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jhasegawa25 · 2 years

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Tales of Arise Thoughts and Review

**This was originally going to have more sections, but it turned out super long and messy already so this just focuses on the important parts: Battles and Story/Characters. Other sections can be added here or in a part 2**

Tales of Arise was a game that boasted major change to the long-running “Tales of” series. Despite major hype surrounding it, as a long time Tales fan, I had my worries given my experience with out “major changes” in video game series. Having finally completed the main story, this didn’t really feel like a major change or major step up outside of one area. It still felt like a Tales game. However, while some of my initial doubts were proven wrong, some still held up as the credits rolled.

Gameplay

Let’s just get right into the part I care about most in my games. Gameplay is above all else for me, and very rarely can a story alone carry me through a game.

Arise’s gameplay promised big change for the series from Berseria, however I feel as though there isn’t that much change from Berseria and the battle system feels more like a natural progression from that game. Berseria did away with the Linear Motion Batle System (LMBS) in favor of just permanent free movement, and Arise continues with this. As much as I’ve enjoyed many iterations of the LMBS, I don’t mind this change at all and I think Arise really does well with the free movement compared to Berseria. Arise also brings back aerial movement and jumping, which was greatly missed from Berseria and Zestiria.

New to the system is the division of ground artes and aerial artes. You can equip 3 of each arte to start off with and eventually artes all together. This is pretty limiting as some games even allowed you to equip up to artes. While the division of artes is nice and streamlines a lot of the trial and error of crafting a good arte’s combo, I think it serves to further limit artes selection.

Some Tales games have a dodge mechanic to reward player, and Arise has its own that’s a large part of the system. When performing a “Perfect Dodge” (dodging at just the right moment from an attack), the combat slows down. Obtaining another skill allows you to perform an attack that breaks the enemy a and jump right into a combat. This will also teleport you to the enemy if you’re a good distance away. It’s a nice and simple mechanic and adds to the enjoyment of the gameplay, however its uselessness during boss battles severely hamper the experience.

Also sort of new is the boost attack, Each character has a boost attack which summons them to the targeted enemy to perform an attack with unique effect. For example: Shionne downs aerial enemies, Rinwell steals spells that enemies are casting, and Kisara stops charging enemies. Each attack has a charge up after use that’s filled up through attacking and being attacked. This mechanic can really add a strategic element, however, when enemies are somewhat more reliant on you using a boost attack that’s not charged, it can arbitrarily lengthen battle time.

After attacking an enemy to a certain point, you may get the opportunity to execute a dual attack. This is signaled by the directional inputs shining on the enemy and is triggered the same way as boost attacks. All characters have a unique pair attack but they all serve the same purpose as an instant kill for the enemy no matter how much HP they may have left. Often times I didn’t mind this mechanic (more on this later), but it really trivializes battles since it isn’t hard to trigger, is free of charge and can happen multiple times a battle.

Finally, this games TP/CC is divided into two different mechanics. The first is the Artes Gauge (AH) which is very similar to Berseria’s Soul Gauge with all the risk taken out. This controls how many Artes you can use and if you have no AG then you have to wait for it to replenish. It’s a standard system and both have similarities to CC anyway. However this time, there’s a new resource system called Cure Points (CC). Cure Points are similar to TP, however they’re only consumed when using Healing or Support Artes.

I found a lot of my problems with the gameplay started here as CP is often drained at a fast rate since the AI isn’t exactly good at dodging or staying out of danger. This wouldn’t be too bad however items that restore CP are absurdly expensive. All healing items are more expensive than previous games on average, but CP items are more than double the price. They can sometimes be found in the field, however its very rare and I rarely saw them respawn. In addition to this, CP is also used for exploration to open new paths (or in Shionne’s case, heal wounded NPCs) for items. It’s an attempt at a risk system and almost Metroidvania approach to exploration making you choose between items or healing and encouraging returning to previous areas. However, systems like this were in place in previous games without cutting into your healing resource that is already pretty scarce for other reasons. It didn’t encourage me to return and only frustrated me more.

I only played as Alphen outside of the coliseum, but from my short time playing as the others, I can say that each character feels fun to play as. Even Kisara, whose style I was not a fan of previous, grew on me after finding the right artes. I only ever play as the protagonist in Tales games so when a game has me interested in trying out other characters, its a win.

