Well, needless to say I’m excited: Tales of Xillia is coming to North America in 2013.
This is pretty big news considering how things had been going for the series up until the release of Graces f. Remember, it had been almost four years since Vesperia, and future releases were looking bleak based on Namco’s unrealistic expectations for sales numbers on a franchise they didn’t even bother to promote. One of the Tales divisions was folded back into other parts of the company. The U.S. missed out on several titles like Tales of Vs. and Tales of Hearts.
Then Graces came out, with the best battle system we’ve seen in the series so far, and apparently enough people picked it up and enjoyed it to justify bringing Xillia over here. I’m sure sales of Tales of the Abyss 3DS didn’t hurt either.
Xillia was the most preordered Tales game ever in Japan (where the franchise is adored), and received a near perfect score from Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. I’ve heard different takes on how good the game actually is and I know that playing with four-player co-op requires a bit of a sacrifice in tactics, but I don’t care. It’s a Tales game, it’s coming here, and that’s all I need to know for now. Consider the countdown started.
Gray Areas 
The fact the main character fights with fists instead of another generic sword swinging guy is pretty awesome. Also, from the looks of the two openings, it looks like a much more serious or dark Tales game, a bit like Vesperia but even moreso.
True. Fists will be a nice change of pace, especially considering that I can’t say for sure that Senel ever existed. I wanted to like Legendia, really, but when they didn’t bring four-player co-op over to the States, it was a tougher sell for me.
It’s also nice to see a female lead character, even if she only got half of the lead.
In trying to avoid spoilers I’ve ended up avoiding much of the info on the game overall. Is the MC dependent on a starting choice (ala Star Ocean 2) and the whole game plays from their perspective and then play a second time and it’s from the other perspective? Or is it just a situation where you play for awhile as one and then the story switches you over?
I can also relate with the co-op being pretty important. My brother and I both love JRPGs (and RPGs in general) but multiplayer isn’t exactly normal. So it’s always been one of the best things about the Tales series in our eyes to the point that we just skipped Legendia as well. Well, that and it looked kind of bad anyway.
I’m with you on the no-spoiler train, so my info is limited as well. But my understanding is that it only really affects the beginning of the game, and that the split has much less impact than SO2 did (although I really liked that game’s approach).
Supposedly you’ll be in good shape on the co-op — the battle system appears to have a lot to do with linking between party members, and you can’t do that in four-player co-op. It only works for up to two players. So if it’s you and your brother, you should still be okay. But yeah, co-op was a huge reason why I became such a big fan of this series.