It's the first Tales game that I've ever played and I got to say, it's pretty good.
Anyways, this game to me was an excellent game to play. First off, I've always liked playing dual swordsman so having Lloyd with two swords was awesome. The combat system was really quite interesting, allowing you to actually play with 4 different people all at the same time which was fun. (Yes, I actually tried it with 4 people!) It was pretty simple mechanics, nothing to complicated to learn, and each of the characters AI's where not completely hopeless like normal. The EX Gems system was pretty inventive too, letting you actually equip different enhancement gems to each of your characters which changed their states and capabilities.
As for the story line, that actually surprised me a few times. It's there where quite a few different twist and turns that made me wonder what was to happen next and how the story would actually go. And the characters where also quite interesting too, each one having their own unique traits and quirks, which made for interesting interactions between them. Though I wish I had a bit more control over that. All in all though, it's a great game that showed me just what the Tales series is all about.