I will try to give the best opinion I can here since the only Tales games I own are Phantasia, Symphonia, Abyss and Vesperia.

Phantasia - Got past the part where Dhaos kills(?) Chester and Morrison. Sadly I stopped playing shortly after. This happened on two occasions now.

Symphonia - Started playing, immediately disliked the cast, got up to some ruins or something, met some angel(?) who's voice acting immediately turned me off and I have not touched it since. Yeah I should probably try to look past that but I just couldn't.

Abyss - I really enjoyed this game, but I made the mistake of starting, then buying new games and leaving it behind. I know at some point I will without a doubt come back to it. I was about 5-6 hours in.

Vesperia - First Tales game to suck me in from the start and has me still going. I am about 25 hours in now and on pace to spend at least 50-60 hours on it for just my first playthrough. I really like the voice acting in the game as well as the cast. Estelle brings humor in and out of battles which is a big plus for me because I enjoy games like that. Yuri is a bad-ass who isn't afraid to show a good side here and there. By far my favorite in the series considering the limited amount of playtime I have given the series as a whole.

For my 2 cent. I love the tales series. ToV is a better game, but when ToS came out that kind of game [ I had only owned a GC and N64 then ] was new to me. I greatly enjoyed it. Playing Vesperia recently, and seeing how weak it is in some areas, I find it only a good game. Also, I prefered TotA. At least for the characyers, hated the load times. And Estelle sucks.

See man i just cant agree with you. I do find everything in ToV great but its like this. Im basicaly in love with ToS because it was an RPG which i thought had great voice acting and thought the whole storyline kicked some major ass. I love all the Characters. Every Scene was amazing. Every hour i played in that game i just loved and hated because i knew the ending had to come sometime.

I mean i bet you feel this way about one or two games? Kingdom Hearts and Tales of Symphonia for me!

Gotcha! I feel the same way about MS saga: A New Dawn.

When a game does something that fits your personal taste soooo much, it's hard to like even a "better" game more.

And the voice acting in Symphonia i thought was badass. My favorite would have to go... SPOLIERS for characters

1. Lloyd - Scott Menville

2. Kratos - Cam Clarke

3. Zelos - Shiloh Strong

4. Regal - Crispin Freeman   <--- WHO CANT LIKE CRISPIN FREEMAN!!!!!

5. Reminal - Sadly i cant find this guys voice actor but i thought he was pretty badass.

And to the guy that got only to the fire seal. I swear you wont regret playing ToS if you just give it another 10 hours. I guarntee youll be hooked like i was. And maybe playthrough it 6 times........ lol!

I even admitted that I should at least give it a try. I most likely will seeing as how situations in my personal life are going to limit my gaming funds from here on out. Plus, with me really enjoying Vesperia it gives even more reason to give each of the games that I own in the series a 2nd or some cases a 3rd look.

I hear you on that one. I will still sit here and tell everyone how awesome SaGa Frontier is, even though many will tell me that the game is garbage.

Yeah I'm kinda the same way about ToS. Maybe it was because it was the first Tales game I played, but it had a certain charm to it that ToV couldn't match, despite the gameplay mechanics being basically the same, if not even a little better. ToS just had this compelling story that engrossed me into the game, and I'm generally not one to care much about game storylines. And the characters were just likeable, and I felt they made them very three dimensional and interesting. ToV on the otherhand just had a meh story, and while Yuri is indeed a badass, the rest of the cast just doesn't really stand out like Zellos, Raine, Sheena, Kratos, etc did. But like I said, this could be a bias since I was younger and more impressionable, and Symphonia was my first Tales experience. ToV, while still a great game in its own right, feels like more of the same.

Remiel was voiced by Wall Wingert.

Crispin Freeman is one of the greatest VAs in anime/video games.

The rest are meh and the dialog is crummy.

Yuri>Lloyd>>>>>>>>>>>>>Emil.

Was NOT a fan of that Disney like pansy.