Tales of Arise (2021)

I loved the game for the first 20+ hours but it became repetitive and I just wanted to finish it. After the double Vholran fight I felt broken, I was so sure that was the end. I did not touch the game for years. A few days ago I remembered this game and thought I must be near the end. I felt the characters and the story was not working for me, but because it's a Tales game I wanted to finish it T-T.

The story after the Vholran fight was pretty crazy. Not in a good way. I hated the ending because I believe evil exists and there are unforgivable crimes.

I finished it, I hated it. I won't do this again!

With the DLC being out this week I thought it was a good idea to go back to this one and review it.

I’ve been a fan of the Tales Of franchise for years now – going through Symphonia, Abyss, Tempest, Hearts, Graces, Xillia 1 & 2, Zestiria and Berseria. So it filled me with joy to see this particular entry received positive reviews and even Best RPG at the Game Awards 2021 back in the day.

Story

The story starts very strong, with some mysteries here and there for you to think about. It does seem like it takes ideas from other games in the series and mixes these together, so as a Tales Of fan I could connect a lot with the themes. I thought it was a big wink-wink for the fans. The lore had a lot of thought put into it, and it intertwines with the plot in an organic way for most of the game, letting you have your own conclusion and reflections on what is being presented. Nevertheless, as we start to reach the end of the road… this plot transforms into a last-minute infodump with little context. It feels like they merged two games into one, or maybe they wanted the ending to be “shocking”, but the truth is that it felt underwhelming and a little bit disconnected with what was happening before. I also think somewhere in the way the game forget what it was really about, and some of the mysteries presented earlier in the game find their resolution in a very anti-climatic way (i.e the iron mask).

Characters

Following with its legacy most of the characters are very anime trope-ish oriented with their own very anime trope-ish personality. You have your white hair tsundere, your redhaired bishounen, etc etc. Complaining about this would be complaining about the very base of Tales Of game, as to me is one of their trademarks that make the games actually work – so I’m completely fine with that. I found Alphen too similar to Ludger from Xillia in more than one sense, I would have preferred some other character archetype. The story arcs connect with the main plot enough for them to have reasons to stick together so I’m good with it.

Visuals

The game looks STUNNING. Very polished, great visual effects. Designs are incredibly well done. If you’re into JRPG and modern anime this is your cup of tea. I would slightly complain that you can see they wanted this game to be a PS4 game too – so even though you see incredibly detailed landscapes, the maps are very limited in the space you can go through, and I felt some of them were very corridor-like.

Gameplay So… here start’s my ranting. These games have evolved across the years, and some of them implement great ideas, while some others… don’t. Following up from the INCREDIBLE battle system that Berseria had, I found this one very undercooked. For a game in which the main attraction is the action/RPG battles I feel they couldn’t reach the bar they’d raised for themselves on previous entries. The gameplay starts very strong and as the game goes it doesn’t add much features or new things – it stays very static. Not being able to play with another person as player 2 was also a big let down.

Music

`Motoi Sakuraba. Nothing to add. 10/10. And the insert song at the end of the final battle… my goodness. That song destroys me.

Final Thoughts

Unpopular opinion, I thought Berseria was a lot better than this one even with its flaws. The story starts strong but falls apart towards the end, and it does look they forgot what the game was about. The characters are good but not enough to carry the game on their own. The game suffers from COVID-19 era issues – you can see the team didn’t work together in a lot of specific moments and that caused a disjointed experience in the narrative and in general. Said all of that - the game IS fun, and I think that has its own weight.

I don't want to be insulting to this wonderful saga, but if I'm honest, this will be the last tales game I play.

For goodness sake, it has fabulous characters, the battle, let's say the difficulty is decent...

(Although I don't find it very difficult with the hard mode, simply the monsters have millions of HP but there is no real difficulty...)

It has too much and I mean too much dialogue, yes okay, I can skip it (thankfully) but...

It fills me with crazy boredom.

I like games for their challenges, not exactly for the story, (if not for how I feel obviously)

I'd rather watch an ANIME or a MOVIE.

P.s. I don't know about you guys, but I can't stand games anymore, where they force me to go to point A then B, a new dialogue opens, only to have to go to point A-B again, suddenly I find myself in a random battle and the game repeats itself like this, until the end.

Firmly mediocre game that doesn't do anything exceptional. Play it if you like JRPGs; skip if you don't like JRPGs. To expand on this short review with some scatterbrained thoughts. Played around 95 hours on hard with no cheat 'DLCs'. Never played TALES game before.

SPOILERESS REVIEW

Premise of the game is: race of aliens is enslaving the race of protagonist person to leech space energy from them; you, the protagonist (an amnesiac), embark on a mission to shed the shackles of slavery and discover your past.

Sounds boring? Because it is. Story has an odd structure of being split in two; and each of the halves having three acts each. Second half of the game feels borderline like sequel. If you had your fill after the first big half (you will know when it is) it's a good point to end your journey with the game composing some headcanon ending. There's pretty big chance that whatever your headcanon is it won't be worse than actual ending. It's hard to judge story as one because of the split; the first one is at least competent, second half is dreadful.

