Tales of Arise (2021)

So I decided to play for a bit before bed, just check out the quest or two that popped up in the post-game, y'know.

This one single extended follow-up quest to one of the late game monster quests easily adds like a full point to my rating of this game.

Spoilers below!

It essentially involves using this researcher's keys to go through a gate to areas from different Tales games. He had six, but lost five, so you use the first one (Destiny) and go to a new world/area where the field and battle music are from said game. But then you get to this cavern and MUH GIRL EDNA from Zestiria is there and you fight her and get the next key, which is Symphonia! I finished up that second rift happily beating the shit out of wasps to Symphonia battle music. AHHHHHHHH.

IT'S FINALLY HERE! MY COLLECTOR'S EDITION ARRIVED! <3

It's so pretty; I'm so happy.

The soundtrack is inside the steel case.

Sorry the pictures are a little cut off. I didn't want to fill this whole front page with them so I just grouped some of them into collages. Also not sure what happened to the image quality, but whatever.

Last two pictures are of my Tales shelf. It's not absolutely everything because when my boyfriend moved in we got new shelves in the living room and the display shelves are honestly worse than what I had before, so I don't have room for the steel books, art books, etc. (They're in the same shelving unit, just with the game cases and other art books.) Collector/Special Edition boxes are on top of the shelves, and my nine-character school outfit keychain set is in an ita bag. Probably some other miscellaneous stuff, too, but this is the bulk of it.

49.5 hours in as of last night.

I defeated the fifth lord, and then they really got me with a, "This is just the beginning," and then starting up an animated scene that was like an opening/ending. I was sitting here, 3 a.m., going, "WHAT IS THIS?! WHAT IS HAPPENING? IS THIS A FEVER DREAM?" Then I played for about another hour and a half. When I just started the game up today, that opening plays now when you start it up. Wild. Dis game.

I think I mentioned before that I've rarely enjoyed using any characters apart from the main character in Tales games. I knew I'd probably like Law because I loved Jude in Xillia (he's my fav male Tales character, too), but DOHALIM IS SO MUCH FUN. The man moves like he's made of water and his wind attacks are just... Oooh. I've been using him almost exclusively since getting him.

Time for my first thoughts (even though I'm ~20 hours in)!

I want to start by saying that, when the first look at this game was dropped, I was worried. You really could not tell what the combat was going to be like, other than that, to me, it didn't look very Tales-y. As someone who will drop a game because of a garbo battle system over anything else, and as someone whose favorite game series is Tales, this had me stressin' for a long time until they finally released a bit more info moooonths later. The demo is what eventually made me feel like, "Okay, this is new, but this is definitely still Tales." Now that I've been playing for a while, I still have that feeling. It's different, but undeniably Tales.

I'm enjoying the battles quite a bit, and I regularly swap between two of the four characters that I currently have. I think Berseria was the first time that I REALLY used all of the characters (I think because of trophies or in order to unlock something? --not sure, it's been a while), and I actually had a good time using them all. I've barely ever found characters that I liked using aside from the main characters in Tales before, so after Berseria, I wanted to push myself a bit and try it in Arise too. I still don't really like using casters/mages/healers/etc., though, so I haven't used two party members because of that. My only complaint about fights is how your controlled character takes like 45 years to recover after using the max number of normal attacks in a row. This is totally avoidable by just chaining artes into your normal attacks, but the recovery just feels really slow and weird.

[Side note: I'm apparently in the minority of people who don't care about the co-op situation. I feel like there are a million better options for co-op than a Tales game where it's the most minimal form possible outside of like, Mario Galaxy where one person can just...shoot star bits. It's only co-op in battles. Some lady on a Bamco FB post yesterday was bitching that she and her husband were disappointed when they got their second character and found out it wasn't co-op, and now they're basically dropping it. I mean, that's on you, lady, if you didn't know what was announced and has been actively complained about for like a year now. She was all, "One person just has to sit and stare the whole time." You mean like with every other Tales game unless you're in a fight? What are you doing when the person playing is exploring a huge town? Sitting and staring. I dunno, people are free to enjoy what they want, and I'm not defending the decision to remove what has been a staple of Tales combat because I know a lot of people like it, but I also don't personally care that it's gone.]

The game is absolutely gorgeous. The characters, too. Like, there have been pretty characters before: Milla and Velvet are two of my faves and they're both super pretty characters, but like, Shionne?? Oof. Her eyes. <3 (Also, her waist isn't like half an inch wide like Milla and Velvet's. The character designs are still "anime"/Tales but def more proportionate and realistic.) I just got to the area that the demo takes place in, and it's so lush and detailed. I've always loved the area designs in Tales and think that every game has had some really aesthetically pleasing landscapes, but damn if this game isn't just insanely beautiful.

Story so far has been pretty good. Upon starting the game, one of my friends was like, "They must really miss Symphonia. Two worlds, one more advanced, slavery, etc." Not wrong there, but also not strikes against it. There's still a lot to be discovered about the characters and the world, and the giddy feeling of discovery feels really fresh. Maybe because it's been so long since the last new entry in the series.

Since I got all of the costume DLC, and you regularly get attachments, I'm having a lot of fun with that. Party member 3 has a ton of cute outfits that I change pretty often, and I use them as my character to walk around with.

Overall, I'm having an absolute blast. I'm sad that the weekend is almost over and it's back to work tomorrow. :(

I think the only "bug" I've had is audio when skits and some other dialogue starts. It'll sometimes stutter the first sound of the clip, but is otherwise fine.

Fun game so far. Despite the new visuals and overall fancy coat of painting, this is still very much a standard Tales game. Which I'm perfectly fine with, since there's honestly no real improvements to be made to the formula these games pride themselves in (except maybe better storytelling). The combat is quite fun, and like all games in the series, very easy to break once you unlock more artes and learn combo routes with your characters. In a way it's much easier due to the addition of a traditional perfect dodge system that doesn't rely on using resource points like some previous games. I really appreciate the addition of finishers that are generally standard to most action games, though it's a little hard to justify using them on anything outside of "hard" difficulty since killing enemies normally is much faster than the finisher animations. I want to say the map/dungeon design is far better than Berseria, but it's honestly all still mostly hallways with some more open segments like all previous games. It's just that the game is so much prettier and nicer looking that it feels like a huge improvement on that end. The skits are still there and now done in a comic panel style instead of their traditional portraits speaking which I personally like. I liked them in Scarlet Nexus as well.

Still bummed out they removed co-op. I feel it was one of the biggest staples of the Tales series and throwing out an excuse along the lines of "we feel this is a story made to be experienced alone" when the story follows the exact same beats the series has been using since forever is so lazy. Don't really care for the story, but I do like the characters thus far.