Finally, the boss fights. In my opinion, this is where your battle system should shine, this is where you will have most of your fun with the systems. There were definitely some fun bosses in this game, but majority of them (specifically the man story bosses) are just...not fun. Where do I even begin? The bosses are straight up damage sponges, absurd amounts of HP compared to the damage that you’re actually doing with your artes. Bosses don’t stagger at all. It makes sense to some degree as you’re mainly fighting large monsters for bosses, but even humanoid bosses do not react at all to the fact that 4 of you are smacking the hell out of them. If they do, it’s for a very small amount of time. Remember the dodge mechanic? It’s still in play here, but because Bosses don’t stagger so you often times put yourself in harms way with the extra attack. Going back to artes, a lot of them don’t do much damage except for one from Alphen (Reining Slash) which does an absurd amount of damage though is a bit on the slow side. I still found myself spamming this and doing a significant amount more damage than playing regularly. Every time I had fun with one boss, the next one would be the most frustrating battle ever. And near the end of the game, some of these bosses become regular recurring enemies. Having played most Tales games on Moderate or Hard and preferring that difficulty, this is the first time I bumped the difficulty down as low as “Story” for the BOSS fights,

This battle can be fun, and I can’t deny that at times I did have fun, but too many times I wound up frustrated and not having fun because of the choices made with certain mechanics. And there’s not too much different from previous entries to really warrant the idea that the battles are a big change for the series

Story

As mixed as I am about the gameplay, I’m just as mixed about the story and characters. I feel as though there were a lot of good ideas that just fell short or completely nosedive by the ending.

The story starts off pretty strong. There are two worlds: Rena and Dahna. The Renans have invaded Dahna and enslaved all of their people and treat them pretty awfully. You start with Alphen, or as known as “Iron Mask”, who as the name suggest wears an iron mask over his head that completely covers his face. He’s a Dahnan slave in Calaglia who has no memories, not even remembering his name. He also cannot feel anything, though his body still reacts to pain and damage. Eventually he meets Shionne, a mysterious Renan woman who has “thorns” around her that hurt anyone that touches her. Because of his lack of feeling, Alphen is able to touch Shionne and is able to wield the “Blazing Sword”, a fire engulfed sword encased in an elemental master core that Shionne holds inside of her. With this, the two team up with the goal of liberating Calaglia and possibly all of Dahna.

The goal is pretty simple and straight forward for most of the game: Kill each realm’s lord and liberate Dahna, and you pretty much go through each realm’s areas learning about its culture, how each lord rules, meeting different liberation forces and ultimately taking the lord down. It’s simple but it works, and there’s plenty of good twists with each realm’s story that keeps you engaged. The 2nd lord’s reveal that leads to an emotional event had me shocked and hooked me fully into the story. I was ready for revenge, and I wanted to take down every lord.

The 3rd realm has an interesting twist as the lord there, Dohalim, eventually becomes your party member. Instead of war and abuse that was found in the other realms, Dohaim cultivated a place where Renans and Dahnans work together, where Dahnan’s had free reign to work and serve him if they wanted, However you quickly learn that it isn’t all peachy, and there’s dark secrets lying under the realm’s and Lord Doahlim’s nose. It was an interesting change from two realms where the two worlds were fighting and it was constant gloom. It was an interesting look into how even those with privilege who mean well can be naive and oblivious to the deeper, darker evils.

Unfortunately the story takes a bit of a nosedive after this. The next realm tries to portray Dahnan’s unfavorably, showing most of them having a more violent approach to their liberation, and being fueled by vengeance for the horrible treatment they’ve endured. It gets even worse when the lord comes back, does typical Renan things to the realm’s Dahnans, and we learn that Rinwell has her own personal vendetta, almost as extreme as the other Dahnans. For what its worth, I think there is something interesting that could’ve been said about people developing extreme ideologies that consume them, but the game portrays it in such a pretentious way. It almost villainizes Rinwell’s (and the other Dahnans’) valid feelings about the Renan’s and the treatment they’ve received from them. Later in the game during a quest, Rinwell starts ranting to Dohalim about all the things that Dahnan’s don’t have or lost out on because of the Renan’s and it gets pretty heated, but not as heated as in the 4th realm. Rinwell is reacting the way someone in her position should act but the game has Alphen reduce it to “both sides are in the wrong” just because of RInwell’s tone, and that just wrong. Once you get a “respectable” Renan in the party, the game uses it as an excuse to create a bit of a “both sides” argument, but we’re playing as a party that has killed 2 Lords and was planning to kill more even after Dohalim joins.

