Just started playing this recently. The last Tales game I played before this was either Xillia 1 or Graces f, neither of which I had trouble playing, and while I feel the combat here is reminiscent of Xillia… for some reason it’s just not clicking at all. The battles aren’t hard by any stretch of the imagination (on Moderate difficulty) but they consist primarily of button-mashing the same four/five attacks rather than using any actual strategy. It may be the control scheme that’s the problem.
The equipment fusion system is also causing some consternation, as it’s pretty damn opaque regarding how the various attached skills mutate. The human/seraph fusion system on the other hand is pretty straight-forward, and it even has the benefit of looking great. Some other positives would be the scenic environments, semi-seamless battle transitions, and staple character interaction skits. Another negative would be the way your starting combo points steadily decrease as you fight battles, making visiting Inns to restore them something of a necessity. I’ve never been fond of rest mechanics and it’s no different here even though there seems to be some things that can only be unlocked by frequent Inn visits.
If I can figure out a more natural control scheme this game just might end up being a great exploration time-sink. Maybe I’ll try Keyboard+Mouse out, since the primary issue here is being able to press four separate buttons (Arte/Hidden Arte/Blast/Guard) all more or less simultaneously (while still being able to move the camera around), which a controller can’t easily accommodate.