Tales of Arise (2021)

Almost at the end of the game (i think).

It's an interesting game for sure, and it's not terrible. But it's not very good either. The game has a lot of potential to be a great jrpg, but everything it does seems to be 'just short of good' and missed oppurtunities.

The story, while i still have to see the ending, is decent, but very simplistic in nature and seems dragged out a lot. The character building in the game is completely absent, where town npc's just feel like glorified signposts, sucking any feeling of liveliness out of the game. The villian storywriting is also absolutely terrible, where most of the villains i've seen so far boil down to 'i'm such a bad dude, look how bad i am'.

What really grinds my gears is the slapped on nonsense that hits you, continuously and way too muchat a time. There's over 500 skits in the game (!) and about 99% of the ones i've stomached to see so far have been of 'a 4 year old could have written something more interesting than this' level. This gets inherently worse in the latter part of the game, where apart from absolutely overloading you with said skits, they also put an insane amount of forced dialogue and cutscenes on you, none of which are of any better level than the skits themselves.

The positives of the game are it's great combat system, good enough to keep you playing, and the gorgeuos world design. It's a real big shame that they filled up that piece of art with the trash mentioned above.

All in all i would rate the game a 5/10 so far, because inherently, character building and story is what makes a good game for me, and ToA does not have either of those. The 5 points are for the great combat and art.

Let's see if the ending of the game still does anything to change that ;)

So a few hours in now. It seems like a really enjoyable game! I had played the demo a while ago and that one did not really picque my interest, but the game itself seems pretty good so far. The environments look really nice even though it's cellshaded, it kinda adds it's own flavour the the game. The combat seems really fun, although i probably only unlocked small parts of it's full featureset so far. Gameplay wise it really reminds me, a lot, of the old Star Ocean games, which is a good thing!

The only thing that annoys me so far is the overly long text scenes that don't seem to add much, i mean, a 2 minute dialogue about going to eat something at a campfire? really? :D But other than that i'm having a blast!

Okay, been chipping away. 33 hours in, currently battling the "man this is a great JRPG but it's a JRPG and has JRPG length and I need to balance that with other games I want to play" conundrum.

And then I go and blow 2 hours straight on fishing.

What a fun game. Right now it's up there with Returnal for my GOTY. Neither of which got nominated, of course. Psh.

24 hours 3rd realm

I hate Law.

I dislike Shionne.

Alphen is a s!mp.

I have nothing against Rinwell and Kisara is hot.

I don't like the story, it's boring. I can win without a deep understanding how things work. When I got the farm I thought it's a minigame, not just making steak.

Anyway, the gameplay is fun, but I am not sure if I'm going to finish it. I play because I like the story or the characters, and Scarlet Nexus is more interesting.

After a launch week full of hype I was prepared to pick this up. Thank goodness for demos. I gave the demo a whirl and am pretty comfortable saying this isn’t for me. It looks sharp, seems well designed but just not my thing.

I also gave the demo for Trials of Mana a shot and I’m 50/50 on buying it. I think I want to play the original first before I do.

Repeat, reuse, don't risk change. It feels like the Tales games just regurgitate similar story tropes again and again, similar story tones and beats, similar character arcs, similar everything in regards to story and cast. Plus the usual: 90% of playable characters look the same: young-looking, with perfect bodies and perfect faces (and worse, same faces). On too many different levels, everything feels the same. It's just boring. I couldn't finish it.

To this one's credit, its exploration of slavery and opression was not exactly what I expected. At worst I expected some truly terrible takes or framing where the oppresors where portrayed as good or whatever. At best I expected the usual "both sides are bad" or some variaton of that; a diluted uninformed or corporate-approved non-take.

But there is some attempt at depth and nuance at the different explorations of how each slave state falls in the game. There are even some that fall because of the people and not because the intervention of the party of heroes, though there's some story caveats there.

Sadly, I feel like there's still a levity given to the oppression the slaves experienced for 300 years. Like "Yeah, that was bad, but hating your oppressors is basically just as bad. Anyway, now that a couple of weeks have passed since you got freed, we should all hold hands and kinda forget about the deaths, torture, rapes and destruction of their dignity, minds and emotional life, etc that's been happening to you, your family and your people for generations". As if those wounds and the material repercussions of slavery didn't take centuries in real life to even start the path towards resolution.

So yeah, both-sides-ism. And I fear I didn't even get to then end because of boredom. The finale of this kind of diluted slavery stories is where the both-sides-ism sometimes kicks high gear.

Of course, in the style of many J-RPGs and animes, most of its explicit statements on slavery, oppression, trauma, revenge feel pretty toothless and predictable. I sometimes wonder if this happens because Japan is such a conservative society that even safe, mild, centrist statements like these are considered revolutionary.

If someone's going to make a videogame about slavery, I hope they actually research stuff instead of basing their version of slavery in the typical, watered-down popular imagination. There's tons of documental, testimonial and academic material out there, but I get it that it's not as easy to digest. For something easier I can actually recommend the first videos of the Crash Course Black American History youtube playlist.