How about Tales is just bad? Symphonia is overrated by Nintendo fanboys. Vesperia gets buy because it was the one that looked like it had a budget. Xillia and its copy and paste sequel are the pits when it came to jrpg world design. Beseria was decent at best. Graces is the definition of good combat, but bad everything else.
I will still try this one, if only because I can actually tell it a part from the last decade of 3d console Tales games.
As an ex-Tales fan I can agree on this.
All the ones I actually like have a pretty bad story/cast but good combat like Graces, Rebirth.
I feel like the ones that actually have a decent cast/story tend to have either bland gameplay (Symphonia/Vesperia/all the PS3 ones) or good, but nothing amazing gameplay like Abyss.
Tales of Eternia is honestly probably the best one for balance of cast & gameplay. It's not super deep but it's pretty fun and has a likeable cast and doesn't outstay its welcome. Phantasia/Destiny are ok too. Destiny Remake is pretty good.
Like Legendia looks and sounds amazing but the combat is so boring and the cast is pretty boring. Tales always struggles to nail every strength in the same game.
Zesteria had great music again, but the story was whatever and combat was weird and just ok.
Berseria I didn't like. The cast/story was fine, but I thought it had one of the worst field maps in Tales and I didn't like the battle system which was weird like Zesteria and I guess Arise will be? They keep trying to make these new games not play like traditional Tales of games which is...stupid? I mean Tales of was fun because the battle system worked without reinventing the wheel.
Anyhow I'm just an old fogey with weird niche jrpg tastes. Tales of was fun when I was young and full of anime, but it just feels like a C-tier jrpg now and can't compete with Atlus or SE or even Falcom jrpgs anymore.