Tales of Zestiria is a game and not a good one by any means. Before I get onto what the game did poorly, I'll get onto what it actually did well because it does have some merit to be praised for. The concept of both the narrative and setting were decent enough and had a lot of potential had they been fleshed out well. The soundtrack as well is the first, and ultimately one of the only, Tales games with a genuinely good soundtrack thanks to Go Shiina especially with the vocal tracks along with having the series' signature fantastic character design. Beyond this, the game is almost a total failure.

The narrative itself, despite it's potential, is about as unremarkably generic and forgettable as a fantasy anime story can get without being a terrible isekai. It is quite literally a 'chosen boy finds his destiny to defeat dark lord' story that's been done a million times with no actual good differences. You can more or less find this narrative everywhere without it actually being worse. There are moments of genuine gold within the narrative and even some rough gems. The big dragon fight and ending being examples of this. However the ending is very underwritten as it does nothing to provide actual closure to the world itself and the root cause that caused the narrative in question.

The differences are mainly in the characters and this game is very short of actual good ones. Rose, being the biggest difference from other cookie cutter narratives like this, is written like a 12 year old's OC in a fan fiction of their favourite anime. A very rare example of, and I hate using this glorified buzzword, a Mary Sue in modern JRPGs. She bends the rules of the world and themes that the narrative is attempting to represent as well as the characterization of other characters around her as the writers bent over backwards to praise her every other second regardless of how much she contradicts everything else.
As for the rest of the cast, they're more or less as bland as you can be. The game gets the bare minimum of basic character dynamics down well but how painfully shallow and transparent the cast is, is immediately shown in anything that's not a skit especially in a scene that's meant to be serious. The scene more or less just breaks down into regurgitated generic anime dialogue.

The actual game design is...questionable at best. There were some attempts to branch out here but they either fell completely flat or just simply hurt the game. The game tries to be more open world but it doesn't even have a sprint button, windstep does NOT count and in fact makes this point even worse, and the party system is flawed on such a basic level that I can't even laugh at it. You are soft locked into using a party member that isn't the protagonist, naturally it's Rose again, and if you don't use her you're punished by the game forcing a party limit on you. There are nine playable characters and without Rose you can only use two and sometimes three in the rare occasion Alisha actually exists. Though she may as well not as Alisha has access to less than half of the game's mechanics and is almost a genuine liability than she is helpful. It is absolutely baffling to me how an RPG of all things will punish you for party customization by handicapping you if you don't like her character or gameplay.
Art direction is...poor to say the least which goes for the visuals as a whole. I don't expect much in terms of graphical fidelity from an anime style game, but Zestiria looks awful especially for a PS3 game. The areas you explore are bland cities, villages and open fields with ruins mostly taking a backseat despite the emphasis on them within the narrative. There are some puzzles in the bigger ruins but even those are mostly just samey corridors, which detract from the seamless combat by limiting your play area, and there's far from enough actual good ones.

VA work is...terrible. At least in English. Good voice actors dragged down by horrific voice direction as if they were really trying to hammer in the point that this is a generic, unremarkable and ultimately forgettable anime fantasy story.

All in all, Tales of Zestiria, despite a few standout parts, excels at being unremarkable and poor. It brings almost nothing of it's own worthy of any kind of merit and it's quite literally a dime a dozen narrative with a poorly designed game tacked on.

Tales of Arise has solidified itself as one of the best games in the series and has overcome one of the series' biggest weaknesses, gameplay. It's faster paced than the series, and demographic, is used to but it uses it's time and pacing well as it provides a sufficient and informed exploration of themes that are very relevant to the times. It's cast, as usual for the series, is strong and it places an emphasis on their growth both as individuals and as a group whilst keeping the group a nice size to not sacrifice this. Graphically, it's far beyond most JRPGs and the rest of the series as a whole with fantastic graphical fidelity and art direction that makes each realm memorable, unique as well as reflective of their thematic purpose without going overboard. A solid JRPG and one of the more balanced entries in the series.