As a big fan of tales of symphonia on the gamecube, when the tales of innocence trailer appeared it looked like my DS had yet another great game, and using my R4, I have given it a little playtest.

Note to other people with R4's which may wish to play this : The R4 (and some other flashcards it seems) have problems running the intro movie, which means the game hangs and never reaches the main menu, just keep holding A during the games startup, seems to do the trick.

So after getting in-game, we are greeted with a horned due with an oversized sword, and some voice acting, of course I have no idea what he's saying as he's speaking Japanese but he gets attacked by some odd man with a hood and a double ended scythe, ad before you know it you’re in your first battle,

The battle system seems pretty much the same as tales of symphonia's on the face of it, with the A button serving as your standard attack, and the B button + a direction serving for your special moves, after a few hits, the scythe man drops, and few words are said, are then you’re a white handed boy who reminds me of Allen walker off D.greyman, and the story begins, all I really understand after this point, is that you are pointed in a direction within a city, and end up meeting the first member of your party, a gun using girl, after getting her out of trouble with some power relating to the horned dude you do your first battle as, you go off on your adventure, not long after this I ran into the third member of my party, and green hat wearing dude, who uses two swords like Lloyd from tales of symphonia, he also seems to have pretty much the same moveset, and so has because my main party member.

Some other stuff I’ve seen in my hour or so of play :
On the world map, the enemies look like what they are in battle, instead of black tadpole like things.
The touchscreen is used at a stat showing screen, as well a world and local area maps.
Any other menus live on the Y button
Z-skits are back, but are select-skits instead
The game is one of the DS best looking games, it’s almost as good as tales of symphonia, but on a handheld, the crappy screens I've got from the internet don't give the game fair do's.

Overall this game will be a must buy when the english version comes out.