It's one of the long-lived game series and still alive and kicking, seeing that the most recent one came out this January. It's famous for:
1. Having almost exclusively characters with very fleshed out stories.
2. Taking a lot of RPG clichees and subverting it to hell and back.
3. The minor villains being absolutely depraved, and the main one being mostly an Anti-villain.
4. Filled to the brim with skits unlocked at various points, all of which are hilarious.
If you have a console, you're bound to find at least one Tales of game, especially with the older ones getting remade frequently. Xbox, PlayStation, Gamecube... there's also at least one avaiable on Steam, but it's so filled with bugs and glitches, you also need a patch. Sad thing is, it took the one who made the patch fifteen minutes. They didn't have fifteen minutes to fix all the problems.
Also, playing on Easy is discouraged, as you get GRADE on anything above, which, upon using New Game +, can be exchanged for lots of boni. (or hindrances, for the masochistic ones)