It's an amazing game with an intriguing story line! As usual, it's another great title in the series.
At first glance, it may seem simplistic, but with the new battle system comes more challenges as the story progresses. And as usual, the Tales series always manage to bring out the best of the story line with great character development, and scenes that can bring out a set of different emotions which leads to laughter, tears, and/or anger at times.
The new battle system switched out the usual TP to CC, which is now used for every move you make, including back stepping and moving forward. If you're not careful enough, you could run out of CC right before the move you actually want since you have to be able to link the artes in order to get that perfect chain of combos that you want, or the effective arte on a monster/boss. It takes a LOT of getting used to, but it has definitely opened a new fighting style within the series and makes for a much more interesting battle!
From the beginning, the story manages to capture the heart of the gamer with a heart-warming and yet mysterious-like scene that leaves you begging to know more - and anticipating what happens next! Even though it begins that way, it soon smoothly changes from a joyous scene to one that leaves the gamer crying in the next scene. Personally, I love how the Tales series always manages to bring out the best emotions of a person out with every scene that occurs in the game.
Most of all, the character development of the story is amazingly done, and you can definitely see the big difference of change and yet no so, from their childhood to when they're older. They manage to bring out the best of each character, and even the ones you previously disliked at the beginning of the game, you come to understand them through this.
Lastly, the graphics as well as the sound such as background music are so perfectly matched. The art and every detail done of the character is beautiful and anime-like, and for this I enjoy it very well. The music fits well with every scene and adds to the mood as the gamer, such as I, enjoys every playing second. (:
All in all, I very much love this game, and I would highly recommend it to all fans of JRPG games out there.