Surprisingly addictive for a game with so many flaws.
Gameplay: This could have been a lot better. It's just quests, quests, a mediocre boss fight, quests, quests and quests. The quests vary from making sandwiches of delivering cakes to defeating a certain number of a certain enemy. The delivery quests are completely worthless, as the only thing you
do is going to the client, then to the one who you're supposed to give whatever you're delivering, and then back. That's it. Honestly, they're just a waste of time. And the "kill 5 of enemy X" get pretty boring after doing it a hundred times just with different enemies.
You get to customize your character(choose gender, profession etc), but in a way that I feel is too limited. Plenty of old Tales characters return, and after gaining their trust you can invite them to join your party. However, all characters in your party leave after each quest(yes, even the sandwich-making ones) and have to be re-invited.
The problem with this is that there is a chance of them refusing to join your party, even when they supposedly "consider you an invaluable friend". If the Tales characters refuse you, you can either exit and re-enter the town to try and invite them again, an act that you might have to repeat a lot of times if you're unlucky. There is also an option to invite generic character. They never refuse you, but often look horrible and lack some techniques that are unique to Tales characters.
The battles are good though. They're reusing the "Flex Range Linear Motion Battle System" from Tales of the Abyss, which is really awesome. Many of the battles can be won by button-mashing, but some of the harder ones require you to constantly check the status of your party members, healing them and giving them orders.
Graphics: Average graphics. The game looks pretty good, but there are a lot of PSP game with better graphics. A positive thing is that the characters actually wear their equipment, as opposed to many other RPGs. They even wear whatever armor they're wearing outside of battle. Cool? Not really. The weapons don't look that good, and the majority of the armors are really ugly. Perhaps the stuff you get in Very Hard mode look good, but seriously, one play-through(with plenty of side-questing tho) took me more than 60 hours, and just having a chance against the weakest of the enemies in Very Hard would take another 60 hours.
Sound: The voice acting is pretty good compared to many of the other RPGs out there. The music is good, but nothing outstanding. Most of the battle music is just reused from other Tales games.
Story: The story is your average RPG-story. You meet a girl called Kannono who's lost her memory, and then you and Kannono join a guild called Ad Libitum. And of course an evil guy is trying to destroy the world, and only you can stop him. Nothing interesting here.
All in all, the game could have been a lot better. So why do I give it 8/10 you ask? Even with all these faults, I got hooked and couldn't stop playing until I had beaten the final boss and gotten the best equipment(in Normal Mode, that is). I always wondered what the next technique would be, and what weapons I would find. I also know most of the Tales chars and enjoyed seeing(and being) them in action again. But if you haven't played any of the other Tales games, you probably won't enjoy this one.