Eternia was pretty great but the VA (especially Meredy) was a total embarassment. I am actually playing through Abyss now (been on it for the past few weeks, 40+ hours in), and I am enjoying it. I actually like the characters (it's pretty easy to relate to the main character, not the least bit because we share the same name, but also cuz he's a spoiled, lazy, ignorant bastard at the beginning
), and the story is pretty detailed with a lot of references to the Kaballah. There also seems to be a TON of secrets, optional dialogue events, special techniques, etc. My main problems with it are WAAAAAAY too much backtracking and not enough dungeons, I thought some of the other Tales games had much better, more intricate dungeons with greater puzzles.
Tales of Destiny 1 was OK but it had too many repetitive dungeons, a really slow combat system (especially compared to SNES TOP), and pulled the "false end" something like 3 times throughout the game! I liked Symphonia but it had a tendency to drag on-and-on-and-on, and the characters were pretty stupid (except Raine and Regal). But Symphonia's battle system was cool, and the game had some neat puzzles.
Tales series >>>>>>>>>>>>> Factor 5 games, Rare, and 99% of the games Nintendo fans hype up.
