Play the GameCube version instead.

I remember getting to the world map and seeing the frames dropping and how laggy it was and being disappointed that one of my favorite JRPGs of all time, wasn't treated with the respect it was owed.

Never got around to the Dawn of the New World, but I heard bad things about it, so I am not incentivized to pick this back up.

Contrary to what most people are saying, this is my favorite version of both Symphonia and Dawn of the New World. Chronicles was my intro to "Tales of" and when I played Symphonia, I fell in love. Tales of Symphonia is an amazing game with a wide cast of characters and a lovable, yet semi idiotic protagonist (I love him), it's story may be cliche, but it's masterfully crafted and every dungeon and city is unique and fun, there's always something to see. The soundtrack is amazing and while the graphics haven't aged well, that would be my only note apart from the fact that Symphonia doesn't do a good job of teaching you combat mechanics. Speaking of combat, it's easy enough to pick up, my only problem with it was triggering Mystic Artes. Almost everything about Symphonia was well done. You grow to love each of the party members and even some of the antagonists. Also each character got an English voice actor that really fit their character, I really love how each character sounds and how expressive the VAs were able to be with their characters, it really helped build each character's personality and elevated my enjoyment during cutscenes.

Moving on to Dawn of the New World, Symphonia's sequel, also contrary to popular belief, I absolutely love this game too, as much as I love it's predecessor. Emil and Marta are both fun new additions to the already wide cast of characters, and Emil's character development is noticeable, but very well done and reasonable. I understand why people think Emil and Marta are annoying, but I honestly love them. The graphics aren't much better (it was originally a Wii, what should I expect) and the story may be simpler and maybe lower quality, but I still found myself enjoying the game I was given. Actually, my favorite part of Dawn of the New World is how Lloyd was written. It was so interesting to see how he'd changed over 2 years and to this day, I'm still (slowly) writing fanfiction about it. The rest of the Symphonia cast comes and goes so that the recruited monsters can stand out (yes, you can recruit monsters, it's really awesome. I haven't quite figured out the details on how to get it to happen consistently, but it's still so much fun). An improvement I believe happened between DotNW and Symphonia is that in DotNW, it's much easier to trigger Mystic Artes, which is super nice. The less interesting part about DotNW is the music, most of it is remixes of music from Symphonia which I can't say I'm suprised, but also I would have liked to hear more original tracks. Speaking of sound, while, from my understanding, many people were upset by a majority of the original Symphonia cast not being present (I believe only Colette and Kratos kept their original voice actors), I actually don't mind the new cast. I enjoyed how they played each character and I have to give props to Lloyd's DotNW voice actor for being able to play him, considering he's not the main protagonist like he was in Symphonia. Lloyd's DotNW voice actor (Brian Beacock, if anyone is interested, yes, he played Monokuma in Danganronpa), in my opinion, played Lloyd really well, of course I love how Lloyd's previous voice actor (Scott Menville) played him, but I feel like Brian's voice for Lloyd had a kind of tone to it that just fit Lloyd for the situation Lloyd was in, a slightly more closed off, secretive character. The way he voice acted that kind of Lloyd just... works, and it's really good (again, this is just my opinion). I wish I could explain it better than I am, but the gist of it is I like how Brian Beacock played Lloyd, I think he did a really good job. The rest of the new voice actors I feel were able to bring their own interpretation of each member of the original cast. While the voice actors are different, I do like how each of them played their character. The 2 returning voice actors, Cam Clarke (Kratos Aurion) and Heather Hogan-Watson (Colette Brunel, aka my favorite character in all of fiction (also, side note, I've seen both last names used (thanks Fire Emblem Heroes), so I don't know which one is actually it or if it is both, apologies if there is a problem with this, and if there is, please reply)).

Anyway, I'll stop rambling now, I love both of these games a lot and will recommend both of them purely out of bias and also I just think they're both fantastic. I am so sorry for the wall of text and thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

TLDR; Both Symphonia games are awesome, also (Dawn of the New World Steam/Switch port when)