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.
Good for you. My first tales was Symphonia Dawn of the New World. Arise has great gameplay I just felt the story fall off after his mask came off. Idk why I kinda got bored with the plot after that. I'm about to replay it again through game pass. Maybe I need to replay it to really get into the story.
All due respect, that is probably WHY you loved it - first game bias. Arise is truly a terrible experience through and through with very few redeeming qualities that aren't just the jingling keys effect. As a game in general, it is....mediocre? Shoddy combat, pretty visuals, bland characters, forced and awkward romance, and garbage-tier writing. The only real upside it has is how good and flashy it looks, but again, jingling keys. And all of this compounds tenfold when compared to other Tales games. Arise is a stock standard unimpressive-to-bad game overall, but it is a FUNERAL PYRE of a Tales game.
I liked arise, however in hindsight, having played almost every tales game with the exception of the japanese locked ones that still don't have a translation patch, it really is just an ok game with an ok story and amazing combat ruined by its systems (especially the absurd amounts of hp the bosses have making it so that the harder difficulties just become a slog if you don't spam the flaming sword artes with alphen) This game could've been amazing if bamco didn't put a lot of emphasys on graphics, the game looks beautiful, but the time they took to develop the shaders stole a lot of time to actually produce a good story here (and I'm not even doom posting here, I'm pretty sure there are reports saying that of the 6/7 years the game took to develop 4/5 years were mainly used to develop the shaders and learn how to work with unreal engine and the reason for the delay that arise hadwas because they needed more time to develop and finish the 3rd act of the story, which is the most rushed arc, like in many tales games to e fair, but still it feels especially rushed here in arise) As it stands the game is carried by Alphen and Shionne's romance and hootle Hopefully in the future, as the shaders are already developed, the tales studio can just focus on making a good narrative, because the premise of arise was truly good, but just didn't have the time to develop into its full potential But hey, good news is you started with the most beautiful game in the series so far, but also the most mid game in the series so far, there's so many great titles here with much better stories to tell and so many combat systems that honestly rival what arise has For best games try out symphonia or vesperia as probably the most accessible and beloved games in the series Abyss is on ps2 and 3ds and has an hd texture pack made by fans that makes it look very appealing and beautiful And finally, if you have the ps3, there's a bunch of tales games that you can buy there but the best ones by far are the xillia duology and berseria, the xillia games have probabky what I would consider the best combat in the series, with a lot of characters with a bunch of playstyles and combo potential and berseria has one of the best stories with some of the best graphics the series can offer (especially if you play it on pc with some texture mods, the game looks so good)
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.
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.
you sir, got a like for this. You see i liked the game, not a big fan of jrpg but i liked for the beggining the trailer of this game and i was like hell yeah and started it without know it was jrpg. in 2nd place maybe its my bad, i think i dont have patience in sometimes and that makes me be a different player, more casual (my playthrough was 35 hours and the dlc was like 4 xD). 3rd im here becouse i loved the story and idk why i want more, they did (for me personaly) (a fcking masterpiece, forgeting about all of that of if you dont want to speaks about it dont do it)(I don't get used to it and I never will.) So as said i want more, in that way im wathing videos on JP, it was better for me and i did the bad thing to play it on english. its well done english but Jp its like dude, the voice have feeling, in english i dont get it in that way). sorry for the text and the bad grammar, i had to say it to can continue with my life. i hope next tales of gets romance story again. If not thenm will be sad xD.
You are completely right with your last point. Not every game has to be a masterpiece for you to enjoy it. As long as the game is solid and fun, that's all I need.
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
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
Adding on to that- Tales of Vesperia (amazing cast and group dynamic), Tales of the Abyss (amazing story with great character development), and Tales of Symphonia (gives a peek into the origins of many Tales of norms and a pretty compelling story and cast that all have depth)
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.
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
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.
That is a very good point. I only died maybe two or three times during my playthrough on normal so I did not see that screen or I would have made it a point to include it.
This issue is more noticeable when the boss mechanics are challenging, especially for Ganabelt, who can cast Indignation in the base game. With mods we can enjoy the Ganabelt fight and stop him from casting Indignation, as it was originally intended without requiring any extra purchases.
That's why he's complaining that the characters aren't fleshed out, he didn't talk to many of the NPCs and clearly didn't do most of the side quests. I finished at 90hours and thoughts all the characters we're perfectly fine (some better than others, as is always the case).
Ngl that's about how long I took to clear Symphonia my first time. I spent 72 hours stumbling around trying to get to the freakin' Tower, FIRST VISIT. Don't feel bad, bro, knocking Arise out in 40 hours means he probably did the story and not much else.
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.
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.
It later gets into Music and SFX thats almost identical to final fantasy 7 remake(Arise has Moogles.....but you got to guess what the are....even has a moogle forest. It uses the unreal engine so its gets crazy beautiful with the lightings and trees. ) For secret boost in game change difficulty to Hard when fighting normal enemies to get twice the points. Change to normal if boss to hard. No penalty.@@Miloproductions1
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.
