I Need to Be Honest About Tales of Arise 

Honestly, to me, a weird criticism about the long cutscenes and convos thing for a JRPG/RPG fan in general. I love that shit.

No offense but given a lot of the complaints you have with the game I feel like you beating the game in 40 hours is kind of telling of you skipping a lot of content and that probably is why you feel the way you do

I dunno about "characters besides Alphen and Shionne could be anyone and the story wouldn't be affected", I feel like Dohalim is pretty integral to themes of the story and is pretty well written, for my taste at least

Honestly I loved it, was my first tales game and still enjoyed my ride Edit: ok ok I get it that it’s first game bias, and I know we all have our own taste but can we not just have every comment say how bad it is.

As soon as you mentioned that this was developed through Covid, I was like “ohhhhhhhh yeahhhhhh, that can explain quite a bit”

i feel kinda attacked with your 40 hour clear when it took my nooby ass almost 180 hours to clear it

Finished it just today on hard difficulty and clocked 90 hours. After the credits rolled, I genuinely felt sad it was over. Didn't spend a single penny on DLCs and yet I don't feel like I'm missing out. Definitely buying the Beyond the Dawn expansion to see more Dahnan adventures. I thoroughly enjoyed this game. I can see why this isn't everyone's cup of tea. But if you like anime and JRPGs, like to maximize characters' strengths, enjoy a well designed & well thought-out combat and stats system, collect items and weapons, play quirky side quests and games like finding owls and fishing; enjoy a solid story that keeps you invested + likable characters, I don't see why you won't like this game. Great world design, character design, even the generic NPCs look decent. A solid 8.2/10 in my book. Not every game has to be a total masterpiece to be enjoyable.

Something I don't see people talking about enough is the fairly obvious reason why the bosses are designed to be brick walls to begin with: They wanted to encourage people to buy the P2W boosts. If I recall correctly, after you die a couple times on the same fight it'll even give you a nudge toward the shop. It's depressing to see microtransactions affecting game design of fan favorite franchises in this way.

I have to say, I'm getting toward the end of the game, and it's such a wonderful little game. It truly feels like a journey. There is so much to the story and so many memorable moments that the whole adventure 'FEELS' grand as you approach the conclusion, without taking up 150 hours of your time to get there. Though I do admit the story sort of rolls into the 'huh?' territory. But at least the characters seem to feel that way too. But the grand journey feeling while keeping to an average JRPG length is hard to do when it comes to RPGs. I disagree a bit about the supporting cast. Dohalim and Kasara have a fascinating dynamic. And Dohalim's introduction and path to becoming your character really helps the story take an interesting turn. But their relationship has it's own cool arc. I agree that Law and Rinwell aren't exactly deep. But I sort of think it works, because they are kids. It's like they are the little brother and sister. One thing I would tell anyone, that as annoying as they can be sometimes, making sure you activate all of the conversation prompts is really important to give depth to the supporting cast.

The way the story went down the drain after the 5th Lord was shocking… it was initially funny in a “so bad it’s good” way with the ~lets go find that spaceship subplot (when they first mentioned a space ship I thought… no way this has to be a joke and continued due to morbid curiosity but… they were not joking about going to space LOL) but the space adventure gets old fast and takes itself way too seriously. Lenegis was horrendous to play but IMO the space station after that was even worse, I think so many people just gave up or just checked out during Lenegis they don’t realize how horrendous the Hevrekt-35 story time is lol. - The game had minimal humor and most of its attempts at it were stilted and awkward, the party was not cohesive as a group IMO. My personal wish would be to make Law and Rinwell older so the banter could be between the personalities of the characters rather than every convo coming down to just two kids squabbling and the “older members” telling them to calm down. The only time I laughed my ass of was when [spoilers] Vholran came crashing into the final boss fight on a flaming broken space ship….. what a missed opportunity to make him a goofy villain who thinks he is scary but is anything but… everything about his character is goofy goober material but the game is dead serious about making him seem threatening. - I agree Shionne and Alphen hogged too much of the screen time. I feel like defenders of this game are fans of both of those characters and their love story. If you’re a fan of them, congratulations, this game will be bearable. If you’re not a fan of them well…. Good luck lol the rest of the characters suffer from too little space to grow. There was so much potential for them that wasn’t explored. Some reviews have said this game is too long but I disagree, for a Tales game I found it too short but I think that was more of a development issue than anything else. The game only feels long due to terrible exposition dumps and the story not being developed properly or satisfying to uncover. If this were a regular Tales game, each character would have their own little arc... the game felt like half of a Tales game to me. - The combat system is fun at the beginning as you learn new artes. But once you learn all the artes it does not evolve and late game becomes spamming the same 3 things: tres ventos, shooting star, and alphen’s burst artes on enemies who feel like rock walls to fight. No strategy whatsoever, I could determine if I would win or lose a fight based on how many Orange Gels and Life Bottles were in my inventory. - It seems like the AI for party members in combat was worse than usual. Also it seems like only 3 characters are really good in your party at one time and some characters must be controlled manually or they are useless. Half the party members have terrible AI, including the healers who leave party members hanging with less than half HP (yes I checked my strategies). I ended up having to control all 4 party members including the healer during fights, which I never do and also had no interest in doing. - Some of of the moral resolutions in this game are…. just plain bad. Law stopping Rinwell from taking her revenge on Almedreia is obviously everyone’s favourite punching bag but also the notion that the oppressive, power hungry, slave-driving Renans were “just everyday people with deranged fans living on Lenegis so we have to see them as multidimensional” was pure sh*t considering they were the most basic one dimensional “evul” villains during their time on screen. - In Tales of Symphonia, Colette accepts her fate as a sacrifice for the greater good and this adds to her character. In this game, Alphen makes the decision for Shionne to not be sacrificed, not saying I wanted her to be sacrificed but I saw that moment as an opportunity for a genuine moment of strength for her character but its delegated to Alphen so he can make his “victory and justice” speech which I’m sorry I liked him at the beginning but for him to go from lowest slave to the world’s greatest freedom fighter and then by the end of the game also the most morally righteous man in the universe was laughable and eyerolling. The group finds out they are only tiny pawns in the whole scheme of Lenegis, Renans, the Great Spirit… yet apparently this group is the only one capable of saving the universe? I’m sorry but I cannot see Law or even Alphen as great heroes… it’s just my opinion sorry!!! Lol. They slash the boss to pieces for 40 mins to save the universe but they seem as clueless as ever when it comes to solving oppression and racism once and for all. I groaned when Alphen gave his “you are the evul because of no friends” rant during the Vholran fight… I should’ve stopped listening to the dialogue and story well before this point lol.

