Tales of Hearts R is an abomination. Look at ToH DS battle footage sometime, looks amazing. This just looks like the most generic 3D Tales combat possible.
It is. It's not broken, but it's just not as interesting or fun as other titles. Additionally, the game uses random encounters instead of enemy field icons, and seems like the game balance expects you to fight significantly more battles because of this. (also, holy bottles only have a very short duration, and using them is kinda annoying.)