Well I finally finished Tales of Xillia, and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the game. The production values could be a bit better and it was a shame all the sea port areas were re-hashed and re-skinned and it was blatantly obvious. But the story and characters are great, it reminded me of watching a well made anime, and its one of the few games I have seen that blends anime into a JRPG so well, and I think the character models looked pretty darn awesome too, but thats about the extent of visuals sadly, many area look and scope seem like it could have been done on PS2, it feels like a bit more enhanced PS2 JRPG, and while thats not bad completely, it leaves you wanting a little bit more, but with such involving story and characters you can almost over look it.
battes are fun, very addicting action combat system, the ability to link characters and customize them with a plethora of different skills really gives the ability to switches alot of things up in battle and experiment. Sure the Lithium Orb (which is basically the sphere grid from FFX, thus bringing up the PS2 again) is kinda of stolen, but it works well for this setup, and I enjoyed leveling my character other atributes with it. Here is another small gripe but doesnt end up really being a gripe at all, so the game is way too easy on normal, and I mean you could play it with your eyes closed, its that easy, thankfully the JRPG gods blessed these devs with a revelation taking from many other game genres in putting a difficulty settting in a JRPG. Wow how did they not think of that sooner? Its scarce but im glad its there, but i'll have to play again to see how difficult it actually is on other settings, which brings me to my next point...
New Game + in this game is alot more than the usual New Game + in many other JRPGs. So at the beginning of the game you choose a character and you progress the story through that characters point of view, you cant watch all the cut scenes or even do all the quests and see everything in one playthrough (which is probably a hit or miss with some people). And that works fantasically with new game plus because it gives you a bit more incentive to actually play the game again. You start your new game + with the usual fare, keep levels, items and character progress from the last play through. Just this time you get a whole other point of view, and there are many times in the game where your party, and the main 2 characters split and go off on their own and certain events happen that can only be seen when choosing that characters perspective, its actually significant scenes to the story and not felt tacked on or short events that really defeat the purpose.
All in all Tales of Xillia was a very unique experience, it blends so many different elements from gaming and anime, and does so blissfully like no other JRPG I have seen, it has a certain perfection for me since I love both (although the game is far from perfect). Tales of Xillia is a very focused experience and has many well done touches and refinements that other JRPGs simply look over. The game definitely isnt for everyone, but if you like anime, JRPGs, and want an 80 hour experience with a well told tale with little strings left hanging loose and fun combat definitely give it a try.