(The only surprising thing that happened was that one character left the party and never returned.
Zestiria's plot is not amazing, it's earnestly straight-forward and predictable. When I brought up that Zestiria was going to be my first Tales game, someone on Twitter told me that the entire series was 'Anime: The JRPG'. When a young woman is found during Sorey and Mikleo's ruin explorations, what she tells Sorey about the world below kicks off a quest that will make him the Shepherd, the world's chosen hero. Sorey has lived amongst the seraphim for so long that he can see them naturally - a phenomenon called resonance - which helps because his best friend Mikleo is one of them. The seraphim exist alongside humanity, but they're invisible to the average human so they're sometimes revered and worshiped as local protectors. Tales of Zestiria is the story of Sorey (pronounced Soar-Ray) a young man who's been living in the town of Elysia alongside the mythical Seraphim. I just had a number of games ahead of it on the queue - various Final Fantasies, Dragon Quests, and Disgaeas - and I never got around to it. I have a copy of Tales of Symphonia lying around here somewhere and I fully intended to play it at some point. That's not to say I was avoiding the series. This is the first Tales series game I've ever played.
