The Tales Of... games are pretty good RPGs, but like a lot of RPGs, the plots sometimes get a little bit tough to follow. But you have a (not very) secret weapon.

Check out my status screen from Tales of Symphonia for the Game Cube:

The bottom-right option is 'synopsis', which shows a list of topics

which tell you a brief recap of what's happened so far, and what you should do next.

Which is pretty awesome if you have a tough time following the story for some reason, plus it gives you insights into how the story's playing out that you may have missed otherwise. Which, when the story gets as complicated as it does in this game, that's not a bad thing.