Miguel, I think it's churlish and pointless to criticize a writer in the comment section normally, and I'm aware that you'll probably never read this, but your snobbery towards Tales games is so appalling, I feel the need to go against my better judgement purely as a matter of catharsis.

Reviewing a Tales game and fixating on things like characterization and plot is about as fair as criticizing The Walking Dead for poor combat. Bandai Namco aren't trying to make powerful works of art, they're making exhilarating, and often very charming, videogames. Characterization and plot development in a game like this is purely auxiliary. Would you bash Ocarina of Time for having the same problem? I don't think you would. And yet the plot in that game is just as shallow as Zestiria's. By all means criticize the combat, the dungeon crawling, the exploration at a push if that's what your job requires, but don't call the characters vapid. Most videogame characters are vapid. It doesn't matter. For the most part, a game's stimulation comes from the gameplay, the experience.

I'm starting to really dislike this modern brand of games journalism, where every writer seems implicitly to disdain the industry he/she works in. You talk about Tales fans as though they're all gauche teenagers, incapable of appreciating any nuanced work, but that's not the case at all. I'd say we merely understand what these games have to offer, and wouldn't even think of acting superior to them.