It is by no means perfect, but if this is the future of the Tales series, it looks pretty damn bright.

While it still suffers from some glaringly rough edges towards the end, it's the best a Tales game has ever looked, sounded, and felt to play.

Talk about the surprise of 2021! I thought I would never touch this game out of pure protest after seeing it over-advertised at E3 2021, Nintendo Directs, etc. But I walked away loving the story and characterization. I laughed a LOT playing this with my girlfriend.

The gameplay gets repetitive after a while, but the huddle buff and the elemental shots you obtain later on keeps things interesting for me.

Never thought I'd see an open world game in an office building. This feels like a good step above Alan Wake gameplay wise, and visually it's a lot of fun.

Downsides are the checkpoints are way too sparse, difficulty spikes at a certain point, and I experienced some audio issues with the XBox Series X version where some sounds and audio weren't playing

I legitimately don't know what people see in this. It's difficult but not in a fun or challenging way, and it feels like it's taunting you the whole time. Playing with a second player makes it an even WORSE experience. People say that that's part of the charm, but if that's all it has, there's literally nothing here for me.

One of the most miserable experiences I've had playing a video game.