Protagonist can only be described as 'stupid good' with 0 nuance to him and he stays the same throughout the game.

The antagonist is an afterthought and his last appearance will probably make you laugh with how silly it is. There's a second antagonist, but that 'character' is even worse than the other one.

90% of sidequests come down to killing monsters and are there to give you extra story/character bits and level up/give you currency or consumables.

Throughout your journey you will meet companions. Some of them are teenagers and they act like teenagers. If you are not used to JRPG teenage characters you might have an issue with not finding them frustratingly annoying. There're adult companions, and one of them pretty much made the whole game bearable for me (when I put him in stylish sunglasses I couldn't stop myself from laughing my ass off). Companions are also 'stupid good'. 'Stupid good' but reckless then a little less so. 'Stupid good' but 'racist (racist in quotes because I wouldn't say that hating on the race of aliens that enslaved your people and killed your family is racist). Etc.

Combat in the game is chaos, with awful camera, brainless AI companions (I had to use resurrecting item around 20 times in one boss encounter because they just kept dying even when their strategy was set to staying away from enemy at all times), meaningless combo points system. You play as a party of 4, but control one character at the time. Combat strategies that are usable in normal encounters are completely unusable for bosses. On higher difficulties encounters with bosses very often come down to having enough items to survive whacking the creature for 10 minutes due to horribly bloated hp pools. Game constantly takes control away from you for special attacks, which gets annoying really fast, since you will see those animations 100s times. Enemy variety is quite low, you will be beating on same monsters again and again, sometimes they might have a different shade though!

Difficulty is there if you are outleveled by enemies and isn't there if you outlevel enemies. Enemies have handful of attacks, same with bosses (some seem to have like 2-3 attacks tops).

To add on to the gameplay interruptions by the way of attack animations. Tales of Arise loves stopping you from playing and it will be doing it all the time. At certain points in the game the structure of gameplay will be as follows: Enter a room > cutscene > skit (short comicbook like cutscene) > skit > skit > move for 5 seconds > cutscene > skit > move for 4 seconds > cutscene. This is not an exaggeration. it's absolutely horrible.

Game is pretty much completely linear with no choices to make. Story will be exactly the same each time you replay the game; only replayability being trying different character in combat encounters.

Music, there're definitely some good pieces there; but I quickly found it too bombastic too often, it was so even during slower exploration moments. Turned it down to 20% and can't say much more about it due to that.

Game has absolutely useless crafting system that boils down to: instead of monster, mission, whatever rewarding you with weapon; we will give you random crap to craft stuff! Same goes for accessories (sort of ring/amulet that you can put on each of your companions), BUT not for armours for some reason, which you can buy/find in chests. While UI for crafting weapons is very straight forward, crafting accessories is a different story. While maybe not overwhelmingly tedious, the fact that you need to engage with this pointless mechanic made me completely apathetic to them and after crafting some okayish ones 30-40 hours into the game I didn't use the system at all for the rest of the game.

Some more thoughts:

Areas/zones are better than something like CODE VEIN but that's not exactly a high bar. Some of them are bad, some of them are nice. At no point the game will make your jaw drop with a gorgeous vista or well-designed enemy.

Art direction is there. Not much to say about it. Looks very similar to something like CODE VEIN.

Game has really curious game mechanic clash. On one hand it has party banter while you wander the world, on the other it has battle encounter chaining bonus to your various experience points. I missed probably around 50% of the banter because I was runing from encounter to encounter to maintain the bonus. Maybe it's normal for TALES games, maybe it was two different mechanics developed too independently and merged too late in development to change them.

Last dungeon made me switch difficulty to story mode and avoid any combat encounter I could. It's atrocious; long, boring and tedious. If you are there for 30 minutes and you find yourself hoping it ends soon; seriously, lower the difficulty.

My opinion of the game started pretty low; I started quite liking it in the middle; and for the last few hours I wanted it to end as soon as possible.

Ending is surprisingly OK.

Fishing is cool.

Owls are cool. (Hootle best character in the game).

Finished! Got the platinum in around 75 hours, a little under.

Pros:

Characters felt believable and refined and well-developed

Dialogue between characters was witty and fun and served to help develop both plot and character--if a bit quirky sometimes... Definitely a "good dumb" at times.

Environments are varied and genuinely fun look at

Combat system was fun and satisfying

Solid story that slightly leans into the "WTF is going on"-ness that some JRPGs can adopt

Post-credit content was enjoyable

Cons:

Pacing stumbles in the back third of the game

Level design isn't anything to write home about

No mounts :(

The story does wander a biiiiiiit into Crazytown at the end

Once you reach a certain proficiency with the combat, there isn't much reason to create different builds and swap out Artes, etc., even on Hard mode. You just sort of fall into a rhythm. That rhythm IS good, I'm just saying. It kind of plateaus at a point.