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 didn’t even finish it. After forcing myself to finish FF7 Rebirth and it not being worth it i wasn’t gonna go down that route again. Id rather have my time back 😂
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.
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.
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
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.
happened the same to me... uff man I almost dropped it several times. The only thing I could do is keep going and play at least a couple of hours as continously as possible until I would finally fkng understanding it. At around 40 hours of game you will unlock all players and a ton of abilities, and just THEN it really gets good imho
- 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.
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.
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).
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
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
It took me _forever_ to not hear and see Law as Makoto Naegi from Danganronpa. Hopped into Final Fantasy Type-0 immediately after this, and there's Papenbrook again!
>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.
@@matth1641you and the other guy hate change. You're a grown man now, things evolve. This was advertised for the new generation. I got Vesperia for free on PC and never touched it, but I played the demo for Arise and it appealed to me way more. I already played all of DMC, I know what it feels like to see a franchise change dramatically, and I don't hate it. Quality of life features are a must, I don't care if games are getting easier, I'll play Elden Ring for a million hours before I even think to play the old ass dark souls games.
@@GameoftheYear-fx4mq I'll be real with you for a second. That combat was not fun. I am a Dark Souls mega fan and I have platinumed all of the old FromSoft games (besides DS2) and of course Elden Ring (as is customary). Tales of Arise does not understand difficulty. Huge health bars and repetetive action does not a compelling ARPG make. I enjoyed the story, art style and characters so that was pretty decent (the themes are a bit wonky as a narrative back bone when you think for a second about the whole Renan and Danan thing from a thematic perspective vs how it's presented in the story).
@@GameoftheYear-fx4mqI don't hate change at all, change is important otherwise things get boring. However, the changes need to be good. You don't sound like you've played any other Tales of games before, but Tales often makes changes to it's formula with each game that comes out. Back in the day, you had separate teams working on different Tales games and they each had their own style. However, there were certain defining features that would appear in some form in every Tales game regardless of which team made them. Without these features, Tales would be a generic action RPG. Arise does not have a lot of those features, and the ones that it keeps it does a poor job with. The problem with Arise begins back when they were first developing the game. It was initially supposed to be a completely new IP, having nothing to do with Tales. Halfway through development it was decided by Bamco to make this project into the next Tales of game. So Tomizawa and the God Eater team decided to do the bare minimum necessary to brand the game as a Tales of game while keeping it similar to their initial project's vision. It was never meant to be Tales in the first place. I would be surprised if Tomizawa has ever played a Tales game before because it's clear from interviews that he views Arise as a masterpiece above every other Tales game in the series. He especially believes the story is far above any other Tales game, which is laughable. I find this game to be disrespectful to long time fans, but I can understand why new (and old) fans would like this game.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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 😔
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.
It was a great game, the director had to make a decision, they had 2 options they could become more like Bayonetta and Nier automata, or they could become more like Persona, it is obvious what option they took and 90% of the time invested on developing went to perfecting its combat system. The exploration is still mediocre, the world is rigid and it feels like a painting more than a semi real and alive world. Because everything goes into making the combat system work. The one truly disappointing moment was the ending that was truly rushed
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 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!
It's unfortunate they went that route which is something they also did in another game. It just feels like a weak cope out when this game and the other one (hint hint Vesperia) could have succeeded without having to add in generic save the world final boss.
@@Natquerx I think the reasoning is because the writers are too scared to deviate from the formula or don't know how to raise the stakes without it being about God or another all-powerful entity.
It was enough to git me to stop playing it I got so tired, I was satisfied and then the game sold me what felt like a whole other game I was not interested in ....I am currently trying to finish it
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.
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 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
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!
I still felt like the bosses had a bit too much hp. I struggeld like only really with like 4 or 5 bosses and the nonexsistent gald in the game. Like lord 2,3, the two doggies and i think like maybe one additional was hard. Rest was fine, bullshit was really the small gald amount you get.
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.
I did platin +100% the dlc and I can see what you mean. Well, you can farm around 500.000 with the silver dog tags. But yes, for over half the game, untill I could somewhat craft good accessory, nearly every boss one tapped me on normal, leveling is basically impossible thanks to reducing EXP and the fact that every animation locks you, be it normal attack, skills or even landing from a jump. And then, after around level 60, the game became way to easy, even at expert. And the aggro system sucks balls... mc (had a different name in german) and kisara had bouth aggro plus L and Rinwell (my main) less aggro L, and the boss still focused me after 3 skills. It got so annoying that I just run circles around the last lord and let him play catch wile the outher 3 beat him to death.
@@Natquerx as a newcomer, no, there are better tales games, i recommend "Tales of The Abyss" as a first tales game. but as a secend tales game, its a good pick.
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.
