I recently finished Tales of Graces f, the main campaign anyway. I didn't like it very much. My main issue is the story and how overly dramatic and unbelievably optimistic they are about certain things. Partway throughout the quest, one of the main hero's friends starts doing evil bad things because he's slowly being consumed by an evil spirit (you later learn that said evil spirit has a tragic backstory), and his actions are causing the world to die. The party wants to save their friend without killing him, which is fine and dandy but everyone is always reluctant to fight him because he's their friend and fighting a friend is something that seems to cause a lot of anguish among the party members in this world. His actions are causing everyone else to be miserable like no more water for the desert folks or no heat for the snow folks for pete's sake! This also extends to one of the main characters who has the power to destroy the evil spirit but at the cost of their own life, but everyone is yelling at said character to not do that because they say her self sacrifice won't solve "anything" despite that it would end their problems with evil spirit dude. Eventually everything pans out so that things are conveniently hunky dory and no one has to die, but it feels like there's a lot of forced drama and unrealistic optimism when it comes to solving problems with unknown solutions rather than solving a problem with the solutions they do know, however tragic the known solution may be.
Dungeons are pretty boring to look at and lack personality. There are a couple of dungeon that're supposed to be complex laboratories but they feel overbloated with many rooms and halls that don't seem to serve for any scientific research save for maybe 2 or 3 small rooms in each dungeon, with many rooms looking the same. You'd think laboratories this big would house more than one scientist (there is only one scientist managing one giant laboratory that's supposed to research the problems of an entire city)
There's some cute chemistry between the characters but otherwise the main cast of characters are pretty boring despite their character interactions. The Discoveries are also a neat addition, where you can find many worldly curiosities and it records the discovery in your log and helps flesh out the world with wonders. Associated with the Discoveries are optional skits, which I liked because they fleshed out the characters. One memorable Discovery was a Salt Stone that had a sign that said only people who aren't true to their heart will taste something other than salty about tasting the stone. Everyone has a taste of it and they all think it tastes salty except for Cheria Barnes, who is actually one of the most vocal of the group but has some unreciprocated love for the main character. She tries to hide the fact it doesn't taste salty to her so she doesn't have to feel like a weirdo.
In the end I give this game a -10/π chest hairs.
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