Verdict

All in all, a very, VERY solid JRPG that's worth your time if you're into the genre. It has its quirks and things that might annoy individuals, but it's well-designed and well-executed almost across the board. It struggles in moments, but when it hits its stride, boy does it sing.

9/10 - play it (if you enjoy JRPGs)

It took some time, but Tales of Arise did click with me! This is the second game in the franchise that I actually finish and although I expected a little bit more from it, I'm amazed with how it slowly became a game that I just couldn't put down.

This is a gorgeous game! The environments, enemies, character design and combat effects are great. It's a stunning experience featuring soothing scenarios and bleak dungeons.

While I initially didn't like the main cast, I ended up loving them towards the end. Character development is strong, well-constructed and pays off in the conclusion. By the end of the game I was almost part of the group and I think the more mature approach in the writting is the reason.

The story is also beautiful! It is a very long game, but throughly well-paced (except for the second half) and genuinely well told. There are so many nuances to each thing you uncover in the story and so many surprises and plot twists that it's hard to talk about it without spoiling anything. But trust me, it is a very deep and beautiful story, with nice character interactions, a good message and a charming ending.

But the true highlight of Tales of Arise is the combat. My god, it is fantastic! Fun, fast, addicting and a bit confusing, but powerful! It's definitely one of the best battle systems I've ever played in an Action JRPG game. It might not be as tactical as the likes of Vesperia, but it's definitely more engaging.

You get to feel that through boss fights. They're epic and amazing. Each one plays differently and you have to adapt to it. It's a shame that with so many things happening at the same time, battling a few of them (especially fights against the lords) can be quite confusing, with some of them being damage sponges. But they're great, nonetheless.

And while I may be gushing over this game, it does comes with a few notable flaws. The worst one is how generic it may seem at first. It actually took me a long while to finally get hooked, but when it did it hit hard! I'm not sure what it is, but there's something holding this game back from being truly incredible, in my opinion. Maybe it's the soundtrack. Good JRPGS are synonymous with fantastic OSTs and this one is just extremely forgettable. Side quests are also a mixed bag. Sometimes you're facing an incredible tough optional boss fight, sometimes you're cooking or collecting hidden owls. It's unbalanced.

I also disliked how they approached the second half of the game. It cuts the pacing of the entire story, slows things down, throws a bunch of exposition at you and stuffs you with a lot of dialogue. And I do mean A LOT OF DIALOGUES. It gets really boring before it picks itself back up again.

AND WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE MONEY IN THIS GAME? EVERYTHING IS TOO EXPENSIVE!

Tales of Arise brought back the feeling of experiencing a good traditional action JRPG. It is quite a journey and one that I won't easily forget. Took a while to convince me, but I'm really glad it did.

The immediate impression when booting up tales is - wow, this game looks gorgeous. It's nice to finally see Tales get the budget and time it deserves. I've been a fan of Tales since Tales of Graces F came out on PS3 in 2012. While I may not exactly be an old-school fan of the series, I've been one for many years now. I've always been a cheerleader of this series, and was very much anticipating 2021's Tales of Arise.

The presentation, as stated prior, is absolutely stunning. Tales has never looked better. The watercolor-esque aesthetic really impressed me even after 60+ hours with the game. There were several times where I had to stop and gaze upon the environments, they really were impressive. I was honesty surprised there wasn't even a photo mode, with such a gorgeous game you'd think there would be.

The story was immediately captivating to me, and I wholeheartedly enjoyed how the story unfolded. I was worried, initially, given how there's a lieutenant-like system with each continent's Renan lord that it'd be predictable. Without getting into the nitty-gritty details of the story, essentially the story is about an alien race, Renans, enslaving the natives of the planet Dena and these said Denans fight for their freedom. There were a lot of surprises that unfolded within the narrative, and I'm incredibly happy with the ending.

Characters have always been a huge part of Tales, and I'm glad to say Arise's characters are some of the best in the series. Each and every one of the main character's evolve with the story, and there's some stellar character development to go along with it. Everyone brings a unique dynamic to the story, and have their unique quirks that shine; whether it be via skits or simply throughout the narrative, they're great.

Traditionally, Tales' combat mostly remains the same with its real-time action combat. It's very fluid here, and feels more like an action RPG than its predecessors. It was odd at first, having R1 being the dedicated attack button, but I quickly got used to it. The combat is a little more streamlined than prior games in the series, but I think that's what partly made it one of my favorites. Each character has their unique perks they bring to the battles, which complement the game nicely. Everyone has a break attack, which is assigned to the d-pad, making for easy execution in tight situations. For example, Shionne's break attack is useful against flying enemies, when executed properly puts the enemy in a down state where they're open for attack. Also new to this specific entry is CP (cure points), instead of MP or whatnot you have CP. It adds a whole new dynamic, while running around a dungeon you can either use CP for healing your party or in some cases use it to open up a pathway to some treasure. It's a resource you've got to manage carefully, and I enjoyed having that dynamic to the game. The boss battles are incredibly well done, and they were surprisingly challenging. With each boss battle, I walked away in awe, and proud that I accomplished the task at hand.

