[video=youtube;1OWMS4A-WTA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OWMS4A-WTA[/video]

Alisha isn't a permanent party member...?!?!? WHAT THE pineapple. People are speculating an enhanced version/DLC already. pineappleing appalling if there's no way to get her back. Especially hyping her as the main heroine, and then showing of Rose so late.

Alisha isnt a permanent member, even though the announcement stuff made her seem like a main heroine
camera is terrible
Sorey is bland
something about constantly being locked to Sorey and Rose with little chance to play as other characters???? not sure about this one
other mechanics such as equips and cooking etc are fucked up

Everything is pretty big, but it's kind of boring. I think this is coming from being spoiled by how many interactables there were in Xillia 1 & 2. I think leveling the Guardian Seraphs can increase random chests and stuff on maps though, but there's no such thing as harvest points as far as I'm aware. Up to this point, I've only gotten one map action, aside from Sorey's slash, and I've only had to use that in the starting dungeon.
Monsters were pretty sparse at the start of the game in the maps. I wasn't too sure why this was, but I basically killed everything in my way, and I ended up being 10 levels underleveled up til now. Now I know why that is though. Monsters are Hellions; collections of Impurities. As such, if they group together, they not only form a combined encounter, they also power up. From what I could tell, getting a 'Dangerous Encounter' increased the monster's levels by 10, and when you're already 10 below the enemy level to begin with... There's also sometimes random monsters with dark auras/darker models on them, and they're similarly much higher level, and I've game-overed three times so far, accidentally walking into these (Literally oneshot).
The maps themselves are much more vibrant than the desolate wastelands of Xillia, and there's some actual slopes and stuff, which I've noticed, and that makes things look nicer, but while Tales games are definitely not known for their graphics, there's a lot to be desired in everything... especially some anti-aliasing would help.

Equipment skills are a bit confusing, but thankfully, like 10 hours into the game, they gave me some skits that tutorialed how they worked. I personally preferred Graces's equipment skills, since they were attemptable and such, but much less necessary for progress. Xillia 2's were completely negligible in my opinion though, which is the other end of the spectrum. Equipment Skills here are basically the replacement for actual Skills, i.e. Graces's titles, and Xillia's orbs. At this point, it feels like it's difficult to get anything together because everything is a bit too random. However, by leveling your Guardian Seraphs in towns, you can increase the chance for better drops and specific skills on those equipments. It does feel a bit iffy like in an ARPG where you have a 'set bonus' or whatnot, and you've clearly outgrown your gear but don't want to part from the bonus. I imagine that occurring quite often.
Equipment leveling I'm not really feeling yet. The most noticeable effect I've seen so far is it reduces the cost of fusing, but I wish it did more. It probably does later on? Or costs actually matter, because it's fairly cheap to begin with at my level.
Guardian Seraphs, I've only encountered two so far since I've only actually been to two towns. (I'M SLOW). The concept seems interesting. They require GRADE to level up, so you need to kill things in their zones, or offer items to them to increase it. Leveling them gives certain bonuses, specifically improving that area's stuff, i.e. drops etc. For example, there's one bonus that lets you see nearby monsters on your minimap. Normin are attached to this as well. You can choose a Normin at a Guardian, and that specific stat will occur more often from drops. Finding a Normin forces you to add that stat they represent to a piece of gear before they become available, but I believe that's only doable once so it feels like a waste when you have nothing good to upgrade etc.
Battle Acts are more like the Skills from Vesperia or Xillia 2, where you have a set number of AP and equip them. They're more the type that affect your battle actions, hence Battle Act. For example there's some that allow you to automatically dodge attacks, though doing so 5 times decreases your grade by half for that battle. I feel they're like the Skills from those two games, minus the ones that actually only boost stats.
Support Abilities (?) are the ones that you set active on party members. There's Snack Making, and then specific ones for each character. Sorey and Mikleo's are fairly useless in my opinion. They activate if there's a discovery/tablet or treasure nearby, except you have to basically be standing on top of the thing for it to work. Maybe they require more leveling to reach further, but it's really not useful unless there's a chest/etc on an entire elevation below/above you and you can't see it. Edna's is the same, except for Normin, which are tiny and missable, so it's nice. Her other skill picks up Gald, but I was only getting like 10~20 every few minutes so, no. Lailah's heals a bit of HP as you walk, which is nice, but it could be more. At the same time, you don't want to make healing obsolete. Alisha's let her make healing items every now and then which helped a bit. There's a total of four of these per character, and I only have 2 (3 for Edna).
I'm confused as to how Arte progression works though. You have a Title that shows what the next Arte you're going to learn is, but I'm not sure if you earn it by maxing the title or just by leveling/getting exp/grade etc. They're very rarely different artes between titles, and I've only ever seen two different Artes at the same time from my ~6 titles. The title itself gains some bonuses as you level it, and it levels like equipment.

Combat is quite interesting, but there are a few issues that I've experienced as well.
First off, it takes a bit of getting used to 4 actions. Basically, you have 4 AC, but this is invisible to you. It recovers immediately after it replenishes, it just basically means you can only string 4 actions together at a time. You can get more from 'Exceed' skills, which is [Elm 5] (5 horizontal skills of the same type) or if you're lucky, it can come on random gear. On your 4th action, you can step to decrease the delay for the next set of actions, but your Chain Cast will disappear.
Your SC is like Heart's EG, rather than TP. It recovers very quickly when you're blocking, or if you perfect dodge stuff, and there's a few Battle Acts that can improve this. The amount you start with each battle can be lowered, depending on how many consecutive fights you've been in before resting at an Inn. A non-issue if you realise this is a thing. I think it works well as an anti-spam effect, since your 'AC' recovers immediately.

