I have been so disappointed by JRPG on the last Gen, but I had so much fun with Tales of Xillia. It is really an underrated JRPG in my opinion. I bought the second cause it was on sale. I will be playing it soon.

What are you doing with that copy? Xillia is not that hawt in the box art. 

The soundtrack DVD that came in it is very sexy, though...

I enjoyed the game (the first one,havent played the second) but i have to be honest. This series is getting very repetitive gameplay-wise which explains why they are not getting that much praise, and some people may say "well, its not about the gameplay, its about the story" and in my opinion, thats the weakest aspect of this particular game. It really feels like an awful copy of FFVII's story with monster inc's "twist" ending.

i guess i gotta play Xilia if its taht much better than Graces

You did the same Dead Rising 3 too right? What do you do with games

JRPG, too many Tales of games in short amount of time to give a damn about, overshadowed by the new generation.

I'm currently playing the first one, and currently, I feel Tales of Grace was way better. Just judging from the few hours, Grace had a more interesting opening + plot premise, better arte & stat/title customization and of course BoA > Ayu's song. Not going to say much about the characters and story yet, but the characters from Grace showed more character from the first few hours than Xillia's characters, thus making them more entertaining even if Asbel was an ass as a kid.

A few things I do like from Xillia is the art-direction (the city/school opening at night) and expanding the store (even if it's a little flawed since it's so easy to level the store up quick). The battle system also seems a lot smoother with linking, but there's not much of a difference.

As a big jrpg fan I find Tales games rather standard. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed them but I suppose once you've played one Tales game you've played them all.

As in the core gameplay and visuals rarely change and the stories are fairly tame for its genre.

I suppose the games are just missing a certain something to elevate them from 'good' games to 'great' games.

I was expecting a friend to get an Xbox One so I could snatch his console and play it. I did it with Xillia...but have been unsuccessful with DR3

I think this is what it boils down to for me too (although I only played the first). Xillia did everything you expect it to do, and did them well, but nothing stood out from other games in the genre.