Tales of Symphonia

Tales of Symphonia (テイルズ オブ シンフォニア, Teiruzu obu Shinfonia) is an action role-playing-game first released for the Nintendo GameCube and later for the PlayStation 2 in Japan. It debuted in Japan on August 29, 2003, selling 953,000 copies, in Canada and the United States on July 13, 2004, and in Europe on November 19, 2004. The game received a Japanese-only PlayStation 2 release on September 22, 2004, selling 486,000 copies. It is the fifth mothership title in the Tales RPG series, and was the third game in the series to be officially released in the U.S., and the first to be released in Europe. Tales of Symphonia's characteristic genre name is To Resonate With You RPG. Tales of Symphonia takes place long before Tales of Phantasia (hence a distant prequel). The game sold 118,000 copies during its first two weeks of sales in the U.S. and went on to sell over 1.4 million copies worldwide.

A direct spin-off sequel titled Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World was released for Wii.

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. To improve this, enable the Tales of Symphonia GC Custom Projection Hack. The hack isn't perfect however: it merely shifts the blur off screen during normal top-down gameplay. When the camera angle changes the effect will reappear incorrectly, affecting foreground elements like the characters.
 * To enable the Custom Projection Hack, right-click the game in Dolphin and click on "Properties". Check "Custom Projection Hack" and click on "Settings". Under "Presets" make sure it says "Tales of Symphonia GC". Applying it to Disc1 will also apply it to Disc2 since they share the same GameID.

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.

D3D11 Cutscene Rendering Issue
Some cutscenes have rendering issues with the D3D11 graphics backend. Use OpenGL to solve this issue.

Cannot push/pull blocks in certain situations
This only happens if you're using a keyboard to play the game. To fix it, hold down the Main Stick Modifier key while moving towards the block to get a prompt to push/pull it. This only works with the Windows version of Dolphin.
 * The Main Stick Modifier key can be configured in the GCPad settings.

Slowdown on menu screens
Depending on your system configuration, the menu screens slow down considerably when you use D3D9, especially on the Synopsis detail screen. OpenGL and D3D11 yield better performance, with the latter generally giving the best performance. See.