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.

It's honestly kind of crazy how this game takes every step forward to be better than Genshin from the story to the aesthetic to the character design but where the combat design and gacha are concerned, it takes about 5 steps back.

Firstly, for a turn based combat system, Star Rail's combat is incredibly shallow and limiting. The emphasis on hitting weaknesses is nice in theory but the game doesn't have enough options in the form of playable characters (you don't get a free playable character of every element for some reason) or utility to make it work past the first hour or two. On top of this, the way weaknesses are actually balanced makes this problem even more egregious. Unless you're incredibly overleveled, hitting off of weaknesses makes any character basically useless. And the way they've balanced enemies in dungeons, or lack of doing it rather, makes party compositions an extreme pain. You should basically give up using your favourite/best characters in certain elements because they'll almost never be useful. Having completed the Belobog arc with Welt in my roster, I used him a grand total of maybe 3 times because the Imaginary element hardly ever appears. Meanwhile, I don't have Seele and Qingque is available for free so late, right at the end of Belobog while not being on rate up, that I basically never got to exploit the overabundant Quantum weakness.
The same goes for basic utility as basic utility that's standard for turn based games like reviving downed party members in battle or using recovery items have either been locked behind the gacha, the only character able to revive a party member is a 5 star in the general pool, or stripped entirely. Which makes me question why recovery consumables are even in the game. You never need to use them in dungeons because you're never far from the next anchor that fully heals/revives your party and you can't use them in battle. Without an actual use, why do they even exist? Stamina system is as garbage as Genshin's.

As for the actual story, it's mostly just standard sci-fi JRPG/anime fare. Nothing particularly mindblowing about it from it's concepts to it's execution. It's pretty standard with some nice comedy at times. But the presentation of the story is an actual problem. Cutscenes aren't spread evenly, consistently and a lot of the "gameplay" sections are things that could easily be done in cutscenes. There's too many "enter 5+ minute cutscene, walk 30 seconds to next destination, enter another 5+ minute cutscene" moments that are really just pointless draws for time and nothing more. The characters are mostly the same but I do appreciate the protagonist not being silent...sometimes. They're not very consistent with it but it's a lot more tolerable than Genshin with the Traveler and Paimon at the very least.