Tales of Symphonia

In a dying village on Sylvarant, legend has it that a Chosen One will one day appear from among the people, and the land will be reborn. Now, in Tales of Symphonia (テイルズ オブ シンフォニア, Teiruzu obu Shinfonia), you must enter a cel-shaded world in which you command real-time battles. Execute and combine hundreds of special attacks, magic spells, and combos. Each character grows to suit your fighting style, and the storyline changes based on the characters' relationships. The line between good and evil blurs in this immersive adventure where the fate of two interlocked worlds hangs in the balance. A direct spin-off sequel titled Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World was released for Wii.

Cannot Grab Blocks (Keyboard Controls)
When emulating the control stick with a keyboard, it may seem impossible to push or pull blocks in some instances of the game. It's because the character can't grab the blocks while running. A workaround is to assign a key to the Main Stick Modifier in the GCPad settings, which will cut the controller stick's range in half while pressed. The character in-game will walk instead of running, thus allowing it to grab the blocks.

Broken Curtains in Schoolhouse
Turns out the developers messed up the curtains in the school house in one of the rooms. They appear on the back wall rotated out of the screen. You can even use freecam to see the rest of the missing ones. This happens on console as well.

Skit and Dialog Textures
When viewing a skit or when characters talk during in-game dialog, certain textures will not accurately update when the Texture Cache is set to Fast. During skits, character icons may not appear to be talking (mouths won't move). During in-game dialog, the mouth textures may not change when a character speaks. Setting the Texture Cache slider to Position 2 (Middle) resolves this issue. It is set by default in the GameINI, however opening the graphics configuration during play may cause the problem to reappear.

D3D Cutscene Rendering Issue
Some cutscenes have rendering issues with the D3D graphics backend. Use OpenGL to solve this issue. Fixed by

HD Textures
Pack here:

Note: If you are using the widescreen code below, you may want to go into the texture pack's menu folder and delete the 9 character icons and 9 character portraits since their aspect ratio is too narrow.

Widescreen Gecko Code
The game has some problems with fire effects in some areas with Dolphin's widescreen hack that can be solved with the following Gecko Code, and it needs a render fix. Textboxes and a small amount of text will be glitched up. Make sure to disable Dolphin's Widescreen Hack before using this Gecko code. This Widescreen Hack Keeps the HUD Unstretched.

NTSC-U
0400B7A0 4E800020 0435B654 3FE38E39 20C2D4E8 3FB6DB6E 04C2D4E8 3FF3CF38 E2000001 80008000 21296024 3FAAAAAB 05296024 3FE38E39 E2000001 80008000 04023C10 4E800020 C20FE470 00000004 3DC03FAA 61CEAAAB 91C26000 C1E26000 ED0F0232 ED494024 60000000 00000000 040E39DC 4E800020 04116254 4E800020 0403EFA4 4E800020 20C128A4 9421FEC0 04C128A4 4E800020 E2000001 80008000

Reduce Double Image
The game utilizes a blur technique as a "focus effect". During normal top-down gameplay, anything in the center of the screen is clear, but the edges are distorted and duplicated. If the camera angle moves down to the character's level, the effect becomes a distance blur. This is not a problem with Dolphin - this is an actual game effect that the developers intended and is present on console. But at the higher resolutions Dolphin is capable of it can be very annoying.

Previously, Dolphin included a Projection Hack preset specifically for this game. The projection hack removes the blur from the top down sections of the game, but in doing so it makes the over-the-shoulder sections much worse. In the projection hack GUI was removed, and the preset with it. However, the functionality remains. To enable the projection hack on builds of Dolphin after that point, create a user GameINI for the game (right click the game in the game list > Properties > press the "Edit Config" button to create or edit a user GameINI) with the following text:

[Video] PH_ZNear = 0.00026 PH_ZFar = 0.00026 ProjectionHack = 1

Alternatively, you can add this AR/Gecko Code to completely remove the blur:

NTSC-U
04023C10 4E800020

Applying it to Disc1 will also apply it to Disc2 since they share the same GameID.