This was my first tales game n I thought it was pretty good for me. If this one is considered decent can tell me wat tales game I should try next. Wouldn’t know how much better the story n gameplay is till I tried yet

I hate that Shionne and Rinwell felt so unatural with their arms resting so far from their bodies. I can tell they do this to avoid clipping through their costumes. They were two steps away from a T-Pose. This was really obvious at the start for Shionne before she got her poofy dress featured in a lot of the art.

My biggest takeaway from this game is the combat. While you get to experience flashy gameplay earlier it doesn’t mean much when every enemy has super armor. Compared to the other tales games learning all the characters doesnt feel rewarding. For example in Tales of Vesperia playing Yuri is always fun but learning a character like Judy or Raven changes your whole gameplay experience. Whereas in Arise I feel like Im punished for not playing Alphen or spamming Tres Ventas with Shionne. Alphens boost strike literally does everything to which doesnt help. But all of that aside my biggest problem with the game is the AI. Setting up the perfect formation, actions, and artes felt so nice in the older games. I was able to run Auto Battle on Unknown in the older games and had fun playing puppet master. But the AI in this game seems so braindead that I really feel like I have to do everything. This game is fun but its literally Tales of Potential.

>Arise has one of the greatest battle systems in the series In what way? It’s a complete shallow mess of an action game with a myriad of conflicting design choices. >enemy and boss interactions are neutered compared to previous entries (artes have less distinct features among them, the amount of hit states you can potentially inflict on an enemy has been lessened, with even shit like downing enemies locking them down to the ground, unable to be comboed, bosses will flat out ignore hitstun entirely, even humanoid ones) >you only get a max of 12 artes (6 for ground and 6 for air) when most modernish games allowed for at least 16 >artes are now separated into two categories, ground and aerial, vastly limiting your combo potential and leading to more repetition >if you want to keep an enemy in its break state, you’ll find yourself forced into doing aerial combos even if you probably won’t want to, making the aerial and ground play feel even more homogenized >Boost Artes/Strikes all have a singular answer and don’t particularly open up for interesting combo routes and gameplay applications In most action games (the big ones at least, not counting the shoveleware stuff) you can change the status of a normal enemy pretty easily. There are multiple types of hitstun, stun, aerial status, downed status, pinned on a wall etc. These go a long way in making combat against normal mooks enjoyable, since they open up a lot of possibilities. Hitting an enemy and having it suffer just damage and hitstun is the most basic interaction and it's fine, but if it's almost all you ever do, then it starts to become a problem. Tales games usually do a pretty good job with this, giving you a ton of artes with unique properties (pushback, launchers, downing, picking enemies up from a downed state, spinning, dizzying, relocating player characters behind the enemies, inflicting varying amounts of hitstun, comboing into themselves for multiple hits, and more) that not only had useful functions when it came to engaging enemies but made it satisfying as a result due to the amount of different hit reactions you can inflict. In Arise, however, there’s just not as many outside of knockdown with Boost Attacks, in which you can’t even pick up enemies from since it locks them to the ground, launchers, and some status effects here and there, which makes the combat feel less dynamic as a result. There's not really any room for real creativity or interesting situations arising from what you choose to do, there's a very limited number of possible game states in Arise with very limited answers. When an enemy actually is responding to being hit they only have a single type of standing hitstun since things like basic OTG mechanics are no longer present, and a stun/stagger state where all you can do is wail on them while they sit in place. Of course that's when they're not just plowing through attacks with super armor. There's no room for actual variety in combat since everything you do will lead to the exact same outcome. I can't consider swapping out animations to do the same thing to be actual depth or variety. As for the conflicting design choices, Arise wants to have you doing fast, flashy combos (which are really brainless to perform since you'll never create an interesting situation that you have to adapt to and you'll never have to think about what artes will go well together. Even something as simple as accounting for your arte choices causing knockdown is out the window.) yet it's also unresponsive with unnecessarily lengthy animations that can't be canceled, and spams super armor on every enemy. Generally having most of your moves be long animation locks is for games with slow, methodical combat (e.g. Monster Hunter, Souls) but Arise tries to have its cake and eat it too, unable to decide between being a poor copy of stuff like DMC or a poor copy of stuff like MonHun. Then you get to the boss encounters which invalidate half of the game mechanics. It's like you're playing a whole different game when you fight these guys. Their super armor is permanent meaning the pierce system doesn't matter, you can't do the combos they clearly tried to design game systems around, and to top it all off since you can't get them into hitstun you can't knock them into the air, which makes half of your assigned moveset useless on most of them. I like having options in action games. I like having a lot of different ways I can approach the same thing from the core systems. I like being able to find a lot of creative applications for a given tool. That's depth. None of this is present in these encounters where there is a single optimal way to approach them. If it's a big monster boss you dodge very highly telegraphed attacks and hit the flashing glowing weak point until it dies. For humanoid bosses, it's just dodge into attack, use your limited selection artes that come out fast enough, to reset and do it again. I tried the highest difficulty available and it was still so fucking boring and mindless. Then there’s the fact that they removed co-op, a standard feature across the series, just so they could make it like every other generic ARPG Bamco already puts out. It doesn't have the LMBS, fighting game influence, or fleshed out combat you used to be able to expect of a Tales game. It's a "Tales" game with none of the defining features of Tales. And while it threw out a lot of established, unique features of the series the ones it does retain suffered dramatic regressions. The strategy menu only affects healing behavior now and Overlimit is back to the way it was in GameCube Symphonia where you don't have control over it activating and can't see how close you are to entering OVL state either. Outside of the combat I thought it was still pretty mediocre. It's very frontloaded to give you a strong first impression but the world and dungeon design drop off rapidly. It's full of recycling, you'll never stop fighting recolors of the same handful of enemies from the first couple areas, and dungeons are full of copypasted rooms. In all honesty, this just screams to me that your takes on action-based combat are surface-level at best.

