I liked his character development. In an odd-but-good way, it reminded me of Luke from Tales of the Abyss.
Luke went from brat to whiny emo to boring though. I liked Abyss better than Vesperia, but Yuri was a much better protagonist than Luke was. XD
Yuri was an interesting protagonist but the fact that he was so much "better" than other mains in the series made his flaws that much more noticeable. Since he started off so mature, it made any moment where he slips up and does something stupid just really glaring. :/ Like, he's cool and collected all the time and he knows that he has to do what's best for the greater good ("because someone has to") and then he turns right around and blows up at Estelle for wanting to sacrifice herself so that the world will be better off? That bothered me so. much. Moreso than almost anything Luke ended up doing because I expected Luke to be a dumbass from the beginning. I imagine it didn't help that everything but the graphics and some characters sucked in Vesperia, though. xD;
Enjoying the game so far - the combat isn't quite as good as Abyss, but then again I just got to the end of the childhood arc. I've heard it gets a lot better after this point.
I'd say that Graces is absolutely my favorite Tales game so far. I know that the stories of Tales games aren't exactly the best out there or anything, but I really like the plot in Graces, it's relatively more lighthearted. I also love the combat system. The graphics could have been touched on more from the Wii conversion, but it isn't too big of a gripe. I'm about 20 hours in so far, just got to Yu Liberte.
The combat really does get so much better once you get into the adult arc. It's fast and frantic and makes you actually plan your moves and stuff. It's also the first Tales game where I don't actively dislike any of the main cast (Cheria is even growing on me, though it took a while). The skits and interactions between the characters are probably the best in any Tales game yet, too. Still not sure if it beats Abyss for me or not yet...probably not quite. But it's a hell of a lot better than Vesperia.
I didn't manage to get this preordered but I did get it for my brother last month. We decided to play it together, though, so I didn't start it until this week. :( I'm not very impressed so far. I don't like anyone and the plot/situations are sooo cliched. (I went into it expecting JRPG cliche, though, since it's Tales, so that doesn't bother me too much.) The battle system was horrible in the child arc but it's shaping up to be pretty good now that magic's been introduced. I'm not very good at it, though. I'm only about 5 hours into the adult arc so far, so I've heard it's supposed to get better, but I must admit it's not exactly as great as I expected considering all the raving reviews it's gotten from all my friends. ;_;