Good points:
'Artes-Style' as I'll call it still, is fairly friendly. Neutral is fairly good multihit. Up/Down is more single target oriented. Left/Right is more area effect oriented. It explicitly says this in a tutorial I believe (at the least, I recall left/right being aoe). Burst-Style/Spells feels fairly sparse amongst the cast so far. Sorey's is okay, but I'm not really feeling anything special so far. I think they're really championing the rock-paper-scissors style here, which I'm vaguely getting used to, but it's hard because I can't really tell when an enemy is using Burst.
Armatization is interesting, but I sort of feel it's like Chromatize (?) Ludger and crutchy...? I liked that in Xillia 2, but at the same time, I don't want to crutch too hard. It's fun though. Particularly useful if Sorey dies, you can Armatize to revive him.
Seraphs can't 'die' too hard. If they get KO'ed, you can swap them with a non-KOed Seraph in your party that's not on the field, and wait for Koed one to regenerate HP. Then they can come back on. Takes maybe 20 seconds? I think it's an interesting feature since the game revolves around this interchangeable party and focuses on really picking an ally element to get through some fights better. Given how hard some fights are, it's a welcome feature for me, as casual as it may sound.

Sorey's Artes-style is nice and fast, but his 4th hit leaves a lot to be desired. It even costs less SC than his default 3rd hit, and I don't really feel that it's stronger or impressive, more that it leaves me open. Maybe I need to use it more to make it more effective? I just recently got his 3rd hit Up, which is really nice. His Burst style has a few elements so far, but there's nothing that really screams that it's better than Artes. I think it's balanced fairly well then, but I'd prefer it to be more noticeably different. I think I only have 4 Burst Artes.

Alisha is decent, but a bit slow. I like her Artes style, and I would love to see her full branch. She had two Bursts so far, but I'll never know more...

Mikleo is okay so far, for me. His Artes-style is meh. He's the best healer of my characters so far. I have three offensive spells. His Resist is the best heal so far. I think he's got fairly strong magic offense too, I particularly like Ice Shears. He has Freeze Lancer too, which is one of my favourite spells in past games, but I'm not feeling it here. Rather than straight linear, it fans out and I feel it's more melee range to get the full hit count.

Lailah is interesting. I feel like she plays similar to Kohak from Hearts. Really close up melee fire. It's pretty tricky in my opinion, since she's a bit slow, and things tend to run away a lot. Of her three offensive spells so far, two are melee range (Heat Red/Pyrogenic Ring, and another similar to it) and Burn Strike which I just got and it's nice. She's fairly glassy though in my opinion, but I may just suck at gearing. Her heal, Astion, isn't spectacular, but it gives +MATK.

Edna I really like so far. Her Up 2 is a bit weird, since she hops on her parasol and kicks. Misses some of the smaller stuff, but her other Artes styles are really nice. She wracks up the hits, and that's great for her Trigger spells. So far, I have two. One activates after 10 hits, and basically casts Grave/Rock Lance underneath the enemy. The other one is after 20 hits, and looks like a small Gravity (since it's called Gravity Trigger). If you tag a monster with this spell, and Edna hits the monster after a combo has reached at least that mount, the effect will activate. She also has Air Pressure, which is a really nice AOE and high hit spell. Her Heal is Barrier, which isn't as bad as Lailah's in my experience, but could heal more =[ Overall, really loving Edna in and out of battle.

Bad Points:
Camera angles when you're near walls are horrendous if you're terrible and bad. I'm patient enough to wait it out, or know how to dodge so the camera changes, but I typically just avoid the situation altogether. If it's happening to you, you probably got yourself cornered anyways and are about to get pounded.
The fights are a bit hectic. First off, I think I need to switch from semi to manual, since it's fairly common for me to collide with a monster I'm not targetting. Or I just need to tap R1 more often. Second, fights are pineappleing haaaaaaaaaaaaaaard. Part of it is me having it set to hard and being so underleveled, but 1) monsters are pineappleing smart/annoying and 2) allies are pineappleing dumb.

Monsters tend to run up and interrupt spell casters. It's fairly difficult to go through an engagement and heal yourself, even with a full chain spell set-up, because there's sometimes just too many monsters and you can't get them all in hitstun. They'll usually actively seek out a healer. Another thing is many monsters have special tactics and skills. For example, some things run away from you, baiting you, while enemies you're not targeting will chase. Some things backstep. pineappleing Eagles/Harpies are so annoying. They can fly, so they get a little bit of altitude (enough that neutral Artes usually won't reach) then they shoot a big volley of multihit feathers. It's ridiculous how often they just stagger someone who's trying to chase them down because there's four or so on the field at once.

Allies are dumb. I'm not sure if there's a strategy setting I can change to fix this, but I'm often seeing them do nothing at the start of the battle. There's four tactics mid-battle you can employ aside from default (R3). R-Up = Attack. R-Left = Scatter. R-Right = Focus. R-Down = Defend. Focus (same target as Player), from what I've seen does nothing a lot of the time. They'll literally just stand there sometimes doing nothing. Defend is hit or miss. Sometimes they'll be able to run and dodge effectively, other times they'll just try blocking and get broken, or start healing when they're too close. I'm missing the skill shortcut R-analog, which they've removed for this.

Finally, I'm having a hard time knowing when an enemy is using an Artes or Burst. Burst makes your spells cast faster and doesn't stagger, so I'd know I can just tank the hits for a heal, but I can't really tell what they're doing to begin with, and then an Artes comes in to interrupt.