JRPG fans seemingly make excuses when it comes to games like Tales of Arise. It is inexcusable to have almost 2+ hours of cutscenes to walk a few steps with more cutscenes. Players assume the roles of a group of characters united in their fight against an oppressive regime. This narrative structure allows for diverse perspectives and experiences, adding depth to the gameplay. Again, strong start. As soon as the writers of the game go into the extreme of "both sides" of the conflict, blah blah blah, one is introduced to an "extremist" and his "hatred" of his oppressor is "too much." Once the "five lords" were defeated, the writers didn't know what story to tell, and now we are introduced to the "red woman." The exposition of "taking down the oppressive regime" was seemingly just brushed away. And, of course, the "reveal." ReNaNs DoNt ExIsT I am being generous; it is a solid 7.

80% of the game is amazing and very fun, the last 20% of the story is a drag and you can tell the writers were dragging the story just for the purpose of dragging it but then again the last 30 mins of the game is absolute peak, so it ends on a good and satisfying note and doesn't leave a sour aftertaste. Solid 8.5/10 game, had a great time playing

- one of the best looking JRPGs... like... ever ! -the first half of the story was pretty damn good. i loved it. but the moment you take that spaceship, you can just tell that SOMETHING happened with the development. -getting rid of 2d skits killed them. imo, tales skits in terms of look, peaked with berseria. berseria skits were long af, but they looked amazing. like straight up watching an anime. -combat is fun ! nothing crazy but it's one of good ones for tales. -Dohalim is one of the best looking characters ever. and had an amazing intro. only for it to be flushed down the drain and him ending up boring as hell. -Alphen, shionne and Kisara carried the cast. -rinwell is annoying as hell. 7/10 game but i bump it to 8/10 because it's the first tales game in AGES that actually tried to push the series into a new era. also glad that it sold well.

My opinion is the story is fine, it doesn't do enough to set up its twist. But it does what Symphonia was trying to do story wise much better. The biggest writing problems I had were they were a bit heavy handed in the wind region with Rinwell's characterization. And water region definitely showed cracks of the limitations of covid development. Combat wise? Huge problems. The boss fights are atrocious, anything considered a boss can't be launched and not all bosses are large. So a system designed around ground to air back to ground combat falls apart immediately in the fights you're supposed to use them in. Characters like Dohalim and Law feel tragic in the late game fights if you want to utilize their aerial prowess. And not using Alphen late game is just painful. The most tragic part about it is I'm sure they did this for balance reasons, but then in that case just don't make launching central to your game... Polish wise it's a little sloppy there were a lot of grammar mistakes on release, but again, covid development. I consider the game a solid 7/10 which is alright, but I have lost faith in the Tales series I think its interesting you find the series innovative because I don't think the series has done anything innovative in quite a long time. Tales has always felt like the Dragon Quest of Action RPGs because the core of every game is largely the same.

I’m a grizzled veteran of RPG’s and have to say, this one hit me in the feels like few others. Not sure why, but I enjoyed the ride from beginning to end, genuinely cared for the characters, even teared up multiple times throughout the game, which is not at all normal for me. Only sad thing is I doubt I could replay it, since the story is pretty much on rails-nothing to do differently.

