Characters: I loved Tales of Phantasia, but there's no denying that the cast is a bit on the flat side. The GBA version added all sorts of scenes that expanded on them, but it didn't do a whole lot. Tales of Symphonia has Lloyd Irving, one of my favorite characters of all time, but I didn't care much about the rest of the cast. Heck, I didn't care much about the cast of Tales of Destiny. I won't dwell too much on Tales of Symphonia:DotNW, but Emile is my most despised character of all time. Lastly, Tales of the Abyss, while Guy was interesting, everyone but Luke were real a$$holes. They blamed Luke for the massacre, while some of them knew that something odd was up. One of them at least had suspicions that Luke may be 7 years old, meaning he was a bit naive. Even worse, one character is later revealed to have been aiding the antagonists, and she is let off scott-free. And she was among the ones that went harshest on Luke.
As for Tales of Graces, most characters are very cliched, but Hubert is fantastic, and once Richard becomes a playable character, skits become hilarious. And as under-developed as Cheria and Asbel were, Cheria actually deconstructed her "childhood friend in love" archetype, actually calling out Asbel on leaving her and everyone behind. And Sophie was adorable. Tales of series always tries to shoe-horn kids(Suzu, Genis, Anise, etc), and they tend to be a bit annoying(Especially Annise), but Sophie was disgustingly adorable, you just can't hate her, even if she is just another "Mysterious waif who may or may not be human".
Story: The story of World Regeneration(Symphonia) is probably my favorite setting and story on a Tales game, but Graces' is not far behind. Phantasia's story was alright, the big shocker being that the party may have been the bad guys, from the bad guy's point of view. It was smart, and new, but the rest of the story wasn't anything special. Symphonia 2's story was bad and really, really dumb, with the premise that Lloyd was killing people, they just copped out and "Nope, just some guy transformed as him". Seriously? Either go all the way, or don't pull that just to garner interest. Destiny's I can't even remember, so it was probably forgetable, still the Swordians were interesting. Tales of the Abyss story was actually pretty interesting, if only the characters weren't so mean.
Then comes Graces. I've to say that it was pretty interesting, and they had a couple of twists on their twists. And I played Graces F, so I've got to mention Legacies and Lineages too, which deals with some more original themes, Asbel even becomes a parent! Graces, as a whole, was pretty darn interesting.
Gameplay: The fighting engine I felt needed some polishing. For instance, on paper, the CC mechanic is sound, but in practice, unless you are sidestepping at the right time, you are going to be waiting for the CC to charge, and if you wanna pull longer combos, you are gonna want it to be filled. I felt it ended up feeling a bit to slow. The amount of Artes, and how titles held benefits was really good though. As a whole, it's not my favorite fighting engine, probably Symphonia 2 (Yeah...) or Abyss' is my fave.
But where it really stands out is it's length. The main game took me around 50 hours, and the L&L epilogue added 10 more. But what's really cool, is that you are never truly backtracking, unless you want to. Abyss lasted 70-80 hours, but the later 20 hours were dragging badly, making you backtrack through dungeons you've already been too. Maybe even twice.
So, all in all, it's probably among my favorite Tales of games. Yeah. I'm gone. Whatever.
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