Tales of Arise is the latest entry in the long standing Tales series. It is also the first Tales game that i've sunk a decent amount of time into, currently my playtime is sitting at around 12 hours and I've beaten the first two major bosses of the game.
Tales games are basically Bandai's Version of Final Fantasy, in that none of the games seem to directly connect but they all share the same themes. For example in the Tales games, magic is the result of various astral energies usually based on elements like Ice, Fire, Lightning, etc etc. Also special abilities seems to always be called Artes at least they were also Artes in Berseria which is the only other tales game I played though for not nearly as long.
It's always hard to start an impressions like this because I feel like there is a long running theme or gameplay setup that I just don't understand because I've not been invested in the series before. So I guess I'll start at the most fundamental thing, the combat.
Combat is basic action RPG hack and slashy affairs, and immediately i got a lot of Final Fantasy 7 Remake vibes from it. Because you only control the main character in combat directly. You can run around, dodge, strike, and use Artes all in real time from the main hero, whereas you only have very minimal control over what your allies do. Unlike FF7R, you are never directly telling the AI what to do, instead you can set behaviors for the AI in general from the menu. For example you can have them heal if someone drops below 50% HP, or focus on damage and not heal at all. Additionally this AI behavior applies to all AI allies and as far as I can tell you can't direct them separately.
Each character in battle will basically spam abilties so long as they have meter for it and the game encourages you to spam your Artes as much as possible. The gauge for using these attacks refills very quickly and there doesn't ever seem to be a reason to store or save them. There is also a super meter for each party member that you can control to make you or your allies use a powerful attack that will usually stun or stagger a monster when used.
But ultimately combat is very basic, there isn't a lot of control given to the player beyond the main character so you just do your best to avoid attacks and hope your allies are doing the same. It's not a great battle system but it's functional enough and the bigger enemies bring a lot of flash and specticle that makes them all look really cool. So that's nice.
However the biggest problem with combat is that there is so much fucking noise. The attacks and grunts are overwhelming enough, but also your party is just chattering away at you constantly. There is so much talking that characters often talk over each other and everything gets lost in the wall of sound coming out at every second. It's really bad. It feels like the devs looked at party banter from FF7R and wanted to do the same thing, but didn't have any idea how to balance it out with the battle overall. It is very poorly done.
That brings me to the story. Tales of Arise is a dark game in concept, basically a race of space people have come down to your planet to use your people as slaves in which they milk astral energy from the population. There are five "realms" of the land and each one has an oppressive lord form space. These lords are locked in a contest to gather as much astral energy as possible, the winning lord becomes Grand King of all the Lords or something like that. Basically you are a slave that meets a woman who belongs to the space slaver people, but she wants to topple the lords and you join her to fight back and liberate the "realms". It's a dark setup, but still holds to the basics of JRPG trappings.
What was really surprising to me is how quickly you end up fighting the lords. At least the first two that I've already toppled. There isn't much setup outside of "that's the lord's place, let's go get his ass". You enter a realm, figure out how the lord is ruling the place and from where, then you go get him. So far every realm also provides you with a new allie or two. Which also brings me to one of the big negative trappings about the game.
The main character instantly becomes best friends with everyone he meets. And when a temporary party member dies 5 hours in (he wasn't even a real character because he had no progression and was absolutely uncontrollable when in the party), the main character reminisces about the lessons this guy taught him like he was some father figure or something. It's like you just met the guy four fucking days ago, he can't have been that impactful on you. Even the full-time party members will banter about a new member as if they've known each other for years and it's really jarring.
I can't help but wonder if some of the optional dialog scenes are meant for the player to view much later in the game. Because there are a bunch of optional dialogs you can view when they pop up while you explore, something the previous Tales games also had. But if you don't watch them you can always view them later when the party makes camp or stays in an Inn overnight. Which leads me to wonder if they wrote some of these scenes expecting the player to miss them and watch later so that the playful banter between party members makes more sense. As sometimes they tease each other about things that they can't possibly have learned about each other in the 15 minutes since joining the party.