Comes out on Gamepass tonight. Worth a shot when it costs nothing.

It just felt like it was missing something overall and the removal of battle skits definitely didn't help. It didn't have any humor, I didn't relate to any of the characters, the combat felt streamlined, I could go on and on. I personally think Tales of Xillia was the last good Tales game, some would say Berseria although I didn't like the combat system in that. Zestiria even had more charm than this game. It's all about graphics now but it's just not fun, it has no charm whatsoever. Vesperia and Graces f are my favorite.

I’m only two hours In its good to me so far

Tales of Arise's main problem for me was definitely the bland characters. I can't even finish the game because I just didn't feel connected with any of the characters. I've played tales of symphonia dawn of the new world which some may say is the worst tales games of all time but at least they had Tenebrae.

I finished this back when it released, and a few years later I actually don't remember a single thing about the story. Says a lot about the game lol

Would say it's more or less a decent or good game in the end. Story was solid in the first half, still a bit solid int he first part of the 2nd half but more or less nosedived once you got through the reveals on the nature of Dahna and Rena from Hevkrekt 88 (think that was it's name). They shouldn't have went with the swap with the main villain that it did and just kept the expected enemy (the Renans and Renan Sovereign that won the last Crown contest). They should've expanded on Lenegis a bit more (by the way the whole 2 hours on Lenegis without any combat you made is BS, there is a dungeon there even if it's fairly short so you'd get about 30 to 40 minutes of combat there) and maybe even made it the final location as you didn't really do much on Rena or they needed to expand Rena to about 3 to 4 dungeons (and maybe one more EX dungeon there and on Dahna) and at least 2 towns instead of making Rena just the final dungeon. Characters weren't the series best (Abyss and Berseria had the best imo) but I will say as far as Main characters go Alphen is my first MC who I liked the most in the cast and was my favorite character to play as on top of that (of which no other Tales game's MC is my favorite character to play as). Combat was solid even if CP limited you to some degree and is imo was far more fun than the arte tree games (which I don't like arte trees as with the art trees I can't use whatever arte I want from the arte tree at any time without going through the other artes in the tree or doing some other action like dodging first), with that said my favorite combat system as far as arte inputs go is Xillia/Hearts R's free chaining combat system. And while some people didn't like how you couldn't juggle bosses/enemies to death I actually prefer it as being able to take the enemy into the air and juggle them to death or keep them stun locked had been making the series far too easy imo for the last 5 to 10 entries in the Tales series...if they didn't do this than maybe going with Hearts R's counter system while allowing juggling and giving each enemy a fast, normal speed, and delayed counter (indicated either by different colored symbol like: '!' or some other obvious tell) it could've been just as good if not better than what Arise went with. As for the tanky aspects of the enemies I can understand why people didn't like that however it was more or less obvious to me it was necessary as if they enemies HP pools weren't as big as they were we would be killing them too quickly to make use of the boost strike mechanic in the game as enemies would be dying far too quickly to fill the gauge with even half their current HP (hell even on the harder difficulties I still wind up beating them as quickly as I did in older games as I just fill the boost gauge and boost strike enemies one after the other and finish them all in 40 seconds or less 90% of the time)...for bosses I guess it'd be the biggest issue but even there you'd have alphen's flame edges and Rinwell's spells that can quickly rinse the boss's HP as well, especially with good builds/the right skills slot into equipment (and unlike the last 2 games the skill system is much more straightforward and you can manipulate it far more easily). AI: Enemy AI is probably the best in the series yet as they are very aggressive even on normal difficulty (comparable to older game's highest or second highest diffiuclites) and they don't stand around doing nothing for as long as past games (3 to 5 seconds even on harder difficulties) between attacks (more so with mobs but even bosses had done this a lot) and are constantly on the move/attacking at least one party member (usually you as the one issue with the AI is that they all seem to have a natural tendency to target the player even if they stack decrease aggo skills onto equipment and ignore Kisara when she has aggro up on her). Now as for Ally AI it is probably the worst in the series due to all allies being suicidal most of the time and finding some way to get themselves killed as well as the fact the Ally AI management is beyond trash due to being party based rather than individual character based like all past Tales games were...of all the issues Arise had this is imo the biggest one (even more so than CP which I never really had an issue with myself). Skill system was one of the better ones in the series imo and definitely the best of the rng equipment systems that started back with Zestiria due to how it lets you directly slot in skills you want from one piece of equipment in place of skills on the equipment you want to use but has skills you don't want (granted the equipment you take the skill from needs to be maxxed leveled which is determined by how many skill slots it has so either level 2 minimum with 1 skill slot or level 5 max with 4 skill slots). Besises that there's also what ore you used to make the accessory which determines the master skill (which will always be the same for that type of ore used)). While Zestiria did allow this as well the process to do that was ridiculously convoluted and you could accidentally overwrite the skill you want to keep with a different skill and to get additional factors like x2/x3 modifiers to the equipment you needed to upgrade it to +99 and sacrifice the equipment to a Lord of the Land to get the x2/x3 modifier for the skill on the first/top slot of the equipment, in Berseria's there was no real direct way to slot in skills but instead you could manipulate what would likely roll by changing the difficulty level once you go specific items (usually from bosses, story and side quest related) however it was still a rng chance to get anything good along with that skill you want (if another skill that unlocks from that difficulty level didn't roll instead). Skits the new style is fine imo though tons of people complained about it...either this new art style or the old one can work imo. With that said they need to make more interesting skit dialogue and ones that don't really pertain to the main story as much like Arise did for the next game as Arise's skits while fine were just that: fine, not great liek say Abyss, Xillia, or Berseria's skits. Music was also fine, nothing as memorable as some older games though. Graphics and art style are best in the series (though I'd take a dip if my other concerns were fixed). Exploration/dungeon/town design was mostly a step up from the Xillia to Berseria games but not as great as the rest of the series...the fact we can't enter most buildings is a turnoff (though the entire industry seems to be pulling this shit) and in dungeons I'd like either if they used more puzzles or Ys style traps or both to make them a bit more interesting. Field maps also feel good in size but need more to do in them (they didn't attempt parkour in one 1 house in the wind region to get a chest but that was the only time they really did it...should've done that more given they gave us a jump button). Overall the game's a 8.5/10 imo and probably ranked around 5th for all the localized Tales games (if Rebirth, Destiny DC, Destiny 2, Innocence R, and Phantasia Nakiri Dungeon X were localized it probably would drop below Rebirth and Destiny DC and maybe Innocence R too though to around 7th or 8th).

