Pummel him with fire based attacks, he´s weak to fire.

Sucks to be Soriku then because its the truth. Vesperia has the better story, characters, and gameplay. Symphonia was good but incredibly cliched RPG. Vesperia long with Lost Odyssey is one of the first truly epic JRPGs of this generation. The rest Enchanted Arms, Eternal Sonata, and too a lesser extent Blue Dragon were just time fillers. I left IU out of the convesation because I haven't played it yet.

5 hours? You ain't seen nothing yet. Also, yeah. Having played all localized Tales games in the US (and some from Europe) I can say in full honesty that Vesperia is better then Symphonia. Abyss could have been argued, but Vesperia....hahah....its so much better its not even funny. But lets face it; Symphonia came out a long time ago.

It was more like 6 hours when I started this topic and more like 10 hours now. From what I've read it's only a 40-50 hour game, so I'm sure I'm a good 1/4 of the way through.

Also I hate Tales of the Abyss.  Really shitty characters.  In general I think Tales makes a fairly mediocre 3D RPG. Vesperia is good, but hardly groundbreaking so far.  I doubt my overall opinion of the franchise will change, even if Vesperia is above the average.