By the end of the game, its as if the writers don’t know what to do with the story. The game takes a weird supernatural turn (which is weird to say considering this already is a supernatural story), with a new foe and new goal. Cutscenes are reduced to lore dump after lore dump which becomes tiring with how long winded the cutscenes can be. It has the Act 3 syndrome that a few other Tales games suffers from and probably should’ve ended far earlier.

At the same time, the story also shifts a hard focus on the relationship between Shionne and Alphen. Its a relationship that was built up throughout the story, but by the end the game focuses on it, their fate/duty, and Shionne’s “Thorns” more than ever in addition to the weird alien plot. As someone who doesn’t care about romance, this is probably the only saving grace to the end of the story as it has proper build up compared to everything else, but its disappointing how much their story takes over above every other character’s.

Characters (and Skits)

Speaking of characters, as I mentioned before I was mixed on them. Tales is known for its lively characters and interactions. While the story starts off really strong, I think Arise’s characters start off pretty weak. If I’m being honest, they were a bit boring at least until the last two party members join. Even then, it takes awhile after until the usual Tales level banter starts up.

I do think that most of the characters have good development throughout the story. Shionne, Rinwell and Dohalim in particular have great development and you really see their characters learn and grow through their experiences and their relationships with the party, The other three are a bit less developed or rather less impactful compared to those three.

It wasn’t until I had a quarter of the game left that the characters fully began to click with me. The character build up really ramped up, but also the banter. The party had more fun moments with each other and let loose when (mostly) appropriate). The party dynamic began to shine more and it finally began to feel like a family I was apart of.

This is mainly in part due to the skits so let’s talk about them. They’re a Tales staple and can add to the understanding of the story, but they’re mostly there to add to the characters and their dynamics. They’re mostly fun or goofy moments but can also provide extra context to story beats. Unfortunately with this game, they were mostly just added story beats and less fun.

Often times it felt like skits were replacing full cutscenes, which was a problem with Berseria as well. This may be due to budget or just a design choice, but it really dampened the pacing of the game. Skits in previous games averaged on the short side (in Versperia I rarely saw a skit above a minute) however because a lot of skits in Arise doubled as cutscenes, they averaged longer. It was extremely rare to see a skit under a minute and a few even got close to 4 minutes. Long is long, but it would be more tolerable if they were at least fun to watch like Berseria (at times, I still hate Berseria’s skits). However there were very few fun moments in skits for most of the game. I groaned when I would see another skit at times.

Skits also got a bit of a redesign. Before they were drawn portraits that would be in boxes (or half portraits in later games) that would move around and jump up and down. They were minimal but still had some level of expression that allowed its funny moments to shine. In this game, they used the 3D Models and adopted a sort of manga style presentation. This allowed for alternate costumes and attachments to appear in the skits, which clearly wasn’t tested fully (the DLC wing sets can often block out a whole panel). This may be unpopular, but this presentation didn’t add anything to the skits. It made them more sluggish, and nothing interesting was really done with the models to warrant their use. They often just stood around, occasionally you’ll get a panel a panel that shows they did an action, but that’s about it. It’s very underwhelming to me and takes away the snappiness that skits used to have.

It wasn’t until late game when many of the skits started leaning more into the fun side. There was more of a mix between more story lore and just outright goofy. It never really reached the heights of some of the best Tales skits, but it was a major improvement. I wish that the fun skits were more spread out throughout the game than being at the tail end. Unfortunately this makes this the game with my least favorite skits as a whole.

Conclusion

I’ve rambled on way too long and I’ve kinda lost the plot of this post, so I’ll sum up my thoughts. Despite my gripes with this game (and a lot of them are major), I still enjoyed it to some degree. I don’t know if its the Tales fan in me or that the few things I liked just really spoke to me. It’s a heavily flawed game, but I do think that it’s something the dev team can build on to make better. Make regular battles more satisfying, fix the boss battles, reduce the length of skits (and change their presentation back honestly). Tales of Arise could be the foundation of something really good, but as is it doesn’t feel like the major improvement for the series that its hailed as.

If you’ve made it through this long tangent, I commend you. Lol

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