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
@@Flibbertyjib wow you did a fantastic job at misinterpreting my comments. The point is that there is a significant chance he bum rushed through the game, skipping all side content and cutscenes. And if you're the type of person to do that and want to complain about the game or just say it's bad your opinion literally is invalid
@@Flibbertyjib you really are. I'm not suggesting that he play more of the game since he's not enjoying it but that he's the reason he didn't enjoy the game. Skipping content and not having resources and EXP will make any RPG feel awful and that's really his own fault if he did that. And as someone who's beaten this game twice, getting through it in only 40 hours means he almost definitely skipped cutscenes and mashed through dialogue, so any complaints about the story and characters he has are completely invalid TL:DR If you skip most the game and narrative you don't get to say the game is bad
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.
How far did you get in the game to judge its stories? I think most who played either found the standard of writing in games like these to be better or that they don't understand the subtle nuance the writing actually has. The writing is what kept me invested, a lot of simple truths and inspirations
@@hllyenaylleth9576 - It's been a while, and it was a game I didn't enjoy so it's not like the details stick in my memory... There was a prison, and I remember fighting a big guy in armor who was a tedious fight,... and there was a girl who hurt anyone she touched and she met a guy in a mask thing who felt no pain... I mean, it was hardly subtle. Maybe it got better later, but it sure didn't do much to keep me engaged, and with the whole "no multiplayer" unlike every other Tales game I've ever played and enjoyed, I was just done. The game was not what I wanted.
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
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.
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.
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)
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.
(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 :))
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.
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 🙏
I just beat the game on game pass oh man you bea it in 40 hrs 😮 i beat it in 77 hrs I'm just noob or what !! And yeah agree about the story after half of the game it's get flow especially with cutscenes and dialogues i was like sitting and try to make progress but nope just full hour of cutscenes just skip skip but overall it's good story and the end was satisfied for me at least. I recommend it for sure
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!
To me, the plot I found just so unbearably bland. With the rest of the Tales series, good or bad, they usually were memorable in some way, but with Arise, there is like there is nothing worth of note with it. It just feels so cliché and wooden with things just being painfully underdeveloped. The story in general just suffers from being a mostly generic good vs evil villain of the week story powered by the power of friendship. While it tries to present itself as otherwise, the longer it goes on the clearer and clearer it all becomes that it is your average anime fantasy story. This is also why the villains suffer so much in the character department, as they seemingly just exist to be pounded by the heroes and then for them to move on making just your common evil thugs. Even the closest the game gets to a central main villain feels more a like a footnote more than anything. And while the game tries to portray them as having had some redeeming qualities, it all just comes from small side notes, not really doing a good job helping their case. There is also a frequent failure of the plot to consider the side effects of its characters actions. And what makes it so frustrating is that the game repeatedly flirt with the idea of exploring these deeper topics yet backpedals at the last second or changes the subject. For the most part the story settles on being a simple anti-discrimination plot being content with simple answers to complex questions, not really digging deeper. Having completed the game, I am somewhat left with apathy towards it. It was just something that I completed then moved on. It wasn't bad or anything, but I wouldn't describe it as memorable either.
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.
WONDERFUL lol my Tales of experiences falls to this and Zesteria, another game that starts out good and ends as a dud lol. Thanks for the warning :/ maybe I'll finally play a good Tales of game one day!
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.
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....
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I wish that this game was more popular. I love the art style and the science-fantasy setting. The dialogue is not consistently good, it's either really cringe or really amazing, but the story overall is great. It actually attempts to deconstruct the 'fantastical apartheid' plot archetype.
I sorta disagree with the characters. Rinwell is easily one of the best characters in the franchise. Law was ok but my issues with him werent really his lines. The other 2 characters i think just didnt have enough development I agree the end of the game was bad but its more like the finaly 1/4 not final half. The radical fall of the game in the final act also matches with the opening music. The determining factor in tales games if they are good or not is the opening music and arise switches near the end of the game. If the next tales game has a bad opening song or worse, doesnt get english dubbed its likely going to be bad. Arise was great. I really hope the next game in the series is similar to the first 30 hours of arise.
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 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.
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.
That is honestly a good summary of what's going on in modern day gaming. So much is being held back by imagine which makes the story and the gameplay an afterthought.
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.
A play this game and trials of mana (seiken densetsu 3 remake) and i felt kinda mixed when i finish arise , the story was kind of meh to be fair and had some very cringy acting but was ok , a 7 out of 10 in my list
Wasn't that not the true ending and you had to go fight aliens? Also I agree talking to everyone was weird indeed. I forgot about that I became tired but still was a good game.
@rx Wow lol what was that side quest with super hard alien levels? Just leveling up I thought there was more to the game. That's a horrible ending? You don't even know the random kid moving everywhere lol. Huh? After the game a alien structure appeared. I just didn't have time to play and I wanted to replay in 4k anyway so i let it sit for future use. Wow that ending sucks. IF you think about the game the true ending was supposed to be when you was stranded at the beach.