This game was at its peak at the revelation of 2nd lord.

Okay, your points are vaild, but i hate how you didnt mention bryce papenbrook, voice of Law and kirito, who has also voiced eren yager of attack on titan and has had various other roles in anime, movies and games

I completely agree. The story flat-lined in the second half. I got so bored. Cutscene after cutscene including so many skits. I was so glad to just finish the game. It started out strong but became tedious.

I honestly have no idea how you finished the game in 40 hours. My first playthrough was 80. Post game took another 10 or so. All side quests owls and artifacts found. I feel like you missed out on several things. Im not sure why you felt that everyone but shionne and alphen felt like sude characyers when they literally get more lines of dialogue than those 2. Everyone is extremely fleshed out by the end and we understand them and their motivations, fears, aspirations, they even made everyone a couple by the end believably. The only thing i would say i didnt enjoy were the few anime cutscenes which felt out of place.

As soon as you go to space, is when things get so rough with this game. Every enemy is just a combat sponge, the story takes a nose dive, the skits are never ending, even the voice actors even sound bored and confused themselves. First half is amazing, and then it legit dwelves in scientology reasoning for plot development.

Ooph for me this games combat was pretty, but didn't feel engaging. The plot pulled the old Tetsuya Nomura: If we make it seem really complicated, then perhaps the player won't realize it has nothing to say gimmick. Shion and her awful attitude grate on me the entire game, and Alphonse simping for her is just like... why? It kind of amuses me that both Tales and FFXVI went into this slave like story, with more adult themes, and managed to essentially be tone deaf in the west. While I appreciate the graphics being pretty, I still can't wrap my head around these game companies deciding its more intelligent to almost go bankrupt with every title, instead of producing multiple rock solid games with worse graphics. Basically this game is a thinly veiled Beauty and the Beast love story, that makes me cringe.

Tales of Graces F was my first tales game. Its combat is hard to beat (only Xillia comes close). I still enjoyed Arise's combat but I loved how Graces had a system that allowed me to use nearly all my combat abilities without having to constantly go into menus to change what abilities are slotted......even while having more abilities than arise. Arise seemed to simplify combat in a lot of ways unfortunately.....but I did like Rinwell's casting system.

This game is amazing. Never played a Tales game. Just went in blind. Took a couple of hours to get hooked. When i got a few good combat skills and bonded with the characters, i couldnt put it down. The story and world are brilliant. The love story is sweet, and not cringe. And it refreshingly has a happy ending, thank you

I'm 2 hours into the game and really can't get into the combat style. Should I push on or just drop it

I agree with all of that actually, Tales of Arise being my first tales game, it gave me the impression that every other 'Tales of-' games have bosses with a ridiculous amount of HP. In contrast, this was one of the few JRPGs I managed to finish from the top to bottom + Beyond the Dawn expansion, I liked the flashy effects, how the party members are ALIVE and fights along while having some small banters here and there. Idk what to say though about Beyond the Dawn, it felt... watered down, and the finale with the god awful two-phase boss with 400k+ hp at first then 800k+ at its second phase, note that I played in Normal difficulty, it felt like a chore to keep dodging, chanting, cast spells and heal, was the ending good for Beyond the Dawn? NO!!! THEY DIDn'T LET ALPHEN FINISH HIS PROPOSAL TO SHIONNE!!!! 0/10

The combat is easy compared to many action games. There are so many difficulties to pick from you have no point. You are just either poor or miserable. Probably both. The story is incredible, the art direction, the combat design...everything is beautifully done.