My one very minor complaint about Tales of Arise, is its skits. Every other game featured their anime counterparts within the skit, whereby here uses their in-game version. It isn't a huge deal, and I did grow to appreciate them all the same, but I was missing that familiar Tales staple.

Tales of Arise is easily my favorite game this year, and probably my favorite Tales game ever. I loved the story, characters, epic boss battles, music, and gorgeous visuals. It's nice to see Tales finally get the extra attention it's always deserved, and I'm excited for whatever Bandai Namco does next with the franchise. I highly recommend this phenomenal JRPG. Welcome back, Tales.

Minor issues: combat takes a long time. So I played on very easy and auto. Side content not very interesting in terms of story. So I skipped most of it.

I didn't connect with the story as much as with Tales of Berseria.

Still, fantastic experience and intriguing mature story that I wanted to see thru to the end. I'm ready for the next chapter in this series.

I played a loooooot of JRPGs in the past two decades and boy this one is definitely one of the crispiest, most dynamic, beautiful ones and that's not something I expected from the "rigid" Tales of series. Basically there was no improvement on the formula since Symphonia (except for Berseria it seems) and this new entry builds back everyting almost from scratch and it's very refreshing.

My main issue though with the game is that i'm burnt out on the anime cliche games with always the same characters stereotypes. While the overall story is fun, the cast of characters and overwhelming dialog takes me out at times. To be fair that's the case for most JRPGs I played recently and it's still better written that let's say DQ XI or KHIII but since the approach was a bit more "mature" wannabe I expected more on this department.

I still had a good time and would recommend this game for anyone looking for a good/modern JRPG that is not Persona or FFVIIR

Tales of Arise Review

Before i begin this review i want to say that this is the first tales game i played, so i can't tell you whats different or whats better or whats new and all that stuff.

The story in this game is about whats called the two worlds one being Dahna and one being Rena. Rena took over Dahna's homeworld, and for 300 years they made Dahnans into slaves to serve the Renans. The differences between the two is Renans have blue eyes and can use astral artes which is basically magic and this makes there eyes glow.

Story begins with the Renans oppressing the dahnans on Calaglia making them into miners hurting them when they don't listen. They try and hurt a kid who can't push something that is impossible for him to push by himself. The main character steps in to help and he gets hit but didn't feel nothing. The main character face is covered in an iron mask, which i immediately thought of Leonardo Dicaprios old movie called Man in the iron mask. The next day somethings going on where you hear about a Renan girl. The Renan girl is seen shackled but the people transporting her is attacked which leads to a guy trying to help her but he gets hurt by touching her leading the girl to escape. Main character sees the renans talking about her and he finds her on this transportation mine cart but he gives away her position but this gives him an opening to escape and help her. He fights the renans off with her than another guy called Zephyr helps them.

They end up in Zephyr base with his people. The main character hears about them locking up the girl so he goes and sees them questioning her. The people immediately don't like her cause shes a Renan which is indicated by her blue eyes. A guy gets angry with her and tries to grab her but gets hurt. It is than Zephyr calls her the girl with the black thorns because people can't touch her or they get hurt. Shortly after they are attacked by the Renans looking for the girl and have to fight them off. This causes Chaos and gives the girl an opening to escape but the main character sees shes in trouble and helps her. They work together even though she doesnt want his help because hes a dahnan. You find out her names Shionne and that the main character can feel no pain or anything which she doesnt really believe. They get outside but are surrounded by Renans, Shionne gets shot by one of them and the main character is angry. This causes a core in Shionnes chest to appear which materializes in a sword which the main character grabs and fights off the Renans causing them to retreat. He checks on Shionne and she isn't hurt or anything but shes shocked to see him holding the Blazing Sword which burns and incinerates people who touch it. She finally believes the guy cannot feel pain but decides to heal him .

Shionnes than says she wants to kill the lord Balseph to obtain his master core. Balseph the lord of Calaglia and the lord giving the orders to oppress the slaves. Shionne realizes this is a big opportunity to take out Balseph since the blazing sword is powerful enough to take out a lord. The main character agrees cause he wants to free the dahnans of being slaves and Zephyr and his people agree to help cause they want to get rid of a wall blocking them from the outside world. They develope a plan to take out Balseph.

Shionne and the main character attack Balseph in his chamber and during this battle half of the main characters mask breaks and he remembers his name which is Alphen. They kill balseph and break the wall that was blocking any from leaving. Shionne reveals theres 4 more lords to take out and 4 more master cores she needs. Alphen agrees to help because he wants to free all the Dahnans from being oppressed by the Renans.

You learn that the 5 lords are in a crown contest, a contest which sees the 5 lords compete to see who can drain the most energy from the dahnan slaves. All the lords use various tactics to get astral energy from the dahnans some more vile than others. Each lord has there own regions and each lord has a master core with a different element. Some of these lords even affect the region there in. Some regions being always night cause the lord is taking the light.

So the characters in this game theres 6 made up of Renans and Dahnans a like so they have to learn to put there differences and there hatred for one another aside.

