Tales of Arise (PC/PS4/XB1) - September 9, 2021

[Zealot]

Victory!

This ranks below Vesperia and Abyss for me, but above Symphonia and well above Zestiria.

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[Tyrath]

Sounds like you need to go play Berseria sir

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/TalesofSeries/st...63697868263424
https://twitter.com/TalesofSeries/st...93733367181314

Price conversion from the Japanese announcement is $15-20.

[Zealot]

Also when I say ranks below Abyss and Vesperia, I mean this was 8/10, Vesperia was 9, and Abyss was perfect.

The other ones I've played are Symphonia and Zestiria, which I would give a 7 and a 5 respectively.

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[Zealot]

Finished up the post-game stuff to get Platinum, guess it's on to something else now.

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/BandaiNamcoUS/st...05694069460995

[Obsidian]

Finished the story yesterday, still have the secret dungeon to do but have some thoughts to share anyway.

Overall, I quite liked it. I was pretty worried about the combat from the teasers and I didn't play the demo much, but I was glad it still felt more Tales and less Demon Souls-ish like it was kind of advertised to be early on. I still think Vesperia (and kinda Xillia even with the AC shit going on because Jude is so awesome to play) are the pinnacles of Tales combat, but Arise's still felt fine and is a definite improvement over the arte chain bullshit in Graces/Zesteria/Berseria. The accessories system is much better here than Berseria or Zesteria (and the Graces F accessory system can fuuuuuck right off). The story is okay even if the end of the game kind of drags a bit because of all the lore dumping, which I think most Tales games kinda suffer from. The characters themselves are pretty good and mostly all fun to play (Shionne's probably my least favourite to handle but that's in part because I hate trying to heal in most Tales games). Kisara was a great new weapon type for the series and I think they really nailed the feeling of shield combat. The party dynamic was fine, if not quite up to the standards of the all-timers (Vesperia, Abyss, Berseria), some very funny skits. Some very pretty environments.

I'm willing to let some things slide based on the fact that I know the reason this game took 5 years to come out was in large part due to building the new Tales engine for it. Loootta enemy re-use, primarily. The dumbed down AI Strategies is also something I'm gonna chalk up to new engine growing pains. Outside of Alphen's and Rinwell's, the Boost Strikes feel pretty underwhelming and don't reliably down things. The total lack of OTG options is also pretty annoying but something I can live with for now because it's kind of hard to down enemies in the first place. This game also has a real bad case of Graces F boss fights where the bosses are completely un-staggerable (Alphen's boost strike aside), can't ever be juggled or guard broken, and frequently throw combinations of lots of adds and area-wide damage. The second Lord is probably one of the worst cases of it, but really all the Lord fights are like that, and some of the Giganto fights too. The boss fights that end up just being waves of zeugles are also kinda lame (Four Great Spirits) and while the final boss battle was mostly a letdown for being a three-part wave battle, the final one-on-one did mostly redeem it for me. While the old skit system did really have its charm with the portraits, the new comic-style skit system isn't bad.

DLC artes/skills are a big F from me even if I think only a couple of them are really effective/useful. (Falling Storm, Flashing Savage Roar, kinda Serpent Knuckle, Howling Azure Storm, Fairy Circle until you get Revitalize for Shionne.) Aerial combat feels pretty good generally, but some artes have some tracking/hitbox issues even if you're playing on semi-auto that put a real damper on the combo game. Law is pretty bad for it between Inferno Punch, Death Blossom and Eagle Dive, and some of the longer ground artes in the game also suffer from from the lack of animation cancelling. I know they were trying to make items more valuable and healing a little more costly with the CP system, but when you combine the restrictive nature of the CP system with a main character whose core gameplay mechanic is dumping HP for damage, and AI that are very hard to keep out of danger, it just doesn't feel good to be constantly chugging Orange gels throughout a dungeon/boss battle. If the Spirit Bangle was 1% CP per defeated enemy instead of just 1 CP per, it would've gone a long way to improving the feeling, I think.

Overall, a solid game and certainly one of the better entries in the franchise. Hopefully the next game builds off Arise and doesn't bounce back to the Graces/Zesteria/Berseria gameplay. (Confession: I did find Rose fun to play in Zesteria even in spite of the arte chain garbage.) I think I'm gonna take another crack at grinding through Abyss in the near future before I play through Vesperia again.

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/BandaiNamcoUS/st...07026899836931

[Kachiko]

I like the comment "No thanks, I'd rather have a game I can actually own and play any time, not one that'll be shut down within a year." Couldn't even pay for the JP voices.

[Tyrath]

Cosign because fuck phone games

Who needs this when I haven't even finished Arise

[Obsidian]

I still don't even get what it's supposed to be. They already have Tales of Rays or whatever it's called for their gacha bullshit. Is this also a gacha game? Why?

[6souls]

Who needs this when I haven't even finished Arise

Exactly. How dare people play games while you lag behind on Arise.

[Tyrath]

Exactly. How dare people play games while you lag behind on Arise.

I mean people can play shitty phone games if thats what they want to do with their life

[Tyrath]

I took a break from Arise to finish up Horizon Zero Dawn so I do not feel bad at all about my choices

[Kirin]

I can get sunk into mobile gacha grabs as much as the next person, but Bamco doesn't have the best track record for mobile titles. May be the 4th one in as many years. Pass.

[Gokulo]

I did like half of the first scenario and tbh couldn't keep myself playing longer. The gameplay is pretty annoying, you just run down a corridor and fight enemies from time to time, combat feels bad, the vertical screen means enemies constantly stay off screen and you can't see what they're doing or how many there are left because there's no radar or anything to tell you and I didn't find any way to lock on enemies too so I just whacked air more often than not... it just wasn't fun and it's not like the story will be something to make it worth playing because let's be honest, it's Tales.

[Lucavi]

I treat all mobile gacha "RPGs" like Capcom treated the Breath of Fire franchise when they released "6".

With equal parts disdain and utter contempt.

[Karbuncle]

I still don't even get what it's supposed to be. They already have Tales of Rays or whatever it's called for their gacha bullshit. Is this also a gacha game? Why?

Tales has like, 3 dead Mobile games. Pretty sure Rays died like 2+ years ago, at least in Global. Their MO seems to be churning out "Dead in a year" mobile games, which is why I dont bother with them anymore.

[Kachiko]

Debuted at somewhere around 316 or so, in the JP rankings.

[Odesseiron]

Ok this is an unreasonable amount of cutscenes.

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Man, I could not relate to this any harder after this weekend. I was about 10+ish hours from the end and I was getting tired of the gameplay/story and just wanted to get through it. I thought this was an exaggeration.

Sadly, it is not. I don't know if I'll ever play this again.