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
One big problem i had with this was... How bland and similar the characters felt compared to each other, for example, law is just a good guy but hot headed, dohalim is a good guy but serious, alphen is a naive good guy, kisara is a strong good girl, rinwell is a good girl who can get angry sometimes, and shionne is a ice queen, this is not a problem by itself, the problem i have with all this is that they dont differentiate enough to have enough good banter or interactions, in berseria for example, every character was different in personality and morals, and that made the interactions so good!, laphicet the naive kid who wants to learn and can be easily influenced by members of the group, velvet the mostly serious and sometimes warm girl who could be very reckless, magilou the clown of the party who always tries to annoy the others and specially velvet with inteligent remarks or funny observations, rokurou the fighthing obssesed demon who can even be considered selfish and evil but still has honor in him, eleanor the honorable and idealistic girl who has her morals confronted and has to think about them, and eizen, who is knowledgeable about a lot of things, is calm and has a set of his own morals, who can even mediate when his group gets angry or have a fight, this makes the character interactions in berseria so good!, i could see the berseria group talk to each other for hours, they are just incredible together, all the banter and funny things they say, literally my favorite group in any tales game, they just bounce each other naturally by virtue of their most completely different personalities, while the arise cast have their character arcs and then they just become dull, this game really needed a little bit more spice for their characters, they are not terrible, just a little boring, after their character arc ends, law just becomes good guy who is a knucklehead, rinwell is good girl who is not racist anymore, kisara is just there honestly, dohalim is funny, i like his serious aristocratic and knowledgeable personality, there should have been someone to annoy him or have more organic banter with him, for example if rinwell was a little bit more like magilou for example (i mean the sarcastic personality) she could have been a good character to have banter with dohalim specially, and alphen and shionne have all the spotlight, all this make it so the interactions feel so inorganic, so many skits of the characters saying things you already know or can guess yourself, like "racism bad slavery bad people dying bad oh this is so sad" it just gets annoying, its really sad because i really wanted them to be more interesting, everyone in the end thinks the same way and says the same things, which makes it so boring, in berseria almost everyone thinks differently in the end, in arise not so much, which is a shame.
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.
Good for you. My first tales was Symphonia Dawn of the New World. Arise has great gameplay I just felt the story fall off after his mask came off. Idk why I kinda got bored with the plot after that. I'm about to replay it again through game pass. Maybe I need to replay it to really get into the story.
Same here. The history is very weird on the last quarter or so of it
All due respect, that is probably WHY you loved it - first game bias. Arise is truly a terrible experience through and through with very few redeeming qualities that aren't just the jingling keys effect. As a game in general, it is....mediocre? Shoddy combat, pretty visuals, bland characters, forced and awkward romance, and garbage-tier writing. The only real upside it has is how good and flashy it looks, but again, jingling keys. And all of this compounds tenfold when compared to other Tales games. Arise is a stock standard unimpressive-to-bad game overall, but it is a FUNERAL PYRE of a Tales game.
I liked arise, however in hindsight, having played almost every tales game with the exception of the japanese locked ones that still don't have a translation patch, it really is just an ok game with an ok story and amazing combat ruined by its systems (especially the absurd amounts of hp the bosses have making it so that the harder difficulties just become a slog if you don't spam the flaming sword artes with alphen)
This game could've been amazing if bamco didn't put a lot of emphasys on graphics, the game looks beautiful, but the time they took to develop the shaders stole a lot of time to actually produce a good story here (and I'm not even doom posting here, I'm pretty sure there are reports saying that of the 6/7 years the game took to develop 4/5 years were mainly used to develop the shaders and learn how to work with unreal engine and the reason for the delay that arise hadwas because they needed more time to develop and finish the 3rd act of the story, which is the most rushed arc, like in many tales games to e fair, but still it feels especially rushed here in arise)
As it stands the game is carried by Alphen and Shionne's romance and hootle
Hopefully in the future, as the shaders are already developed, the tales studio can just focus on making a good narrative, because the premise of arise was truly good, but just didn't have the time to develop into its full potential
But hey, good news is you started with the most beautiful game in the series so far, but also the most mid game in the series so far, there's so many great titles here with much better stories to tell and so many combat systems that honestly rival what arise has
For best games try out symphonia or vesperia as probably the most accessible and beloved games in the series
Abyss is on ps2 and 3ds and has an hd texture pack made by fans that makes it look very appealing and beautiful
And finally, if you have the ps3, there's a bunch of tales games that you can buy there but the best ones by far are the xillia duology and berseria, the xillia games have probabky what I would consider the best combat in the series, with a lot of characters with a bunch of playstyles and combo potential and berseria has one of the best stories with some of the best graphics the series can offer (especially if you play it on pc with some texture mods, the game looks so good)
Arise was my First tales of, and this game Is shit
Honestly, to me, a weird criticism about the long cutscenes and convos thing for a JRPG/RPG fan in general. I love that shit.
