While its presentation and gameplay mechanics are outstandingly good it lacks in storytelling and in its characters.
Gameplay:
The combat is easily the best among any Tales games. The new side-step system is fluid, challenging (it really gets hard near the end) and a lot of fun. Each of your characters can fight with 2 different styles. And on top of that the limited CC (you drain CC with every attack, when it reaches 0 you have to wait until it regenerates, known from Tales of Destiny) keeps you on your toes and makes it a lot harder to simply combo your opponents all the time. The rest of the gameplay is just like we know and love it: big dungeons, big cities, a gigantic world, lots of item and character customization, no random battles and cool bosses.
10/10
Graphics / Sound:
The graphics are quite good. They don't reach Vesperia status, but you have to keep in mind that this is a Wii game. What I personally really like about the game is that the ingame cutscenes (like in Dawn of the New World) are back and quite often you can simply sit back and enjoy, without having to press the A button every 3 seconds to advance. The synchronisation is extremely well done and all skits are voiced. But this is quite common for a japanese game. The BGM has some outstanding pieces and never gets annoying.
9,5/10
Story:
The story starts out very interesting and the first 15 or so hours of playing were the best I ever had in a Tales game. But after that it slowly starts to downgrade. The pacing gets a lot slower and sometimes you are forced to do stuff of which you can only think as some kind of filler content. But it catches up in the lategame and starts to get better and faster again. A downer in the middle of a long rpg is something I really can tolerate (50-60 hours for first playthrough), but what the story really lacked were surprises. Every Tales game I played so far had those mind blowing twists that you could hardly see coming and suddenly the story turned 180, but Graces sadly misses out on that part. The story has a few twists and turns, but nothing is really outstanding and on top of that it was predictable which is about the worst thing you can say. I really could imagine how everything would turn out after the "child adventure" (and that is about 5 hours into the game) was over. The twists that are revealed in the end are mostly something you can guess after playing the game for a few hours and that is simply a no go for me. Don't get me wrong. The story was actually very enjoyable for the most part, it just lacked a bit of polishing.
8.5/10
Characters:
Although there are some typical Anime stereotypes (like guy who wants to protect all, girl with lost memory), the main cast is really likeable, fun and can sometimes be surprisingly moe. None of these characters are annoying and most of them actually have very interesting backgrounds and a well rounded personality. So no problems with the protagonists, but I can't stand how the antagonists are handled in this game. Most of them simply jump out of the shadows a few moments before you fight them, rant some one liners and than get their butts kicked and either die, turn good or simply vanish after 1 fight. You hardly get to know any of these guys and this is especially sad because all of them seemed like pretty solid and interesting characters. There is 1 exception with a villain you actually have to fight several times and thank god this guy is so awesome he can nearly make up for the rest of the crew.
8.5/10
Extras / Sidequests / Replay value:
There are a lot of side-quests and extra bosses. Even if you have beaten the game you have plenty other things to do. You can unlock new difficulties, buy stuff from the grade shop and visit a second playthrough only dungeon if you start over again. You can easily get over 100 hours of gameplay out of this game.
10/10
To sum it up:
Tales of Graces is by far the best rpg for the Wii. If you played a Tales game before and liked it or if you are interested in jrpgs, get this game! You won't regret it.
9.5/10