This is really a love it or hate it game.
The game starts out with Senel (The protagonist) and his sister Shirley on a boat, it gets attacked by monsters, Senel fights and saves Shirley, and they see a glowing light, well, when they investigate it, it turns out to be a really big ship, and this is what you will adventure on throughout the course of the game. When you first arrive, you meet a man named Will Raynard, who will become one of your party members, well, I could go on about this game forever, anyways, like most RPGs the beggining is pretty slow, and it won't pick up for a while.
The Characters were a letdown too, when you meet Norma (A treasure hunter who gives a nickname to everything.....) she will drive you mad!!!! She nicknames everything, she is always complaining and she is soooooooooooo annoying!!!! I wanted to kill her.......and your team is pretty odd, you have a brute, knight, healer-magic caster, Bandit, pseudo-ninja, a magician who has amnesia, an annoying treasure hunter, and the brute's sister...Sounds like a band of hereos, right?
The combat system is ok, one of the better parts of this game, the combat is what you expect from the Tales series, you have techs (AKA crystal and iron eres), OH!! I forgot about the eres, crystal eres is magic, and you collect, uh.....Enemies spirits to learn new ones..........Iron eres is like physical attacks, you start with a base, and once you master it, you can combine them to make new moves, i liked that part of the game. Well back to the combat, you have regular attacks, techs, and magic. Iron eres are assigned with the O button and you attack with the X button, and guard with the square button, and you also have a climax bar, when it fills up you press the L1 button and it stops time until the bar goes down.
The audio in this game is my favorite part, this game has real good audio, like ToS, this game has audio to fit every situation. If you buy this game, you might want to buy the soundtrack also.
Now, the story, it well, it's kind of wierd, your sister is the Merenes (basically the savior of the world) and the bad guy, *Spoilers*Vaclav kidnaps her, so you try to save her and you eventually do, and you confront Vaclav *End Spoilers* basically, rescue ______ storyline.
All in all, this game is a love it or hate it game, it may start of good, but it can really get annoying and repetitive