That's a shame, because I think a lot of people would buy a Kingdom Hearts clone for the Wii.

I enjoy most of them the way they are, as well as most of the characters.

Can't go wrong with 1, 2 and 4 though. I usually prefer the Japanese boxart so no idea if the West is doing the wrong styling or I just prefer the Eastern one.

And good dubs. Personally I'd much prefer an option for original voices but the majority probably doesn't so at least make the dubs good. ToV was pretty well done, but overall I've come to hate Namco dubbing.

5 is a weird one. The Japanese like an emotional story. It's all over anime. A few years back when (a pretty bloody) Battle Royale (that wasn't anime, real action) was released I wasn't that used to it and was honestly surprised at what seemed like sappiness overload.
But now I'm pretty used to it and frankly wouldn't want the series to seem better to the West than to Japan.

5 is a weird one because it makes it seem like Western gamers hate emotional stories which I can state why it isn't true.  Western gamers don't hate emotional stories, they just hate corny stories.

seems like most of your points fall under number 1. Also, about your last point.

It seems to be a more recent phenom have a the 16 year old protagonist.

Chrono Trigger?? Nope, FF6, nope, in FF4 they are all in there 20s (once rydia grows up)

Many of the SNES games had there heroes ages 20-25.

I tried to put that part at the end of the second 5.

@Bigjon: I'm talking about sub-main characters.

Not bad, you definitely made up your mind. I completely agree with the points you made about marketing, advertising and stuff, though I wouldn't want the story be touched in order to sell the games better in the west (although the things you said would maybe be working...)

However, first and foremost, Namco should get out a strategy for the west. Currently, they are throwing Tales games out of the window, but only about every third hits the west. I mean, they started a lot of hype with Tales of Symphonia since it came out at a good point in the Gamecube's lifetime. After that though, they messed up. Instead of releasing another game on the Gamecube (they could have ported Tales of the Abyss for example) they just released nothing new on Nintendo systems (I'm not sure about the Tales of Phantasia remake, maybe that was after ToS). In Japan, they released Tales of the Tempest, Tales of Innocence and now Tales of Hearts, but it looks like none of those games will make it to the west. If they wouldn't have made the crappy Tempest, but started with a good effort like Innocence and brought this game to the west too, they might would have built up even more hype about the series and made it big.
Instead, they released Tales of Vesperia and ToS 2 several years after ToS. At least we got those, but the 360 audience is hardly the same as the Cube's audience and ToS 2 is only mediocre from what I've heard.

So what they should do in my opinion is, decide on which consoles they want the series be on the West, and bring every game they release for this console here. They can still bring out more games in Japan and of course the best would be if they would come here too, but if they don't want to release all the games in the west, they should at least release all on one console, because they could build up a fanbase like that.

Also, when they are releasing it on Nintendo consoles, they should try to advertise it as something like Zelda. Of course it's not the same, but it's an epic Adventure with Action fights, so that should be enough parallels. I often here people that are looking for "epic" games, so that might work. I know that Okami does suggest otherwise, but then again, it's difficult when there's hardly no marketing.

I thought gamers didn't care for epic games anymore.

 They should name it "Tales of War"and change the whole genre so it's a FPS with tons of blood 'n guns goodness. Oh, and superly super superior HD graphix!!11!!11!1 XD

What now? ToV had a great story (best out of any Tales game) and the graphics were phenominal!

 Yeah, I didn't understand that post either. haha.