Pretty far into the game(I think) myself, like 4 areas done, on the "last" one(although I'm sure there's gonna be another after cause what JRPG doesn't have additional areas once you're "done" with the first objective), few things I'm not a fan so far.
First is boss fights and how they just degenerate into spamming mystic artes in their last bar, shit's fucking annoying and if you don't have damage reduction accessories you just kinda die. I guess good aoe heals could help but CP is also kinda low at that point, and aoe heals aren't a thing so far unlike some other Tales(there's Healing Circle but shit's too small and over time). It's fine to have to switch to accessories for boss fights, just don't like how it's just mystic art after mystic art at the end in some kind of soft enrage shit.
Second thing is the caster girl has for some reason super limited spells. It isn't uncommon in tales for the caster to start with an even split of normal "weapon" artes and some spells, and as you progress you get more and more spells, but here you just mostly keep getting the normal artes and a lot of aerial moves, but very few actual spells to make use of the spell charge mechanic. At the point I'm at, I've only gotten 2 additional spell besides the 3 baselines, and I just got that 5th one like as I started the 5th area. It's kinda weird, and she's also stuck with 3 elements only so far. Which is standard early on in Tales, but usually you branch out and start getting different elements too later on, but no here, no fire/dark/earth spells yet which is also kinda weird.
Third is the emphasis on air artes in this game. They have their own category for shortcuts and shit and every character gets half a dozen of them pretty quick. That's nice but a lot of the chars don't even use them when played by the AI(they never jump and try to use them even if you turn off everything else, only chars that use them are the ones with ground artes that put them in the air). It's kinda weird. They also feel still as shitty as usual on anything but larger bosses where you'll just hit regardless, smaller mobs don't float long enough to get more than like one skill in the air anyway unless they're being massively comboed to stay in the air by other ppl at the same time, feels meh. On the caster I'd much rather get more spells than all of these jumping attacks, a lot of which aren't even good due to terrible targetting/range/aoe/movement(some are good though and since there's no cast time you can spam them pretty quick).
Last is how boring the passives are this time around? A lot of them are just duplicates, and a lot are super generic shit. There isn't much in terms of unique stuff for each char and mechanic changing systems. Taking the caster as an example, there's no "cast faster but do less damage" and "cast slower but do more dmg" passives. No "caster faster when using different/the same element multiple times in a row" and really not even much stuff related to the charging spell mechanic. Feels like it's missing a bunch of stuff.
Overall while I'm liking the game so far, I think I liked Berseria combat/mechanics more. Magilou especially was crazy fun compared to Rinwell who's more like older Tales casters, a bit rigid and boring.
