This is definitely not a global truth for the series; I haven’t played Symphonia, so maybe it does this heavily, but Vesperia had ONE boss that I would consider any sort of barrier (That freakin’ WOLF THING in the forest really early on.), which, frankly, I considered a total aberration, because I never even felt pressured by any other boss elsewhere in the game. (Excepting, of course, optional bonus bosses, which are supposed to be punishing by design.)
Abyss also has one “difficulty spike” boss (And frankly, not as hard as that stupid wolf), relatively early on and then it’s smooth sailing.
Aside from those two instances, I would consider Vesperia and Abyss completely grind free, though Vesperia encourages grinding with its stupid item synth system, it’s absolutely not required to complete the game except for that bloody wolf. Honestly, I think both games could stand to be a little HARDER - a nontrivial amount of the problem with the ‘difficulty spike’ bosses in both games is that neither one has done anything to REALLY teach you/require you to learn the ins and outs of the battle system until you hit those fights (Which are both, incidentally, entirely beatable on normal at the level you would ‘naturally’ hit them at, by a player who has a firm grasp of the battle system.). So you’re doing the same sloppy/beginner style fighting you’ve been doing up until then, and suddenly the game comes down on you like a ton of bricks. Once you get past those unique bosses though, there’s really nothing that compares with them in relative difficulty until you start hitting optional content.
So neither is at all grindy or boss-barrier based, but both difficulty/learning curve scaling issues early on (Vesperia moreso than Abyss.). Symphonia might be another story, though it’s also a little bit older and therefore perhaps still has some holdovers from earlier RPG design.
This is true, but what RPG doesn’t do this? Tales games have more of it because they have more optional stuff, as opposed to the extreme linearity of, say, an FF game, but optional stuff is pretty much missable by definition in RPGs. I guess this one comes down to a matter of choice - do you want there to be a lot of interesting sidequesty optional stuff, or do you want the game to be, well, even more linear? I enjoy seeing what I stumble into the first time through, and then typically will do a “new game plus” playthrough with a FAQ handy to see the stuff I didn’t. I think this is the playstyle the Tales games are trying to encourage, because there’s usually a ton of stuff that can ONLY be done on a second playthrough anyway.