i think in general since Vesperia two things have happened: An oversimplification of the world design and overcorrection of the battle mechanics. The latter was slower to come, as Xillia was more of a natural progression of that style, but they really began nerfing player potential and giving bosses super armor around that time (arguably even earlier starting with the PS3 vesperia port). They've kinda been trying to make it so players are less broken and can't combo bosses to death. IMO getting that strong always needed to be earned, but now its at tthe point where your attacks dont phase bosses at all and youre just chipping their health away while getting hit by attacks that do too much damage and you're just reviving and praying the whole time. The world design thing is easier to see. While the towns may look nice, they lack depth and exploration. Dungeons are also barely there, providing little to no challenge and many have the same visual language which makes them less distinct. Arise is a very good game, but i do think that the tales team needs to create richer games if they want to stay afloat. I do love this series, the battle system, characters etc but its been a while since one hit all the right notes. I'll also agree w/ the story stuff. Tales needs to bring their stories a bit more down to earth and keep it there as long as possible. Abyss has one of the best narratives because its core theme stayed at he forefront. Arise was more concerned with a huge anime twist than its plot imo.

this might be the quietest cast in a tales game and the least fleshed out

I was playing this, even bought it on Steam after starting it on Game Pass. I liked the combat but after the halfway stage it goes down hill, after cut scenes you get 3 skits each time, which offer nothing and really hate the pacing. The enemies become endless meaning you get fed up of the combat. I thought id beat the final boss and oh no its still going…i dropped it. After watching this I’m glad i gave up. Really disappointed after such a string start.

I played tales of arise in hard mode, sure the hp bar for the mini boss and bosses seems large but if you know how to grind properly (meaning fighting all the enemies you encountered and not skipping them) you will be in the right level when fighting the bosses. I remember I only die 2 times in hard mode, 1 is in balseph 2nd phase because of the fire spirit attack. The 2nd time I die is that indignation bullshit the 2nd lord pull out of nowhere!

Arise is amazing

OMG, I've never experienced anything so hard/taxing in my gaming life than that last simulator fighting each of the bosses separately, an additional boss, and then ALL the bosses together with ZERO rest in-between.

I had to bump the game down to easy just because of the ridiculous health pools

It's a good game, but I think it is my least favorite of the 9 tales games I've played. Even Zestiria I think I've enjoyed more.

to me, I never really mind any of the combat system. But the story and the characters are what keep me going. But for some reason, I couldn't with Arise. or maybe i'm just bias after coming from Berseria....

Of the 5 tales games I’ve played, arise is ranked 4th. I would go 1. Symphonia 2. Berseria 3. Vesperia 4. Arise 5. Zestiria.

This game is a 6/10 for me. Meanwhile, Berseria is a 9, Symphonia is a 8.8. Innocense R and Abyss are 8. Zestiria is a 7. Arise is decent, but it is, to me, one of the worst games in rhe series for me.

I loved this game the combat was amazing story I mean it alright serviceable the characters I really enjoyed their interactions together. I don’t know why this game gets so much hate.

Completely agree with this synopsis. The game had all of the right pieces to be a great game, but never jelled them correctly. So it just became a "fun to play" but not really great game.

Loved this game along with its flaws. The story really did fall off for me and the early game bosses are no joke. A right step in the direction imo. Xillia is still my favorite.

I miss the sense of discovery from older tales games. You could revisit a town/dungeon after awhile and unlock new stuff and quests. Just take Eternia for example. I played it blind without a guide and there was so much to discover. Finding optional Craymels, secret dungeons and bosses, unlocking the ability to fly etc. Every game from Xillia onwards, there seemed to be little to no incentive to explore anymore 😔

I like this game. Played Zestiria, Berseria, and then this one (the games who forewent the TP mechanic in favour of AG crystals allowing for a more flexible combat without relying on TP restoration items) I just wish it played smoothly like Berseria did. I feel like the ability to chain link multiple artes like the old games (normal arte -> master arte -> arcane arte) went really well. Arise removed that in favour of artes being able to flow into each other, but I wish they kept the chaining.

Personally I liked the game, my only issue is enemy variety. Maybe because I don't care that much about stories in JRPGs because I did, I would only play very few.

Im not a fan of anime games with super flashy combos and punchbag enemies that dies from my 10k hundred blade of agony stabs

If you enjoy anime style games...but hate anime tropes...Tales of Arise is amaizing. For an anime stlye game it is soo mature. The cast is not dump to make the story interesting. They discuss things and even spoiler the player a bit while comming to conclusions. No stupid child protagonist, no cringe comedy (at least most of the time), no woman that feels like tropies, ... I love it.

I love this game it has become one of my favorites of all time it’s not perfect but the characters story and gameplay did it for me the dawn dlc made me feel like I came home to some long term friends I haven’t seen in a while the art style is amazing in my opinion and can’t wait for a sequel and or next tales of game

I feel like I’ve played a totally different game…

You missed the whole point of Arises story and it being about Romance. For somebody that likes other tales games, not being able to enjoy arise story tells me enough.

its mid lets be real getting some things right just means its bad and u have to cope so much is weakened for broad appeal jrpg to the general masses and it shows

I REALLY hated this game. My wife and I have been playing the Tales games for some time and were crushed to find that this latest game had no simultaneous multiplayer option. That was a big reason we loved these games (we could play them together) and since the previous games in the series had simultaneous multiplayer we didn't check if this one would have it too. We still decided to give it a try, but we found the characters to be more like ridiculous anime parodies, and the story (what we could stand of it before we shut it off forever) was trite and insultingly weak. This game was a huge disappointment for us.

i give the game a 5 out 10 man. the pacing ass. the story is decent but characters are annoying plus the combat gets boring plus the low amount of enemies just colour swaps. ballsack😂 i called him that too

I im sorry bro but ive replayed this multiple times I have to disagree with allot of that

I could forgive the bland story and repetitive combat if the character interactions were good, but Arise botched that as well. Going from Vesperia which has amazing cast of characters that acutally feel like friends to Arise was just jarring. I really liked Shione but i could careless about the other five.

