I'm debating if I want to buy it or not.

You are supposed to have another link art that uses your main character and another one of the parties characters. You cant use the same one twice in a row.

Somewhere on the menu you can see all combinations of arts to link you have available.

You dont need to use chain linking to beat the game though.

Except for Phantasia, Tales games are basically button mashers. Except for the odd boss fight, you can get through an entire game without blocking.

Yup.

I still don't understand. Can't you give an example?

Allow me to present you to Tales of Eternia. Enjoy! If you only attack, you will die or use lots of healing items.

Tales of destiny remake, 2 and rebirth never came out in the west, so its an unfair generalisation of the series you're doing.

Though despite all that to call it a button masher is unaccurate. I think Graces is, but the other ones arent. If you mash the buttons you will run out of TP and you wont do the more damaging arte combos. Abyss even uses the terrain to make you think on your feet. I'm starting to think you didnt play much of this series. ^^

No need for hatin'! I'm a pretty big Tales fan. I've played Phantasia, Symphonia, Lagendia, Abyss, Symphonia 2, Graces f, and Innosence. I havn't had a chance to play the old PS ones or Xilia yet. I do beleive that Eternia would require a lot more strategie like Phantasia did.

As Soriku mentioned above, I did turn the difficulty up on Graces f. It was too stupidly easy. On its default setting, you could almost put the controller down and let the AI win the fight. Off topic, but the original ending in that game, before the extra PS3 content, was one of the worst RPG endings I've ever seen.