Alphen who is the main character that is a dahnan and was a slave who has lost some of his memory and has the iron mask which locks away some of his memories. A lot mysteries surround who he actually is.

Shionne a renan girl who has kind ran away from her own world in order to take out the Renan lords. Shionnes a great and strong female character and her change in the game is great and the mysteries that surround her are very good. Shes not quick to open up or trust people. She is cursed by black thorns which doesnt allow anyone to touch her but also doesn't allow her to touch anyone as well. Shes not afraid to tell people what she thinks straight up, she doesn't sugar coat anything.

Rinwell who comes from a family of mages and she has a lot of hatred for Renans. She has a baby owl called Hootle that is with her. Rinwell has to learn to get a long with Shionne who she immediately hates and doesnt trust cause shes a renan. Rinwells whole story is great which i won't spoil.

Law is Zephyr's son who has to figure out his purpose and what to fight for. His interactions with Rinwell was really good in the game there relationship is funny and heartfelt he is also dumb at times which is funny.

The two other characters i don't really want to spoil who they are but ones name Doharim and the other is Kisara. Doharim probably my favorite character next to Shionne.

Gameplay

You go to the 5 regions and explore a semi-open world. They all have a few locations in them and dungeons. The locations are really good with the art style of the game which i can't really explain its like a painting kind of look. Each region has its own look to it. Calaglia being a desert kind of rocky and hot place. Cyslodia being a cold and snowy dark place. Elde Menencia being very vibrant with flowers. Mahag saar being a kind of desolate and ruined place. Ganath Haros having a lot of water  throughout its region. Some areas in the game you need a party members map action to gain access to new locations, you might see a wall that someone can break or a barrier. There are campfires the party can use to make food and you get skits which are these comic book like cutscenes with the characters. You also get skits from towns and exploring you just have to keep your eye on when they show up cause you have to press a button to see them. There is also fishing to do to.

The enemies are called Zeugles throughout the regions. Theres stray Zeugles in the world and theres zeugles that the renans control. Theres also the gigant zeugles which are the more powerful high leveled enemies in the game.

Each of these regions also have the lords place the capital cities which they rule and theres inns and shops and blacksmiths and metal engravers so you can make new weapons and accessories. The weapons there are a bunch to make and they all have changes in there appearence, they are all very cool.

Theres side quest from people in the cities and there good for seeing the party interact and they vary a bit not much though. Some quest are collecting stuff or beating certain enemies or just talking.

The dungeons the big ones are where the lords are but there are small and optional ones as well. The dungeons designs specifically the lords ones are all great i only had a problem with this one in mahag saar which involved an elevator, and the final area which ill get to later.

Battle System

The battle system is an action RPG or you can also change it to where its auto which the AI will perform actions for you, or you can use a semi auto feature causing the game to only move for you while you attack or you can set to manual where your in control of your actions and moment. I choose manual cause i love action games. Something also cool is you can button map the controls which i used to change what button i used to attack and stuff.

Theres 4 characters in a battle at once and you can switch and take control of them on the fly while the Ai controls the rest. You use abilities by setting them to a certain button but they use your artes guage which are these blue diamonds above your health bar, each time you use an ability it takes one until you wait a bit for it to recharge.

Alphen uses a sword, Shionne uses a Rifle, Law uses his fist and Rinwell uses artes as a mage and than the two others you get later.

In battle there are whats called a boost attack which is a guage on the characters portraits that fills up and this allows them to use a boost attack. I liked these cause certain characters boost attacks are good for certain enemies. You might need Shionnes boost attack to take out flying enemies and stun them, or rinwell to stop an enemy casting artes, or Alphen to instantly down an enemy or Law to Break through enemy armor, shields or Zeugles with shells.

There are also staggering enemy where you attack them enough they get stunned. Enemies have weakpoints as well on them which are glowing crystal like things which are called spirit cores. Once you break them they get downed and staggered for a short period. Another cool thing about the boost attacks is if characters are not in your party you can still use there boost attacks.

Characters have perks to, Alphen can use his health to use the Blazing sword in battle which is a powerful attack, Shionne can throw bombs, Law if hes on the offensive can gain an attack boost, Rinwell can charge and store her artes.

Than theres the advanced stuff in combat where if you continuously attack and raise your combo guage and boost attack enemies a guage fills on the enemy allowing you to finish them off with one-hit with a boost strike which is much needed late game and on hard mode. It does not work on the gigant zeugles or bosses however.

The leveling there traditional leveling up stuff but theres points you get to spend to get new abilties and stuff. There are these different kind of spheres with abilties around it to use your points you get in battle. Throughout the game more and more will unlock and some you have to do certain requirements to unlock them.

Bosses The lord bosses i think there all good its the Zeugle bosses and side bosses that kind of dampen the game a bit because they start repeating which is a big negative which i will talk about.