Same, love seeing character interactions😩
The game improved drastically for me from that point onwards lol, goes to show you how people appreciate different aspects of games
As soon as you mentioned that this was developed through Covid, I was like “ohhhhhhhh yeahhhhhh, that can explain quite a bit”
The end was definitely rushed 😂 but whatever. I went straight into the Expansion and that was anything but rushed. ❤
@@RandomWandrerYoo a bit late here but is the expansion worth it? How does it compare to like the 3rd act of the base game?
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.
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.
its bad
@@marcusclark1339 that's your opinion
I finished the game recently and loved the entire story, I too felt both happy and sad at the end.
you sir, got a like for this. You see i liked the game, not a big fan of jrpg but i liked for the beggining the trailer of this game and i was like hell yeah and started it without know it was jrpg. in 2nd place maybe its my bad, i think i dont have patience in sometimes and that makes me be a different player, more casual (my playthrough was 35 hours and the dlc was like 4 xD). 3rd im here becouse i loved the story and idk why i want more, they did (for me personaly) (a fcking masterpiece, forgeting about all of that of if you dont want to speaks about it dont do it)(I don't get used to it and I never will.) So as said i want more, in that way im wathing videos on JP, it was better for me and i did the bad thing to play it on english. its well done english but Jp its like dude, the voice have feeling, in english i dont get it in that way). sorry for the text and the bad grammar, i had to say it to can continue with my life. i hope next tales of gets romance story again. If not thenm will be sad xD.
You are completely right with your last point. Not every game has to be a masterpiece for you to enjoy it. As long as the game is solid and fun, that's all I need.
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
Ok
@@Eis7if you didn’t like it, no one cares because no one ask you opinion
@mikhailantonov4750 you say that but I can't remember anyone asking for your input input because no one cares. Also I never said I didn't like it.
@@Eis7 ???
@@mikhailantonov4750 ???
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
Tales of beseria , tales of xilia
@@vincentmichaud4726 ok thank you
Adding on to that- Tales of Vesperia (amazing cast and group dynamic), Tales of the Abyss (amazing story with great character development), and Tales of Symphonia (gives a peek into the origins of many Tales of norms and a pretty compelling story and cast that all have depth)
i see, but for tales of xilia, is it only available on nintendo device? im playing on steam rn
Tales of Beseria, Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Vesperia
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.
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
Being effeminate and black doesn't make them well written or interesting.
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.
That was pretty obvious from the start, with the whole Gald situation.
That is a very good point. I only died maybe two or three times during my playthrough on normal so I did not see that screen or I would have made it a point to include it.
This issue is more noticeable when the boss mechanics are challenging, especially for Ganabelt, who can cast Indignation in the base game.
With mods we can enjoy the Ganabelt fight and stop him from casting Indignation, as it was originally intended without requiring any extra purchases.
every battle sounds like the power rangers having a seizure....announcing their spells EVERY SINGLE TIME AT THE SAME TIME OVER AND OVER....
-_-
@@vtelannasv4324shut up
i feel kinda attacked with your 40 hour clear when it took my nooby ass almost 180 hours to clear it
You probably talked to every npc and did every side quest and wandered around enjoying the view and fishing. I'm also over 100 hours.
He probably didn't touch the Training Grounds in Viscint.
You can clear it as fast as possible if you have the very easy mode and just focus on clearing the story first.
That's why he's complaining that the characters aren't fleshed out, he didn't talk to many of the NPCs and clearly didn't do most of the side quests. I finished at 90hours and thoughts all the characters we're perfectly fine (some better than others, as is always the case).
Ngl that's about how long I took to clear Symphonia my first time. I spent 72 hours stumbling around trying to get to the freakin' Tower, FIRST VISIT. Don't feel bad, bro, knocking Arise out in 40 hours means he probably did the story and not much else.
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.
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.
Comes out on Gamepass tonight. Worth a shot when it costs nothing.
Yeah I downloaded it and this mantis lvl 43 with like 50k ho I was like I can just run and let ai kill it be about 1 maybe 2 hours
Yeah that's my thoughts, why I am here checking out the game
Did u guys like it? Looking for some new to play
It later gets into Music and SFX thats almost identical to final fantasy 7 remake(Arise has Moogles.....but you got to guess what the are....even has a moogle forest. It uses the unreal engine so its gets crazy beautiful with the lightings and trees. )
For secret boost in game change difficulty to Hard when fighting normal enemies to get twice the points. Change to normal if boss to hard. No penalty.@@Miloproductions1
Worst tales game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played basically all of them, yes I’m old(not really).
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.
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 didn’t even finish it. After forcing myself to finish FF7 Rebirth and it not being worth it i wasn’t gonna go down that route again. Id rather have my time back 😂
When does it get strong it's starts with a whimper
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.
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.
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
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.
