battles amounting to little more than “block” press A, Press A, “block” in the early part felt more like a timed action game than an RPG.

So far I have yet to find a good RPG for the Nintendo Wii, not to say there aren’t any Wii games but I just don’t seem to have been able to pick up something in the caliber range of “Final Fantasy X” or the original Dragon Warrior series.

This is one of the many reasons why I love GameFly, I can just try a game and send it back if I don’t like it and wait for the next one to come.

-Justin Germino