Negatives

So there are not many negatives there are two major ones and some minor ones but unfortuantely the two negatives greatly impact the game and it sucks. One being the Zeugles in every location in every region it is the same enemies over and over and over and over and over. I didn't notice at first til late game and it  i got freaking tired of it. It is the same thing games this day and age does and that is color swap the damn enemies or make a slight change to them. Do you want to fight a red renan armored soldier or a gold one or one with a gun? Do you want to fight a green wolf zeugle? a damn blue one a purple a black one a fucking green one? Maybe you want a fight an alpha one which is a bigger one with spikes? This is the same bullshit with games in this day and age, the laziness on the enemy designs. I will be consistent in my complaints with this bullshit and will call out all the goddamn games that do this such as God of War Ps4, Immortal Fenyx Rising and Crystar and Code Vein among the recent games i played that has this shit. Look i don't mind it if there is enough enemy variety in the game cause a lot of games use color swap and different element enemies, but when you dont have enemy variety and its the same enemies throughout the entirety of the game its freaking awful.

There are 20 different enemies but theres 156 enemies in the game which means 136 are the same enemies just with color swaps different elements or different variatons or are just the gigant zeugles which are more powerful version of already existing enemies, and than theres weaker versions of the boss zeugles you fight. So this is absolutely unacceptable. I didnt do everything in the game and do all the dungeons but i honestly dont think it will make a damn difference.

2nd negative and this is a minor one because i did hard mode first playthrough but the A.I is very bad. A lot of fights late game i had to do solo cause the A.I continuously dies over and over cause they cant dodge attacks for nothing. You can make a custom strategy to tell the A.I what to do but its not good at all. You can only tell them use certain skills or heal at certain points but you cant tell them to stay back or have one attack or tell one to just use magic or focus on the same enemy or anything like that, even when you tell them to keep distance they still go in to attack so that was very bad. If your low leveled your party will get destroyed leaving you by yourself, i felt like the higher level you are the more your party stays alive. I could be 10 levels down and be fine but the A.I will be no help at all.

Another minor negatives are the dungeons they are pretty short except for the last dungeon and...oh boy that last dungeon... And this leads to the 2nd major negative in the game.

The games story is fantastic i loved the world and the whole divide of Renans and Dahnans and how there are the lords who were ruling over the dahnans and making them slaves. The crown contest the whole thing with the lords just competing to see who can make the dahnans suffer and to see who can gather the most of the dahnans energy is all great until you get to the 2nd half of the game and it just goes downhill.

The 2nd half of the game is just uninteresting, a story that was going so well and they decide to throw in so much and unnecessary confusing stuff. The story starts to change when you find the truth about everything and im not gonna spoil that but its so much that it starts ruining what i liked about the story. They just throw a ton of new stuff at you and just overload you with a revelation after revelation and honestly it started making the game predictable about where it was going to be going. They just threw in so much in such a short amount of time that it started to feel like it was rushing through everything. It was about Renans making Dahnans there slaves and how the two sides hate eachother and than the 2nd half just threw in something to completely shake up the story and if just wasn't good. Trying to follow a long with everything new they were explaining and i found myself zoning out and just being uninterested.

The Final dungeon and last part of the game is absolutely terrible. This dungeon design was just boring it was so bland and everything looked the same. All the other dungeons looked good the designs of them but this one was just rushed. than i became frustrated seeing more color swapped dumb enemies instead of new ones. Than there is like so many load screens in this dungeon which was just odd cause the other dungeons did not have a lot of loads screens but this dungeon was like, go through a door...load screen than another door...load screen...walk to another door load screen...its like 3 load screens in the span of 10 seconds...like what the hell happened?

The final boss is freaking dumb im expecting a big giant enemy for the final fight and you get this weirdly designed medium sized boring looking thing. You fight it twice and the characters are all saying its getting bigger...and all it is...is turning white its like wtf. Than 2nd fight with it makes no damn sense to. Your breaking its cores and you get a a quick cutscene of the boss sliding off hanging on to an edge about to fall off, only for the scene to get over and theres no evidence of it actually doing that at all. Its just a rushed underwelming mess.

Final Thoughts

It is a shame i think this game had GOTY potential unless you only like same old giant open world set piece games that western game have. Tales of Arise story was so good and so interesting i loved the world and the divide between the two races which are Renans and Dahnans. I loved the Lords and the awful stuff they do, One in particular and this is when i really started getting into the game and this is a spoiler but i got to mention how awesome this is. When you get to Mahag saar you find the city destroyed and descimated due to a fight that was happening between the people and the lord who is a women named Almeidrea. They managed to drive her out and make her run away only later for them to capture her again. The people want vengence they want to burn this girl and this puts the people in a violent frenzy as they watch. They burn her and are cheering but little did they know it was trap there anger was actually draining there energy as they watched her get burned, suddenly they all died while Almeidrea laughed and survived the fire. Her whole plan was to oppress these  people as her slaves to piss them so they went after her, to make them go so far as to destroy the entire city trying to get to her making them think they were free. She runs away so they could catch her purposely only for them to build up there hatred while shes burning and them to all die in an instant. This whole part was freaking excellent.