I'm 2 hours into the game and really can't get into the combat style. Should I push on or just drop it
happened the same to me... uff man I almost dropped it several times. The only thing I could do is keep going and play at least a couple of hours as continously as possible until I would finally fkng understanding it. At around 40 hours of game you will unlock all players and a ton of abilities, and just THEN it really gets good imho
@@HellPedre So you have to almost finish the game before it gets good? LOL
@@Wft-bu5zc I'd say half almost... it cooks veeeeeery slow imo
@@Wft-bu5zc the game has easily+100 hours of total gameplay so 40 hrs is quite ok but it's definitely a con
I had to bump the game down to easy just because of the ridiculous health pools
Same. I got tired of beating up on helpless enemies for 45 minutes. It's such an artificial way to try and make the game feel difficult.
- 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.
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.
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).
Great review!
Man, this is 100% how I would revirew it if I could put it into words as well as you did.
What games do you have above Arise (including fan translated titles)?
I am not reading allat
Damn u wrote a 1000 word essay
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
this might be the quietest cast in a tales game and the least fleshed out
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
It took me _forever_ to not hear and see Law as Makoto Naegi from Danganronpa. Hopped into Final Fantasy Type-0 immediately after this, and there's Papenbrook again!
I fucking loved this game. Over 200 on and I have all items, dlc and everything unlocked. Loved it
>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.
As someone who has played every title in the series, I fully agree with your thoughts. I still can't bring myself to finish this game, it's brutal.
@@matth1641you and the other guy hate change. You're a grown man now, things evolve. This was advertised for the new generation. I got Vesperia for free on PC and never touched it, but I played the demo for Arise and it appealed to me way more. I already played all of DMC, I know what it feels like to see a franchise change dramatically, and I don't hate it. Quality of life features are a must, I don't care if games are getting easier, I'll play Elden Ring for a million hours before I even think to play the old ass dark souls games.
@@GameoftheYear-fx4mq I'll be real with you for a second. That combat was not fun. I am a Dark Souls mega fan and I have platinumed all of the old FromSoft games (besides DS2) and of course Elden Ring (as is customary). Tales of Arise does not understand difficulty. Huge health bars and repetetive action does not a compelling ARPG make. I enjoyed the story, art style and characters so that was pretty decent (the themes are a bit wonky as a narrative back bone when you think for a second about the whole Renan and Danan thing from a thematic perspective vs how it's presented in the story).
@@GameoftheYear-fx4mqI don't hate change at all, change is important otherwise things get boring. However, the changes need to be good. You don't sound like you've played any other Tales of games before, but Tales often makes changes to it's formula with each game that comes out. Back in the day, you had separate teams working on different Tales games and they each had their own style. However, there were certain defining features that would appear in some form in every Tales game regardless of which team made them. Without these features, Tales would be a generic action RPG. Arise does not have a lot of those features, and the ones that it keeps it does a poor job with.
The problem with Arise begins back when they were first developing the game. It was initially supposed to be a completely new IP, having nothing to do with Tales. Halfway through development it was decided by Bamco to make this project into the next Tales of game. So Tomizawa and the God Eater team decided to do the bare minimum necessary to brand the game as a Tales of game while keeping it similar to their initial project's vision. It was never meant to be Tales in the first place. I would be surprised if Tomizawa has ever played a Tales game before because it's clear from interviews that he views Arise as a masterpiece above every other Tales game in the series. He especially believes the story is far above any other Tales game, which is laughable. I find this game to be disrespectful to long time fans, but I can understand why new (and old) fans would like this game.
The problem with the combat is it'd artificial difficulty
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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 😔
This game was at its peak at the revelation of 2nd lord.
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.
It was a great game, the director had to make a decision, they had 2 options they could become more like Bayonetta and Nier automata, or they could become more like Persona, it is obvious what option they took and 90% of the time invested on developing went to perfecting its combat system. The exploration is still mediocre, the world is rigid and it feels like a painting more than a semi real and alive world. Because everything goes into making the combat system work. The one truly disappointing moment was the ending that was truly rushed
I have started playing it and it's not that bad.. Chill after some full day of work and easy combat
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 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!
It's unfortunate they went that route which is something they also did in another game. It just feels like a weak cope out when this game and the other one (hint hint Vesperia) could have succeeded without having to add in generic save the world final boss.
@@Natquerx I think the reasoning is because the writers are too scared to deviate from the formula or don't know how to raise the stakes without it being about God or another all-powerful entity.
It was enough to git me to stop playing it I got so tired, I was satisfied and then the game sold me what felt like a whole other game I was not interested in ....I am currently trying to finish it
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.
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 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
Honestly just like the character design of all the characters in this game. And the combat is cool.
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!
I still felt like the bosses had a bit too much hp. I struggeld like only really with like 4 or 5 bosses and the nonexsistent gald in the game.
Like lord 2,3, the two doggies and i think like maybe one additional was hard. Rest was fine, bullshit was really the small gald amount you get.
The story < the skits and side quests
Only a handful of side quests were good. The rest were just fetch quests.
