a good rpg its not the best tales game. It improved on some areas while backstepped in others plus some bad glitches
Tales of the abyss is the second tales game made and localized on the ps2 right after tales of legendia. however out of the series its the 5th out of 7 main tales games released during the ps2's era. and the last game before tales of vesperia to get localized.
Battle system wise they did make some improvements like adding the broken free run, healers and mages that have artes on top of magic to use, more unique spells and artes added some great some not so much, the carmine chamber, ad skills, capacity core systems, you can now control when you use overlimit, item synthesis and second mystic artes ect.
They also had some huge backsteps like taking away level 3 artes combos, group healing spells like nurse, character swap during battle now needs an item, fewer artes and spells than previous games, only consumable items for second playthroughs so no weapon armor or accessories are able to be carried on to a second playthrough ( which makes second playthroughs annoying), glitches that lock quests and second ma's ( i still have yet to get most of the titles because of this ). Lots of lagging between battles both in dungeons and on world maps worst examples are world map dungeons like inista marsh. item synthesis has become much more developed. you can now make multiple items not available in past games but they don't tell you how to make these items, what items are needed, where exactly you get the items needed and you cannot simply buy some of the needed items like in symphonia so your flying blind.
the battle system is greatly improved over past titles with free run control over overlimits and aoe spell grids so you know where you spell is going to land most of the time. so you can target a group of enemies specifically. mages and healers that have artes and decent stats so that they can be used in close combat and ranged casting/support. moves equipped with carmine chamber slots can have special effects like more lift/damge to the enemy, chance to steal from the enemy, healing the user once used and less tp usage/slower casting time. these added features make the battle system somewhat more fun that past games. shame that the cast is so much smaller than some of the other games and you have far less artes spells to use. one of the biggest problems is that they took away the usual combo system of linking level 1 2 and 3 artes together. party wise everyone just uses luke tear jade and guy since they have good stats and consist of 2 swordsman a mage spear user and a healing knife/staff user. rarely do i swap in anise for her dark spells like bloody howling or negative gate since her def stat is awful for a melee character. natalia the archer is useless pretty much since she has the worst stats out of all the characters, is a tp whore, and besides hitting enemies with arrows that mostly miss because she lobs her arrows like theres some invisible softball team in the way D:. her healing is worthless since she takes too long to cast and costs to much that i could use items to heal the entire party in the time it would take her to use one spell. her only useful healing ability is recover and even then i could just take a healing item so without group healing spells she sucks. fofs while a neat little feature are pretty much worthless since they do far less damage to an enemy than a normal arte.
plot wise theres far too much useless long ass discussions about fonons. if you can't really go an entire scene without the words fonons miasma score or replica being thrown around. aer overuse was a minor problem in vesperia compared to the mess of long pointless dialog scenes. if you take out all the filler the plots not too bad though but the mostly unlikable cast luke and anise can go fall off a cliff for all i care ( only really liked jade but guy and tear were ok) and they can land on emil marta and mormo taking out those guys with them. i liked emperor peony of malkuth along with frings cecille arrietta and ion more than most of the cast D:.
va wise yet another great tales game cast. though thats no surpise since only 2 of the games tales of phantasia and tales of eternia have problems with the voice acting and shirly was the only problem in tales of legendia other than those tales games are well known for their good va choices.
in the end i'd say my biggest problem was besides the arena cameo It was just to easy. plus not enough money or exp drops from enemies D: