Under the assumption that the translation department from NBGI is less than rolling-in-the-dough, I think they've stopped translating games as soon as they come out and have been waiting for the "updated" versions (the PS3 versions with bonus features rather than the original releases), given that the PS3-upgrade of ToV was never translated. It saves me getting trolled by NBGI, so I like it. Though wasn't there something written somewhere about Microsoft coining a way to stop that?
Namco had no intention to localize Graces or any future Tales games because Vesperia sold poorly in their eyes. It was only because people started spamming their Facebook page that they actually decided to go ahead and do it.
I haven't played Graces but from what I get the impression of, it's 7.5/10 material. The story tries to target kids while leaping to mature themes quickly--in other words, it's messy. I was relatively disappointed with Xillia (if you really care, see the review on my blog), and I still think Vesperia is the best Tales game. I actually sold Xillia tonight. I think a lot of people want the games because, well, ...they're in Japanese. A lot of people want stuff that isn't localized, just because it isn't accessible to them. This leads to a lot of people buying into Idea Factory's games, etc, regardless of quality.
On-topic: My iM@S2 PS3 copy should be on its way. I ordered from Play-Asia because it was cheaper (yes, actually cheaper than Amazon.jp), but I didn't order with EMS so I have no idea when it's going to come in. I have a tracking number but no actual clue of how to track it. Guess I'll just wait.. get hype for buying the same game twice.
