Man, what a game. The Tales games I've tried lately have had a very hard time disappointing me, and this game is no exception. This is definitely my new favorite of the ones I've played.

The story, is far and away one of my favorite I've ever seen in an RPG. It kept me guessing the whole time, and I never felt it was predictable in any noticeable way. The major themes really spoke to me as well. The relationship of a child and father, the parent's role in raising their child and to what extent their actions may be in the right, the nature of who guards whom in a relationship, the bounds of what trust and friendship can go to. The only problems I ever had with the storytelling was that the voice acting isn't always fantastic. It's actually one of the less well voice acted Namco Bandai RPG's I've played, as they usually do great work. There's just one or two main characters who don't always sound quite right. I'll just conclude my primer on it here by saying I don't think I've ever played a game that's made me cry as much or as often as this game made me.

The Vesperia/Abyss-style battle system of the few titles before this is present here, but heavily modified. In Graces, TP/MP is completely gone, and in its place is essentially time units called CC. You gain CC by guarding, just standing still, or by getting big combos. CC is expended by doing attacks, and bigger attacks cost more of it. Additionally, you're more likely to land critical hits if you let it fill all the way. There are artes that are elemental like in the other games, but your normal attacks now have artes as well, eventually giving each character fairly lengthy combos they can deal out. Combos are very important because they increase damage multiplier, stagger enemies, and gain back CC. Certain enemies are more weak to your normal attack or special attack combos, and which enemies are weak to which can be checked whenever with a quick hold of the R1 button. Finally, the elaborate sidestep, backstep, forward dash, etc. maneuver system that you needed to unlock and equip with skills in Vesperia is far simplified. Now you just have those skills all the time, costing 1 CC for every use. It's a system that's new and certainly confusing at first, as I don't think the game does the best job of explaining it to you. Once I really got the feel for it around the 10 or 15 hour mark though, battles became way more fun, and this is definitely the Tales battle system I've enjoyed the most.

Cooking has been revamped into the Eleth Mixer system. Through this, you can equip specific meals which you've made at least once to the mixer in your menu. All meals have specific activation requirements and times (post-battle, when X-status effect happens, when party member HP < X %, etc.), so if you're going to try to use it, it's worth keeping track of these things. Alternatively, you can also use those slots in your Eleth Mixer to put crafting materials into, which will have a certain chance of duplicating while you're walking around, or spellbooks which you can find on your travels that apply certain passives to walking, combat, etc. at the cost of Eleth (which can be refilled at any shop). I never used the cooking system much, but I always enjoyed having new items or foods to "Dualize" into new stuff at shops, even though it only tended to be for quests.

Speaking of quests, they heavily are geared toward the new title and skill system. Titles are no longer rare, or pointless, as in this game they provide you your skills. These are all skills, from new Artes (both special and normal attack ones), new passives, and even costumes. At the end of battles, you receive both XP to level up, and SP which levels up the specific title your character has equipped. The aforementioned quests always reward some material, be it gold, materials, equipment, etc., and some amount of SP. They're simple fetch quests that are accessible in every Inn in the game. These quests aren't intrusive or anything, and you could completely ignore them if you wanted. I personally liked doing them for completionist reasons. Even doing quests, getting all the titles for all the characters, let alone leveling them sufficiently, is an absolutely madman's dream as there are so many, so you'll always have something to level up with SP. These skills may come off as intimidatingly numerous, but there are 4-preset automatic settings you can pick and choose for each character to manage when the game will pick a new skill to do. Don't want to worry about it early game? Just set everyone to "until level 3" and let them skill-up like crazy!

Verdict: If you like action RPG's , or any other of the post-Symphonia Tales games, this is highly recommended. It's one of my new favorite games ever, and a fantastic piece of story telling.

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Legends & Legacies

This is the expansion content added to the PS3 port of Tales of Graces. Granted, we never got the Wii original, but it's still an expansion. It adds an extra 10 hours to the game, and wraps up some fairly relevant story questions brought up in the post-credits video of the original game.

Gameplay wise, it's 4 or so totally new dungeons, and then 4 old dungeons but with new monsters. A whole new bit of story to see (ten whole hours of it), and a myriad of skits to go with it as well. As far as the intensity of the story compared to the main game, it's not quite the same level, but the writing is still good. It's just not going for those same emotional punches. I did nearly tear up once or twice (which is nothing compared to the bawling I was doing after seeing the ending of the main game (happy tears though)), I found myself laughing far more often in this story just because of how great the character chemistry is with the (sort of) new character they added to the old main party, and their topics of conversation in skits tend to be more lighthearted. I really enjoyed it.

There's also the introduction of the Accel system, which REALLY changes up combat. It's more or less every character getting their own, personal overlimit meter, in addition to the one you already have that's party wide. Granted, the "Eleth Gauge" isn't so much like Vesperia's Overlimit system, but the Accel system is much closer to that. Plus, each character gets their own personalized, unique effects from their Accel gauge, so that's another neat feature. Another curiosity you unlock near the middle/end of the expansion is the ability for characters to turn into other characters by using a certain craftable item at a certain NPC. It more or less gives that character a "costume" of another character. Want a party full of just the main character? You can have that now (but it'll take a while to get enough stuff to craft that).

Verdict: Recommended if you really liked the main game. Granted, it's not a standalone expansion and you need to beat the game first to unlock it, but I'd say it's definitely worth playing if you enjoyed the main game enough to play through to the end.