One of the standout games in this series, the new direction was a success. However, it left us craving more, which has yet to materialize. Expectations for streamlined releases akin to past ones have not been met after 3 years, a prolonged period for a Tales game. Hoping for a new release soon, especially with Sega's RPG dominance through titles like LAD, LAD: Infinite Wealth, and the Persona series. While Namco used to trail Square Enix, the latter's financial woes have shifted the RPG crown to Sega, Atlus, and RGG, given the quality of their games. Yearning for news from the Namco camp.

you are quite right, but I think only playing 40ish hours doesnt really convey the whole picture. Gamespot review is actually the better but its waay to under developed, Im 75 hours in and the end is still Id say 20 hours away from me, I still have like 3 super high level dungeons to clear and I havent even done the high level training grounds... so yeah, the game IS good, but it has WAY, WAY, WAAAY too much dialogue and skits, its too linear at some point and the world although in potential great, gets puddle level of develop. I feel like this same game, with way slower combat (even turn based) with actual real towns, shops, and useful and more interesting npcs, + a proper Overworld Map and a fast way to transverse it and more evenly paced story/development (it took me 40 hours only to get the full party and the first arc of the story cleared) could have been truly amazing. I feel it way too streamlined and made for the casual masses than to the jrpg niche fans (also with DLC clearly inbreed in its design mechanics, aka bulletsponge bosses and super strong massive Zeugles)

Made it 35 hours and then gave up. Combat was way too spongey

The story < the skits and side quests

I agree about the second half of the story, it felt disjointed from what the first part was telling, like they chickened out of the natural conclusion and instead gave you the typical "kill God" ending. It was bland and caused whiplash for me since I was so excited to play a Tales game with a really mature and dark theme. They could have run with what story they were telling but let it go just as it was getting good!

I have started playing it and it's not that bad.. Chill after some full day of work and easy combat

I do not, agree I found the game very enjoyable, and I had great time with it! And I did not feel as the story was rushed at all! It is lengthy, I agree, and it took me around 70 hours to finish the first part, but it was well worth the time!

idk the story is better than other tales ive played so is the gameplay characters and world. the fighting cutscenes also look epic and had weight to them. i only had to grind for the end game bosses which is not all that hard if you go to the right locations

Sorry you had a bad time with the story but personally I loved every part of it

Is the DLC worth it?

Then tales of legendia is the best tales ever.

Since this is my first ever Tales game i gotta say i enjoyed it A LOT. The bosses being literal sponges is 1000% true and DEFINITELY got tedious, but besides that i thought it was a great time. The combat is very similar to ff7 remake which i think is great so it was extremely natural to jump into. I LOVE Alphen and Shionne and there development together throughout the game, it was a highlight for me. Some negatives are definitely bosses being sponges, that is legit the worst part of the game but it does get better as you level up and some segments being a little drawn out (I'm looking at you Lenegis 😂) Also the fact that after everything is done, we get a GREAT montage of images showing the aftermath and the characters stories....but we dont get to play it 😅 I know i sure would've loved to play out the wedding atleast 💯. Overall Tales of Arise got me into the series and i cant wait to play previous installments (Probably zestiria and berseria next because there connected) which should i play first btw? Let me know y'all 🙏

wait, you never mentioned that you can switch of characters between in middle the battle and the other level of insanity in terms of combos that cames to make that. Well, when i finished the game, i feel sad since it finally over. That problem about bosses with alot of hp, i used the debuffed artes to deal with it or Law boost gauge to end them quickly.

Tales of Arise is my favorite Tales of game and one of my favorite games ever, interesting and wonderful story, great gameplay, beautiful visuals 👌🏻for 2nd I put Tales of Xillia 1 & 2

They could've shorten this to like 20 hours prolly. For every 2 step you take you get into some sort of mundane conversations. Harms the pacing alot

My biggest complaint with this game will always be that the economy is so incredibly stingy with no good way to make money and the bosses just being giant HP sponges with too much super armor. The former problem is especially bad because it gets so much better if you purchase the DLC artifacts that cut the cost of everything and make things like cooking and item crafting only take one of each ingredient to make. It reeks of executive meddling to sell DLC

Hated this tales. To much racism story.

The plot ranted self straightened to the ground? Let me guess you think kingdom hearts is a masterpiece with the not convoluted story.

