[Varion]

Alright, I'm still on the final dungeon, but now I've started playing FF13 and after that will most likely have to start studying for university exams and the like I dunno when I'll actually bother to finish this thing - and seen as no one's really posted any spoiler free impressions, I'll stick the usual bullet points up now, and change them after finishing if there's anything to really change. I don't think there will be though.

Pro:
- The battle system. Hands down this is the best 3D Tales battle system as far as I'm concerned, and I'd love many of the systems like the CC and sidestepping to return in future titles. The battles are enough of a reason to play the game on their own. I suggest not playing the game on normal difficulty though, you'll find it more enjoyable to play on the Second difficulty (or if you're braver than me, Hard).
- Classic controls! While Ratatosk wasn't quite as bad as I feared with the Wiimote, playing this game with the classic controller pro was *so* much better. There are many games that benefit from Wiimote controls, but Tales is most definitely not one of them.
- The non-battle music is better than Vesperia's. I hesitate to say it's good (see cons), but it's at least standard Abyss-ish stuff rather than the horrible monotony of most of Vesperia's tracks. It sounded like they replaced Aoyama as secondary composer with Tamura again.
- Decent length. Took me 40 hours to get to the final dungeon, though it may have been less as I had a habit of leaving the console on while doing other things. Not too short, but not too long, either.
- Graphics noticeably better than Ratatosk - the areas, the character models, the menus, they're all a lot more polished.
- Hell, much of the game's system in general just feels polished. There are even cute little touches like being able to see how much HP (both in numbers and % of bar) you'll have *after* using a healing item. There's quite a few little touches like that that while not exactly gamechanging in themselves add together to make the experience that much more enjoyable.
- Extras and subquests! They are numerous and they are many. Everything you'd expect from a Tales game, rare items, titles, monster books, trading cards, and so on. Even better, places where you can do something subquest related are clearly marked by either a star on the ground (for an area event), or a symbol over a character's head (for a talk activated event), which makes them so much easier to look for.
- Titles are actually useful this time! Massively so, even. Unlike in the past few games where they've been little more than novelties and titles, this time all your skills are gained from your equipped title (and once you've learned one it stays even when you remove the title, with no irritating SP management to handle ala Vesperia).
- The grade shop is Hardcore now. It actually feels a lot more deserving of the name - while everything is a lot cheaper, battles don't reward you with grade individually, you get it at the end of the game based on how well you did - how many skills you got, how many subevents you cleared, and so on, as well as single number bonuses if you didn't die or didn't use any gels during the game.

Con:
- Sigh, the story. It felt like I was constantly waiting for a plot twist that only really happened too late, and even then, there was just nothing to really make me care all that much.
- Sigh, the characters. They're above average in general thanks to the skits, but I can't really say any of the characters is actually memorable in any real way - about the only one I'll likely take away from the game is Sophie, and that's only because she's adorable (some of her skits still make me smile after the tenth time hearing them), not because her character is particularly deep or memorable in any real way.
- Sigh, the script. A fun thing to do if you're into that kind of thing would be to go through this game's cutscenes and have a drink every time someone says 'protect'. You will be very, very drunk by the end. I don't usually expect masterpieces of literature from my Japanese RPG scripts, but some scenes in Graces were just painful to read.
- The world feels very, very small. 3 major continents with a decent smattering of towns on each sounds alright on paper, but looking at the game's map and playing the game itself, it does feel quite empty and sparse. The lack of a world map you can actually fly around doesn't help either, though I like that you can at least find secret areas on the world map from the airship screen.
- Sakuraba tried to do something different with the battle music, this time. Okay, this isn't a con in itself - I don't blame anyone at this point who thinks the man needs to experiment. The only problem is that apparently when he experiments the results are ten times worse than the standard stuff. While there two regular style tracks, the others include some random tinkling for the ice region, and Tales of the Riverdance. The latter is particularly painful.

So I guess the easy summary version of this is the gameplay's absolutely fantastic, and the actual story, characters and world are disappointingly weak. Unless the only thing that matters to you is the story I would still suggest people buy the game when it comes out because of the gameplay alone, as it's not like the rest is anywhere near unplayable or anything, it's just somewhat disappointing considering what I've come to expect.