@@AbsolAhm It wasn't the quests themself I liked but the jokes and banter they had while doing them
To many cut scenes towards the end of the game kinda killed the story for me
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.
Arise is amazing
The end felt like story interrupted by random encounters
I’m only two hours In its good to me so far
Is the DLC worth it?
I did platin +100% the dlc and I can see what you mean.
Well, you can farm around 500.000 with the silver dog tags.
But yes, for over half the game, untill I could somewhat craft good accessory, nearly every boss one tapped me on normal, leveling is basically impossible thanks to reducing EXP and the fact that every animation locks you, be it normal attack, skills or even landing from a jump.
And then, after around level 60, the game became way to easy, even at expert.
And the aggro system sucks balls... mc (had a different name in german) and kisara had bouth aggro plus L and Rinwell (my main) less aggro L, and the boss still focused me after 3 skills.
It got so annoying that I just run circles around the last lord and let him play catch wile the outher 3 beat him to death.
Platinum and 100% with the DLC? You were committed! Kudos to hanging in there. Would you recommend it at the first Tales game for newer players?
@@Natquerx
as a newcomer, no, there are better tales games, i recommend "Tales of The Abyss" as a first tales game.
but as a secend tales game, its a good pick.
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.
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
If someone isn’t having a good time with a game your advice is spend even more time with the game? 😂
@@Flibbertyjib wow you did a fantastic job at misinterpreting my comments. The point is that there is a significant chance he bum rushed through the game, skipping all side content and cutscenes. And if you're the type of person to do that and want to complain about the game or just say it's bad your opinion literally is invalid
@@IosLocarth I’m not misinterpreting anything and you just said the same thing twice
@@Flibbertyjib you really are. I'm not suggesting that he play more of the game since he's not enjoying it but that he's the reason he didn't enjoy the game. Skipping content and not having resources and EXP will make any RPG feel awful and that's really his own fault if he did that. And as someone who's beaten this game twice, getting through it in only 40 hours means he almost definitely skipped cutscenes and mashed through dialogue, so any complaints about the story and characters he has are completely invalid
TL:DR If you skip most the game and narrative you don't get to say the game is bad
Was vesperia the last good tales
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.
Sound like a ish. This game was better than the past 4 titles in the series.
How far did you get in the game to judge its stories? I think most who played either found the standard of writing in games like these to be better or that they don't understand the subtle nuance the writing actually has. The writing is what kept me invested, a lot of simple truths and inspirations
@@hllyenaylleth9576 - It's been a while, and it was a game I didn't enjoy so it's not like the details stick in my memory... There was a prison, and I remember fighting a big guy in armor who was a tedious fight,... and there was a girl who hurt anyone she touched and she met a guy in a mask thing who felt no pain... I mean, it was hardly subtle. Maybe it got better later, but it sure didn't do much to keep me engaged, and with the whole "no multiplayer" unlike every other Tales game I've ever played and enjoyed, I was just done. The game was not what I wanted.
@@JonLemerond1 Ok, understandable. It was the dialogue overall, some decent inspirational lines
@@hllyenaylleth9576but the dialogue is the worst part. It’s so badly written (and paced and told)
0:09 what game
Xenoblade chronicles
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
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
Runs well to with UEVR on my old codger 1080ti 15 hours in and havin a blast with it. Would have never bothered to try it flatscreen. Awesome in VR 🤙
(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 :))
i feel like im the only one who really loves second act. Alphen and Shionne be the best video game couple
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.
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 🙏
I just beat the game on game pass oh man you bea it in 40 hrs 😮 i beat it in 77 hrs I'm just noob or what !!
And yeah agree about the story after half of the game it's get flow especially with cutscenes and dialogues i was like sitting and try to make progress but nope just full hour of cutscenes just skip skip but overall it's good story and the end was satisfied for me at least. I recommend it for sure
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!
To me, the plot I found just so unbearably bland. With the rest of the Tales series, good or bad, they usually were memorable in some way, but with Arise, there is like there is nothing worth of note with it. It just feels so cliché and wooden with things just being painfully underdeveloped.
The story in general just suffers from being a mostly generic good vs evil villain of the week story powered by the power of friendship. While it tries to present itself as otherwise, the longer it goes on the clearer and clearer it all becomes that it is your average anime fantasy story. This is also why the villains suffer so much in the character department, as they seemingly just exist to be pounded by the heroes and then for them to move on making just your common evil thugs. Even the closest the game gets to a central main villain feels more a like a footnote more than anything. And while the game tries to portray them as having had some redeeming qualities, it all just comes from small side notes, not really doing a good job helping their case.
There is also a frequent failure of the plot to consider the side effects of its characters actions. And what makes it so frustrating is that the game repeatedly flirt with the idea of exploring these deeper topics yet backpedals at the last second or changes the subject. For the most part the story settles on being a simple anti-discrimination plot being content with simple answers to complex questions, not really digging deeper.
