Have you ever seriously tried to play it with a second (or maybe even third) player?
It's really lot of fun, especially because the games actually become more engaging to me when played in a group. I normally don't really care all that much about the stories or the gameplay outside of the battles the Tales games offer, but when you aren't playing alone everything becomes suddenly much more interesting.
Apart of that, I don't think it's all that unusual to play an RPG "together" with the girl-/boyfriend or another good friend. Normally it ends up that one person is playing, and the other is watching while both are talking about the game; and in Tales game both can actually be part of the game, which is pretty neat.
Actually, the lack of direct co-op gameplay during the non-battle scenes is pretty neglible, imo. When in dungeons or cities the games are mostly about two things: figuring out where to go / what to do and following the story. It doesn't really matter for both thing whether or not you are actually controlling the character on screen directly or if you are thinking together with the first player what you have to do next.