English Version
If you love this game, but can't read Japanese, you could always buy the European version. It has the same voiceovers as the US playstation version (Tales of Destiny 2)

An above-average RPG
Tales of Eternia is a port of the Playstation classic to the PSP. Although the game is older, I found the graphics quite good. The background art and character animations are very charming if not particularly state of the art.

The story and the characters are not as compelling as that found in, say, Final Fantasy VII, yet are much more compelling than those found in the average Japanese RPG.

As for whether or not the game is "import-friendly", the answer is no. First, there is very little English in the game. The opening menu and the screen that appears after successful completion of a battle are in English. Everything else is in Japanese. Since the game is heavy on story, there is a lot of Japanese dialogue to wade through. Some of the dialogue is voiced -- and the voice-actors do a wonderful job --
while the rest is merely rendered in text. So, if you don't know any Japanese, you will not enjoy this game.

If you do have some Japanese, the game provides two challenges. On the one hand, the Japanese used is very colloquial, quite unlike the Japanese taught in textbooks. On the other hand, the Chinese characters
are highly pixelated. Given the limited number of pixels available for each kanji, bits and pieces of some kanji are necessarily left out. This makes some of the kanji, particularly those with a high stroke count, difficult to recognize, let alone read.

If you can handle the colloquialisms and the pixelated kanji, and don't mind playing an older game, then Tales of Eternia comes highly recommended.