A typical 'Tales' game in both the good and bad. Mostly good.
The good:
-Gratifying difficulty (adjustable for the meek and veteran alike)
-Fun combat, with a wide array of 'artes' or special moves and different angles, combos and different characters to play there is a large arsenal to experiment with. Enemies have different attack styles, weaknesses and other variables to exploit. On the more difficult levels it's practically critical to use specific strategy and well timed attacks to survive.
-Link system adds an interesting dynamic to combat. Your characters can 'link' with a partner in battle letting you team up on opponents. Your partner can stun enemies, break their guard, heal you and so on and the best part is the linked artes allowing combination moves between the duos. This unique feature is great and allows more strategy and dynamic options.
-I've always enjoyed the Tales characters. They actual have 'human' personalities, not just stereotyped personas thrust upon you like bad acting. The characters have depth and dimension, real emotional dilemmas and reactions to events in the story. The Tales games do a great job building these personalities with story dialogue, mini skits after battles or even little sub-event conversations while traveling the world.
-Two different story-lines to play from the start, either the compassionate medical student Jude or the stoic lord of Spirits Maxwell. Adds to re-playability and depth of story.
-Great upgrade shop system where you gather and donate materials to particular vendor types to upgrade their stock with new items and get discounts. Different item types and bonuses for donation keep item gathering and shopping fun.
-Fun customizable accessories to edit your characters appearance, such as sunglasses, bushy eyebrows, silly hair extensions, even bandaids and other objects to place on your characters.
-Great level up system. A 'Lilium Orb' is like a hexagonal tree where you can distribute your growth points every level, expanding outward to gain new attributes and when you connect points around an area you gain access to skills and artes. A great and fun leveling system.
The mediocre:
Exploration is somewhat diminished by no open world map, instead they went with interconnected areas. The environments are diverse and colorful enough to make exploration worthwhile but like any game without an open world it can feel restricting at times. The visuals vary from a little bland to nice, neither too disappointing nor inspiring.
The bad:
-While I spent much time describing the good characters there is one who makes me want to throw my controller through the screen. This little sidekick crap is like the Jar Jar Binks of this game. I usually just try and ignore their dialogue as they have nothing to contribute but annoying overly childish commentary in a grating voice.
-Although combat is gratifying and difficult, it can often be very chaotic. With strategy being critical on the higher difficulties it can be frustrating when fifty things are happening at once.
-On easier difficulties simple button mashing can often win most battles (only a negative if you're too lazy to up the difficulty)
Bottom-Line: A solid JRPG with a good story, characters and fun combat.