I first remember reading about Tales games in NIntendo Power. They did an article about the first Tales game on the Super Famicom in Japan, and that was when I was really big into RPGs so I was mad it never came out over here. I did get the GBA port, I have to say it's not very good.
I do have all the PSOne Tales games. I enjoyed Symphonia a lot but I think I only liked it because I played it in two player mode with my brother Jeff. I don't remember if we beat it but we got pretty far.
Tales of Legendia is my favorite Tales game. I know, I'm weird. I just love the characters (especially Grune) and my favorite video game composer, Go Shiina, did the music. And it's wonderful. Way better than the usual Tales music.
I do have Abyss and Vesperia, but nothing about them sticks out to me. I know one character fought with a giant stuffed animal, and another was a purple dog. And there was someone named Judith I think.
After Tales of Graces I kind of fell off the Tales bandwagon. The games just got too long and meandering for me. I did get Zestiria for Christmas one year. i wanted it because I heard Go Shiinia did the music, but it turns out he only did a few songs.
One thing I like about the older Tales games is all the classic Namco references they had. A lot of enemies were from classic Namco games, some even had whole islands dedicated to Namco, and Tales of Destiny even had a 60 floor Tower of Druaga bonus dungeon.