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.

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. This needs verification; it should be fixed by the Depth Rewrites.

HD Textures
Pack here:

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. Make sure to disable Dolphin's Widescreen Hack before using this Gecko code.

NTSC-U
04001800 3FAAAAAB 04001804 3FE38E39 04001808 C2D50000 0400180C 443AA000 04001810 42900000 04001814 43cc0000

04002000 C0001800 04002004 FC020040 04002008 40820008 0400200C C0401804 04002010 7C0802A6 04002014 480FC37C 040FE38C 4BF03C74

04002018 C0601808 0400201C C080180C 04002020 48000010 04002024 C0201810 04002028 C0401814 0400202C 48000004 04002030 ED041828 04002034 480FC42C 040FE45C 4BF03BBC

04018618 4BFE9A19 04023CA0 4BFDE391 0407D1A0 4BF84E85

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.