I don't see myself remembering most of the characters or events of this game long after finishing. Both the protagonists and antagonists were very lukewarm, and I constantly found myself expecting and hoping that the game had reached an appropriate conclusion, only for it to pull a gotcha and prolong things even further. It is a competent enough game, especially for a handheld action RPG, and "good" in many respects, but never quite reaches "great" in anything it does.

If you've played this game after some of the high points in the series, like the other modern Tales games (everything on console from Xillia onwards), or some of the older ones like Abyss or Symphonia, then I don't think you'll honestly be missing much if you skip Hearts R. Hearts R has a good soundtrack, a great story and characters, held back by a serious lack of polish. Early on, some of these flaws can be easily forgiven when you are still learning how to play the game, but they start becoming a hindrance in the late game. The biggest issues I tend to have is that enemies can seemingly tank through your combos seemingly at random, or whenever you try to attack an enemy, the auto lock tends to force you into a run to an enemy at the other end of the stage, oftentimes leading your controlled character to get ganged up on. Not helped by mostly dumb AI controlled partners. The best point in this game is the Soma growth system, which allows for different skill trees to level up, leading to stat boosts, new techniques, and new weapons. Overall, while Hearts R is not going to be regarded as the best Tales game in terms of gameplay polish, the strong story oftentimes makes up for some of the aggravation you will endure during the gameplay.

Overall it's a good Tales game, I liked the Soma/Bonding/Shared skills and counterattacks. It plays fine on the Vita. I didn't like how they changed some names on the localization as you can easily listen them saying other names but I guess they just wanted to respect the original translation? Random encounters can be reduced (or increased) by using items so I don't understand complains about that...