Having completed the game, I am somewhat left with apathy towards it. It was just something that I completed then moved on. It wasn't bad or anything, but I wouldn't describe it as memorable either.
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.
WONDERFUL lol my Tales of experiences falls to this and Zesteria, another game that starts out good and ends as a dud lol. Thanks for the warning :/ maybe I'll finally play a good Tales of game one day!
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.
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....
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.
I've played 8 tales games, arise is my 2nd favorite
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.
Absolutely.
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.
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
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.
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.
I wish that this game was more popular. I love the art style and the science-fantasy setting. The dialogue is not consistently good, it's either really cringe or really amazing, but the story overall is great. It actually attempts to deconstruct the 'fantastical apartheid' plot archetype.
I sorta disagree with the characters.
Rinwell is easily one of the best characters in the franchise.
Law was ok but my issues with him werent really his lines.
The other 2 characters i think just didnt have enough development
I agree the end of the game was bad but its more like the finaly 1/4 not final half.
The radical fall of the game in the final act also matches with the opening music.
The determining factor in tales games if they are good or not is the opening music and arise switches near the end of the game.
If the next tales game has a bad opening song or worse, doesnt get english dubbed its likely going to be bad.
Arise was great. I really hope the next game in the series is similar to the first 30 hours of arise.
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 thought the second part was even better than the first. I also played the complete game in automatic mode.
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.
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.
Where’s Grace beyond your top 5?
@ I’ve never played it hence the part “of the 5 tales games I’ve played…” I ranked all the ones I have played
@ oh my bad Marcus.
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.
That is honestly a good summary of what's going on in modern day gaming. So much is being held back by imagine which makes the story and the gameplay an afterthought.
I don't want a movie, I literally only care about gameplay in my video games. Shocker I know. @@Natquerx
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 .
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.
This was my first tales of game and I absolutely hated it. I normally drop games if I don't like them but for some reason I finished it.
A play this game and trials of mana (seiken densetsu 3 remake) and i felt kinda mixed when i finish arise , the story was kind of meh to be fair and had some very cringy acting but was ok , a 7 out of 10 in my list
Wasn't that not the true ending and you had to go fight aliens? Also I agree talking to everyone was weird indeed. I forgot about that I became tired but still was a good game.
That was the ending. Even if it ended like that though at least give us some cutscenes of what our sacrifices meant for Dahna!
@rx Wow lol what was that side quest with super hard alien levels? Just leveling up I thought there was more to the game. That's a horrible ending? You don't even know the random kid moving everywhere lol. Huh? After the game a alien structure appeared. I just didn't have time to play and I wanted to replay in 4k anyway so i let it sit for future use. Wow that ending sucks. IF you think about the game the true ending was supposed to be when you was stranded at the beach.
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.
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
I love arise
One big problem i had with this was... How bland and similar the characters felt compared to each other, for example, law is just a good guy but hot headed, dohalim is a good guy but serious, alphen is a naive good guy, kisara is a strong good girl, rinwell is a good girl who can get angry sometimes, and shionne is a ice queen, this is not a problem by itself, the problem i have with all this is that they dont differentiate enough to have enough good banter or interactions, in berseria for example, every character was different in personality and morals, and that made the interactions so good!, laphicet the naive kid who wants to learn and can be easily influenced by members of the group, velvet the mostly serious and sometimes warm girl who could be very reckless, magilou the clown of the party who always tries to annoy the others and specially velvet with inteligent remarks or funny observations, rokurou the fighthing obssesed demon who can even be considered selfish and evil but still has honor in him, eleanor the honorable and idealistic girl who has her morals confronted and has to think about them, and eizen, who is knowledgeable about a lot of things, is calm and has a set of his own morals, who can even mediate when his group gets angry or have a fight, this makes the character interactions in berseria so good!, i could see the berseria group talk to each other for hours, they are just incredible together, all the banter and funny things they say, literally my favorite group in any tales game, they just bounce each other naturally by virtue of their most completely different personalities, while the arise cast have their character arcs and then they just become dull, this game really needed a little bit more spice for their characters, they are not terrible, just a little boring, after their character arc ends, law just becomes good guy who is a knucklehead, rinwell is good girl who is not racist anymore, kisara is just there honestly, dohalim is funny, i like his serious aristocratic and knowledgeable personality, there should have been someone to annoy him or have more organic banter with him, for example if rinwell was a little bit more like magilou for example (i mean the sarcastic personality) she could have been a good character to have banter with dohalim specially, and alphen and shionne have all the spotlight, all this make it so the interactions feel so inorganic, so many skits of the characters saying things you already know or can guess yourself, like "racism bad slavery bad people dying bad oh this is so sad" it just gets annoying, its really sad because i really wanted them to be more interesting, everyone in the end thinks the same way and says the same things, which makes it so boring, in berseria almost everyone thinks differently in the end, in arise not so much, which is a shame.