How did you discover the Tales series?

I'm finding more and more that the ways people come across this series are as varied as the people, themselves. I've also found that the way someone is introduced the it affects their opinion of it. For example: I accidentally bought my first Tales game.

Ya see, I was a freshman in high school, at the time, and my friend had just gotten Skies of Arcadia on the GameCube, and was going on and on about how great it was. So, I decided I'd try to find it the next time I went to the Money Tree (idk if this is a chain, or just a local thing, but it's sort of like a pawn shop). When I got there I couldn't remember the name of the game. All I remembered was that it was three words, the second word was "of", and the third word ended in -ia. So, when I saw Tales of Symphonia, I just assumed that's what it had been, because it fit all the criteria that I knew the game had. I got hooked instantly, and when I told my friend that I had gotten it, they had no idea what I was talking about. This was the best accident ever.

I first saw Symphonia as one of G4TV's best RPG 2004 nominees. A high school friend loaned me Legendia for a bit, I assure you that cast and soundtrack is not a bad way to open this series, and then grabbed Symphonia for sub $20 shortly after the Wii came out and Cube prices were prime. It was a good time, you might say.

I used to frequent Gamespot when I was younger (see 11-12) and Tales of Phantasia adds kept coming up, I went to the site they had up and Arche and Suzu really drew me in from the character page, and I loved the look of it. We were on vacation in the states and I found out the game I had kept looking at had already come out, so I asked to get it. I absolutely loved it, played playthrough after playthrough and I discovered it was a series, got Symphonia, then Legendia and Abyss in kind of quick succession, and the rest from there.

I had just gotten a GBA and was looking for games other than Pokemon to play on it.  Tales of Phantasia was in the clearance section in K-mart for something like $15-$20 (the artwork on the cover really drew me in) so I asked my mom to get it for me for Christmas along with Final Fantasy 5.  I ended up loving Phantasia way more than the final fantasy game, and was super sad when I finally beat it.  I went online to see if the game had a sequel or anything, and my knowledge of the series was born.  I got Legendia and Abyss shortly after that, and have now also beaten Symphonia, Graces, and Xillia.  I own a few more games that I have yet to finish (destiny, eternia, zestiria) but I've watched pretty much all the animie they came out with.  Here's hoping for more!

I found Eternia in local game shop back then. It's still called Tales of Destiny II.
From there I start to do research on my own and found out there are Tales of Destiny and the real Tales of Destiny 2.
Then my second tales is Legendia and once again I only found it by chance.

I suddenly stumbled apon Tales of Xillia on the internet then while knowing it I found out it was part of a franchise,just like Final Fantasy,then I wanted to know more about the Tales game series franchise by seeing one of them and learn about them.Then my interest with Xillia was so strong it got me obsessed with it so much I could hardly wait for it to come out,the reason I was interested in it is because I found the story,characters,anime art style,cutscenes and battle gameplay interesting.It was the first Tales game I got then I got Xillia 2 and Zestiria,except Berseria because it was a prequel which I did not like.