The characters are great some can get annoying at times Rinwell in particular cause she hates Renans but its all part of her character developement but she argues a lot and questions a lot of things. There are a lot of great character moments that are memorable and there are some powerful scenes in this game because the voice acting is pretty great specifically for Alphen. Alphen english voice conveys so much emotion and so does Shionne and there relationship how it builds and builds is just soo good. Than seeing there views on the two sides start to change just all this stuff is great.

There are clearly some Final Fantasy 7 inspirations specifically with a lord named Volran. Volran has a long sword and white hair...whos that sound like? Sephiroth. Alphen and Volran kind of interaction throughout the game is reminscient to the connection Cloud and Sephiroth have. Volran even has a scene where he walks in fire, regardless Volran is awesome and the fights with him and Alphen is the more badass action filled moments in the game.

It is just a shame the lack of enemy variety and the 2nd half took so much from the game and added in stuff that wasn't needed. However there is still stuff with Alphen and Shionne that is revealed in the 2nd half that is great which is about all i cared about.

Tales of Arise still is strong with its characters and there stories something japanese game have over the western games. They just have the ability to write great characters meanwhile most western games focus more on graphics and a little on characters which is something i really started noticing after playing the smaller japanese games like YS and Trials of Cold Steel and Crystar and Akibas Beat and now Tales. There characters are all memorable and there moments aren't forgettable. Its a shame these games get over looked cause there not big AAA games so they will never be considered GOTY or have any sort of chance even though the japanese devs put a lot of care into what they create and they create complete experiences and games that feel like full games. Another thing i have to mention is the game never crashed once compared to many other games.

Even though Tales felt rush in the 2nd half it still is a complete game, it still made the story they wanted to tell and it put a lot of time into bulding up the characters. Its more complete than the other non japanese games that release.

So my score for Tales of Arise is... Man it sucks but due to the 2nd half the lack of enemies and the final area and final boss being terrible....i have to give it a 6 out of 10

[Edit two years later on 2/26/24 for some minor errors (spelling, etc.)]

Overall: This game is perfectly serviceable on its own, but it's not Tales. I really hope this isn't the way forward for what has been my favorite series for nearly two decades.

Completed all sidequests (pre-final boss), minus most of the training area stuff.

Clear save was at ~71 hours

Level 61

Rating: 7.5/10

I always play Tales games with guides because there's so much that you can easily miss (extended sidequests with multiple parts, some of the costumes, etc.). However, since this was yet another release without a physical guide, and since it came out everywhere on release day, I obv didn't use a guide. I was a bit nervous going into it because I didn't want to miss stuff, but this game is ridiculously linear and marks available quests on the map for you, so I don't feel like I missed...anything, really.

Characters: 4.5/5

This is another entry into the very short list of Tales games in which I like the whole party. I enjoyed the variety of backgrounds and belief systems, and approaches to problems. I liked that they were kind of paired off, which added further depth to the dynamic. I loved walking around as Rinwell, and she definitely grew a lot as a person, but sometimes she was a little irksome. I loved Dohalim's story.

Story: 3.5/5

Does that seem low? I think the story was solid enough. I was very pleased with the ending. Getting there was just a little messy. The pacing was off, I guess. When the two main characters decide in the first couple of hours that they're going to defeat all of the Renan lords, you expect that to be most of the game, with lots of little stuff in between. Think Symphonia with going to all of the temples--a lot happens in between each one. There are so few actual locations in each domain in Arise that it all feels rushed until after that task is complete and the party realizes the Actual Problem hasn't been dealt with. There were predictable parts (though predictability is not necessarily a bad thing, as a writer just doing random shit trying to trick a reader/player without it even making sense is way worse), and there were some good reveals/twists. The overarching two worlds/slaves/energy collection stuff is all very Symphonia. Not in a bad way; it felt like an ode to the classics but with a new spin.

Music: 2.5/5

This was pretty disappointing. None of it was bad; it actually all suited the game well enough. But I could not hum a single tune from the game for you right now if you asked me to. Nothing stood out to me like it usually does, like getting to a new area and going, "Ooh, I like this music." Also, almost none of it felt particularly Tales. No chh-chh-chh sounds in the music of a forest area like pretty much every game in the series, no little folksy flute village theme. Not really any of the tell-tale Tales sounds in general.

Locations/Exploration: 3.5/5

Speaking of towns, each main domain only really has like, the capital and MAYBE one other town. There weren't lots of little small villages to visit and help people in. The game is very much focused on the main objective and little else. While linearity in some regards was welcome, the quick, occasional sidequests in the major areas don't have the same feeling as exploring a vast world that has lots of stops along the way to major plot points. I suppose this is explained away by the whole five domains thing, and maybe the Renans wanting to keep the Dahnans in centralized locations, but that's definitely something that, looking back, I realize left me feeling like something was missing.

Otherwise, lots of beautiful, detailed locations to traverse.

