This game takes what would've been a very heart touching story but throws us in an undeveloped world full of fun but gimmicky characters. The story feels like it wants you to care about these characters and the world but it just doesn't hit so when the big choice comes up you're left feeling nothing because none of these characters feel real or feel like the game would be different without them. What I did really enjoy about this game was the soundtrack and the gameplay, both are full of memorable moments and make playing this game worth it.

The fact that the game has custom battles very likely will keep me coming back to it once awhile so that's cool.

This one was really mixed, I adore this cast and the OST to death but the gameplay is boring and the story doesn't really have much going for it. The dungeons were slightly better than Berseria, they felt like they at least had some decent ideas going. The whole world just felt so disconnected and thrown together where I couldn't get myself as nearly involved as some of the other titles in the series, I did really enjoy the character designs, the animated cutscenes, and sometimes I did have a good time with the combat system but nothing besides the characters really kept me going back.

Edna made playing worth it

Tales of The Abyss is VERY easily the best game I've ever played. Everything about this game appeals to me and I couldn't recommend a game more. The story is the best story I've experienced in a video game, the characters are the best written cast I've met, and the OST is my personal favorite out of the Tales OSTs I've listened to. The ending is PERFECT for what this game was trying to be and everything played out amazingly. Combat is very similar to Symphonia but feels a lot less clunky and speedup which I really enjoyed. Dungeons are really enjoyable and had very few boring or unfun ones. The visuals are my personal favorite out of the ones I've played, everyone's so full of personality in the animations and the camera angels were so INTENSE matched with some top tier voice acting. My only minor issues with the game were the annoying backtracking during endgame and the world map didn't look the best, other than that I can confidently recommend to this game anyone.

Vesperia was a lot more mixed for me than Symphonia but the good certainly beats out the bad. The combat has a lot more going on this time around and with a very helpful free run feature, every single cast member were extremely fun to play as like Yuri, Raven, and Judith. The characters themselves don't have nearly as much going on as Symphonia's cast did but for the most part they're all really loveable characters with very few weak links, Yuri and Flynn being the best example of the quality of Vesperia's cast. The story this time around takes a really interesting approach and had some really tense moments though falls off near the latter parts of the game, ACT 1 being great, ACT 2 being AMAZING, and ACT 3 kinda ways down this whole game for me, the ending wasn't anything special though I did like it but the gameplay and the really sudden introduction of a new threat in ACT 3 really ruined it for me. Dungeons are consistently decent at best and there's a lot less of them in this game, to the point where I kinda wish there were more. Animations are pretty solid and I really enjoy the art style and locations in this game, the mouths can look weird at times but for the most part they're acceptable.

Rita Mordio makes me recommend this game 10x times over

Overall this game is good, just as every Tales game I've played but I had a pretty rough time with this title. I'll start with my biggest issues with the game and that being the dungeons, they did not try at all. While some of Symphonia's dungeons can be bad and annoying at points but at least they had ideas and were trying new things but in Berseria it all feels the same, extremely boring and repetitive go from point A to point B with the only thing in your way being enemies and your own will to continue going. There were a few more interesting dungeons but all of them were awful and I easily had a better time with Symphonia's lows, the final dungeon being easily the biggest example, I have never had less fun in an RPG ever. Characters are very mixed for me, I only really enjoyed about half the cast this time around and felt pretty comfortable during some of interactions between certain characters, Eizen is an amazing character that made me want to keep playing so I could learn more about him. The skits were funny as always (besides the gross ones) but they dragged on for far too long and made me want to skip them at points. Combat isn't very interesting and you could beat the entire game by just mashing. Moving on to the things I loved about this game is the story was amazing and had my 2nd favorite video game ending ever. Certain characters were very fun to listen to and I enjoyed learning more about them, Velvet is not my favorite protagonist but she's full of depth and how she changes over the game was really interesting. The visuals are pretty damn good outside of the mouths looking awkward.

I really hope to see my issues that came with this title to not be in Arise.

I feel very confident in calling Symphonia one of the best games I've ever played, almost everything about this game comes together in such a good fashion to make a truly amazing game. To start with the best aspects of the game I think the story and characters are easily the best part of the whole game, every single main character has so much depth and lore behind them, I consider Sheena and Zelos amazing examples of how to write a good character that you want to learn more about. The story is one of the best written stories I've ever experienced and I enjoy almost every single second of it. 2nd to the story and characters is the battle system, this was the Tales series first 3D game and it shows as later games in the series improve the combat greatly; Symphonia's combat is stiff at points but for the most part it's extremely fun when you get the hang of it and easily makes this game worth playing just for the battle system, the inclusion of a free run would've fixed all my issues with it. Some of my issues with the game are the visuals hold up decently well but the animations do not, the stiff and lazy animations take the emotion out of certain key scenes in the story, the models aren't much better as they don't really show off the character designs properly, some of this can be blamed on the game being older but this is more of an art style issue rather than model quality. My only other issues with Symphonia is the dungeons are a mixed bag, some of them are fun and interesting to explore but others are horrible and some of the worst dungeons I've played in a video game but in all, my biggest issues with the dungeons is the amount of them, there's way too many with very little downtime in between dungeons.

Overall I recommend this game to any RPG fan as it's certainly worth playing for the battle system, characters, story, and some of the dungeons.