It’s when this turd dropped, universally
Panned by critics and fans alike, it had no multiplayer, an awful cast, and a new combat system which was somehow both boring as hell and didn’t have the camera work. This was also right around the time that games started to take longer in development and also had absolutely, positively, 0 reason to be open world but still were. You can look at Berseria’s doodoo empty maps as a where that disease took the series.

Tales of, like every other rpg series, decided the main routr to go was into the action rpg direction, but the difference was that Tales of was appealing because it was still a sort of turn-based with how enemy stagger worked. Not to mention player roles being selerated and it actually meaning something. Now there’s no difference between a hybrid magic/attack user and an attacker with how every artes is a fucking super duper move that covers the screen in bullshit. To be honest, I doubt this series would ever recover: it’s gotten into the same derivative slop and there’s no saving that with how long production takes now. They might as well make it a fucking Powwr Stone like game and just have you use items and skills against enemies in a battle arena