The map is fully visible as soon as you enter an area, minus what each exit leads to, and treasure/mining placement. This definitely sped up the process of exploring each area, as you could just focus on each dead end first and not guess about which direction to try. The fast travel was wonderful and saved a lot of time when it came to sidequests, but there wasn't too much need for backtracking otherwise. These could be pros or cons depending on your preference.

This point kind of goes in tandem with the map, but...there are no puzzles in this game. Dungeon maps are like any other area. There were never any twisty, wonky teleporters to figure out, or switches to alternate or anything. It was all very straightforward. Having just replayed Graces before this, which has a ton of insanely annoying puzzles (even with a guide), I was fine with not dealing with that level of frustration, but never having to do any kind of puzzle or even an ice-sliding minigame was weird.

Combat: 4/5

I do quite enjoy this new combat overall. It still feels kind of Tales-like and it runs super smoothly. The boost attacks are like a Super Upgrade 6.0 version of the links from Xillia. It gets to the point where they charge so fast you're just boosting to use them for damage rather than the strategy aspect.

I'm just not a fan of how limited you are in the number of artes that you can set and the fact that they're set to different buttons. I've spent a long time being able to have four artes set to the left stick and Circle or B, and then another four set to the right stick. Yes, you unlock being able to set 3 more ground and aerial artes while holding L2 after getting your full party, but it's still not great. The split of 3 ground/3 aerial artes was not my favorite. Aerial artes went woefully underutilized for me. Most of the time I just wanted to be able to use the ground artes I had set while I was in the air, and I'd forget they wouldn't work. I used Dohalim for more than half the game so I got into a rhythm with it, but I don't understand the change from one button + stick to three different buttons.

There are some skits about how Dahnan and Renan astral artes look different and I…could not tell you what that difference is? Everything in battles is just so colorful and chaotic and I really didn't pay enough attention to what anyone else was doing. Like, I can tell you the element of an arte if I saw it, but not who was casting just by looking.

Crafting and Cooking: (not really rating this; just thoughts on it)

These were both quite simple systems, which was nice. I only occasionally made accessories, but I kept up with weapons and I think I got all of the recipes. I loved the campsite addition to the game. That is def a new feature that I enjoyed and think should become a staple.

Other:

One other main thing to note is how experience/leveling up worked, which is...I'm not sure? Within the first few days of playing, I tried looking it up to see why it was so wonky but never found a straight answer. Essentially, all of my characters had the same amount of earned exp, and none had been dead at the end of a battle. However, in the early game, Alphen was obviously ahead since you have him solo first, but then for a while, Shionne was like half a level ahead. Rinwell stayed a good half level behind the next lowest person until the party was in the mid-30s, while everyone else just kind of sporadically took turns levelling the fastest. No one ever got two levels ahead, but it was still odd.

Also, it's nearly impossible to grind until the final area, where the experience is pretty high. Every time you enter a new area, monsters tend to be about 3 levels higher than you if you've been just fighting everything you pass as you go through the game. You'll even out with them before going to the next area, but if you try to do more than that, experience is just shit and you'd have to spend hours chaining for still-paltry exp.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with this game. I was playing pretty neck-and-neck with my friend, so that kind of upped the ante while playing each day. One of us would get ahead and when the other would catch up, we'd gush over certain areas or artes or whatever. He's probably going to finish it today.

I missed Tales staples like Katz/Turtlez and was disappointed in the music. I think they really made this an easy-mode game with the lack of puzzles and such. Since I prefer playing this series with a guide, I'm sure that sounds hypocritical, but a lot was truly lost by making the game so walk/talk/combat/repeat with little else in between. A lot of that Tales luster was lost because of that, regardless of how "vaguely Tales" other aspects were.

My friends asked where I place this amongst other Tales games, and I honestly haven't tried ranking the series other than my favorite being Xillia with Berseria coming up a very close second. I think it's very middle of the road of the new style of Tales (everything post-Vesperia where combat got a bit quicker and we lost the world maps). I might post the ranking I tried making up last night a bit later, but for now, I think this is safely tied with Zestiria in the middle. (I actually liked Zestiria, so don't think that other people thinking it's trash means this one is to me. Arise is also so different from previous entries that it's hard to really compare it with previous games.)

The move away from self-sacrifice endings, FINALLY, earned this game serious points. Just a note.

Great game. This was my first tales of experience so I didn't know what to expect But the overall experience was satisfying.

• Story : 4/5 It could be a 5/5. The first part is really good but what ruins the story is the ending part. Everything was so out of place like WTF I really don't know how they ruined it. They could have just gone a more simple way and also the 2d animations were meh.... I mean come on Ufotable can do better
• Gameplay 5/5 At fist I thought it was a turn based RPG as a lot of my friends told it was like final fantasy from sakaguchi era. But I really liked this action RPG approach. I also played scarlet nexus earlier this year. My biggest complain was you can't change characters in battle so tales of arise is a better experience for me. still i wish the enemy design was a little bit better
• characters 5/5 Thats the best part of the game even if the story at the end is a bit messy but the characters easily fills the gap. They are memorable and likable

Overall a great game definitely recommended. even if you dont know anything about tales of you will still like this game