Only started playing it fairly recently. It's been hanging out in my Steam library for some time after I received it from Humble Monthly quite some time ago. Decided to try it on my Deck. Runs flawlessly despite being marked as "unsupported" by Steam.

English voice acting is surprisingly good. In a JRPG I'd always find someone who's jarring to listen to, and it's pretty terrible if that's the main character. But so far I haven't found any character that annoyed me, and like you said, the actress of Velvet seems to have no weakness in voice acting skill; she can sound soft and tender, moody and dark, and scream with rage. I wish anime had more English VAs like that, instead of the default 3 voices everyone seems to use.

Not sure how I feel about combat, though. I know it's a staple of the Tales series, but I'd much rather fight enemies on the map than being sucked into an encounter like a turn based JRPG.

I'm at the part where Velvet joins with a pirate Reaper to take over a fortress to clear the way forward. I've cleared out the control room and soon will be capturing an enemy battleship. So far the story has been... incredibly edgy. I'm not sure if it'll change, but Velvet is basically female Sasuke from Naruto Shippuden in attitude. I really like the presentation, however. Cutscenes are animated in-engine and transition to animated anime slides. Very clever.