Overall though the game is fun, and while the story is nothing special it's interesting enough to keep me going.
Either that or I'm just desperate for something new to play.
Tales games are basically Bandai's Version of Final Fantasy, in that none of the games seem to directly connect but they all share the same themes. For example in the Tales games, magic is the result of various astral energies usually based on elements like Ice, Fire, Lightning, etc etc. Also special abilities seems to always be called Artes at least they were also Artes in Berseria which is the only other tales game I played though for not nearly as long.
It's always hard to start an impressions like this because I feel like there is a long running theme or gameplay setup that I just don't understand because I've not been invested in the series before. So I guess I'll start at the most fundamental thing, the combat.
Combat is basic action RPG hack and slashy affairs, and immediately i got a lot of Final Fantasy 7 Remake vibes from it. Because you only control the main character in combat directly. You can run around, dodge, strike, and use Artes all in real time from the main hero, whereas you only have very minimal control over what your allies do. Unlike FF7R, you are never directly telling the AI what to do, instead you can set behaviors for the AI in general from the menu. For example you can have them heal if someone drops below 50% HP, or focus on damage and not heal at all. Additionally this AI behavior applies to all AI allies and as far as I can tell you can't direct them separately.
Each character in battle will basically spam abilties so long as they have meter for it and the game encourages you to spam your Artes as much as possible. The gauge for using these attacks refills very quickly and there doesn't ever seem to be a reason to store or save them. There is also a super meter for each party member that you can control to make you or your allies use a powerful attack that will usually stun or stagger a monster when used.
But ultimately combat is very basic, there isn't a lot of control given to the player beyond the main character so you just do your best to avoid attacks and hope your allies are doing the same. It's not a great battle system but it's functional enough and the bigger enemies bring a lot of flash and specticle that makes them all look really cool. So that's nice.
However the biggest problem with combat is that there is so much fucking noise. The attacks and grunts are overwhelming enough, but also your party is just chattering away at you constantly. There is so much talking that characters often talk over each other and everything gets lost in the wall of sound coming out at every second. It's really bad. It feels like the devs looked at party banter from FF7R and wanted to do the same thing, but didn't have any idea how to balance it out with the battle overall. It is very poorly done.
That brings me to the story. Tales of Arise is a dark game in concept, basically a race of space people have come down to your planet to use your people as slaves in which they milk astral energy from the population. There are five "realms" of the land and each one has an oppressive lord form space. These lords are locked in a contest to gather as much astral energy as possible, the winning lord becomes Grand King of all the Lords or something like that. Basically you are a slave that meets a woman who belongs to the space slaver people, but she wants to topple the lords and you join her to fight back and liberate the "realms". It's a dark setup, but still holds to the basics of JRPG trappings.
What was really surprising to me is how quickly you end up fighting the lords. At least the first two that I've already toppled. There isn't much setup outside of "that's the lord's place, let's go get his ass". You enter a realm, figure out how the lord is ruling the place and from where, then you go get him. So far every realm also provides you with a new allie or two. Which also brings me to one of the big negative trappings about the game.
The main character instantly becomes best friends with everyone he meets. And when a temporary party member dies 5 hours in (he wasn't even a real character because he had no progression and was absolutely uncontrollable when in the party), the main character reminisces about the lessons this guy taught him like he was some father figure or something. It's like you just met the guy four fucking days ago, he can't have been that impactful on you. Even the full-time party members will banter about a new member as if they've known each other for years and it's really jarring.
I can't help but wonder if some of the optional dialog scenes are meant for the player to view much later in the game. Because there are a bunch of optional dialogs you can view when they pop up while you explore, something the previous Tales games also had. But if you don't watch them you can always view them later when the party makes camp or stays in an Inn overnight. Which leads me to wonder if they wrote some of these scenes expecting the player to miss them and watch later so that the playful banter between party members makes more sense. As sometimes they tease each other about things that they can't possibly have learned about each other in the 15 minutes since joining the party.
Overall though the game is fun, and while the story is nothing special it's interesting enough to keep me going.
Either that or I'm just desperate for something new to play.