(Long Read Ahead) Really liked the in depth analysis. While story is a games biggest selling point for me, I can forgive it so long as the combat is good. Honestly, the combat has potential. But it needs a lot of polishing. As u said, the glaring problem is the massive HP pool of enemies. One way they could work around this is to make breaking the enemies more rewarding. Increase the damage done to enemies while in this state to balance the massive HP pool. Also, I really wish all characters are able to block / dodge albeit with some limitations or penalties rather than removing it altogether. While Perfect Dodging / Blocking raises the ceiling of gameplay, it doesn't really make the combat experience better. Another thing is how bad the strategy system is. If you have played previous tales games, this will hit u hard. Some complained about how weapons cannot be brought on shops. This really never bothered me, but I guess for some it can hinder progression. I like the semi open world approach. Though, I wish they just went all out open world to encourage exploration. While the world is pretty vast and beautiful, it feels somewhat limiting. I think the world building is good, and things feel right in place. I just wished you can explore more of it. That said, I can't really say I hate it but nor do I love it. I appreciate BamCo for trying new things. Its a pretty bold thing to do. I know that they need to appeal to new audiences to keep the revenue going and keep this series alive. That said, I wish they would spend more time polishing it. And as far as Micro-T goes.... love it or hate it, it's up to you. I love customizing my character tbh, even buying is fine so long as it's for a reasonable price.. Thanks for reading and all the best to your channel :))

So I know that a lot of people will complain about the second act of this game but I actually really liked it and it felt like it was decently built up. Going through the game I had a lot of questions about a lot of stuff that just didn't seem to feel right and when the characters themselves started to ask questions it felt really good. Usually a gane would lampshade or outright ignore what feels like plot holes but the characters themselves start to realize that somethings up once they get some time to slow down. It felt like the game WANTS you to question things and not take things at face value so when the characters start to question things it makes you realize you were onto something.

Did i enjoy this as much as Xillia, Berseria or Vesperia? no Did i still really enjoy it? hell yeah. I was a bit peeved at the ridiculous Gald cost of things and the microtransactions but after unlocking the farm and selling off unneeded monster parts i realized the game just gives you gald in a different way. Sure the gameplay loop of slay monsters, sell parts, buy items to beat boss, progress and do it again might seem boring but the incredible combat system makes it much more fun. The game is very flawed. but if this is the future of the series, i think it's bright.

I enjoyed the combat in Arise more than the combat in Berseria but every other part of the game felt like generic anime garbage to me. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes I love tropey anime garbage, but Berseria did a pretty good job of mixing up the formula and keeping me guessing about the characters. Going back to a hyper generic heroic fantasy, felt terrible to me. I still remember the scene where they run into one of the bad guys, and one of the good guys takes the killing blow in order to save their life, because “we are the good guys and we should only murder people when we are not angry about it.” I couldn’t finish the game after that.

I will never give a like or suscribe to someone who cannot pronunce FF X like it should be pronounced : Final Fantasy Ten (X) learn your roman numbers damn. (Sorry for bad english Im not a native english speaker)

i didn’t think the boss fights were that tough? just level up your characters a little bit, I typically aimed to be the same level or one below. Only boss with a lot of HP to me so far has been Edna and that’s obviously end game so we expect that.

Bandai Namco did dirty to Arise and whole Tales Series, Even though Arise was Massive Success just like Synphonia and finally have a chance to beat Final Fantasy for ONCE

I liked the characters, combat, visuals. But after defeating the Lord's I lost interest. The sci Fi turn of the story does not interest me and like you mentioned with the spongey health, the game is really padded and I just felt exhausted by that point. I think the writing has some strong points but like you say - very tropey. The basic set up and concept is really cool but it doesn't have the originality to execute on the potential.

Disappointed that once again a review of tales of arise is done and once again the theme of the story (slavery/colonization/revolution) is not mentioned and even worse the fact that it pushes a centrist "why can't the slaves and the slavers just get along😢" messege.

Ngl tob is one of the BEST I have played in a good while compared to tales of vesperia and tales of Symphonia i would say on par in certain ways .

I have mixed feelings about the combat system on one hand combat against mobs were great but the bosses were a mess i wish the combat system was like star oceans combat constant fluidity even against bosses.

I don't think you're patient at all lol. You straight up went after the most tiny shit. You not out here to enjoy something, you out here to judge everything

Was vesperia the last good tales

Needless to say Tales of Arise is actually looking good JRPG with its visuals, mechanics etc. But the most major problem is that ,like you have mentioned in this video, the boss fights HP is really fricking too much and it drinks all of your CP as well as consumable materials along the way. We can easily say that it seems pretty harsh to new players while playing at it. Although if you surpass this somehow even if you are excruciably emotionally damaged, you can overall enjoy in this game.

it's a great and fun game...

I thought the second part was even better than the first. I also played the complete game in automatic mode.

Man arise literally killed my interest for this series lol, the game kept getting worse and worse the more it went on, the combat was super boring because of the sponge enemies, the characters were generic af, the only one i liked was dohalim, not because he was particularly good but because he was the most solid, he didn't do or say any stupid shit, he was just kinda there and did what he could to help. I've tried vesperia the series "best" i played 20 hours and i still need to understand the hype, i also tried berseria and while more than good it didn't capture me maybe it's just me but symphonia is the last possibility that the series has to make me a fan

I kinda just had the urge one day to buy a game that looked cool and play it. No questions. No reviews. This was gonna be that game, but it honestly looked to good to be true. So I held off. But now it got added to Gamepass, so might as well lol.

The combat is horrendous and the game is artificially difficult so you will buy the micro transactions.