Tales of Arise

The battle system kinda cool with amazing effects. The graphic is good, can't complain too much about that, great art style. The storyline kinda boring in my opinion but it was great to see some character development in this game.
So, with many consideration I give 7/10 for this game.
It's good JRPG for newcomers but not my taste.

I bought this game during launch week, waited for the perfect moment when I could just enjoy it with a clear mind, years passed, and finally, that time arrived. After looking at the screenshots and all the overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam, I thought, "Yes, this is it, the experience I’ve been searching for!" But boy, I was wrong.

It was 2021, guys, technology wasn’t that bad. You could’ve created a decent combat system, but nooo, instead you went with this weird mix of auto-attack, semi-auto, and manual modes. I mean, really? You could’ve given me a combat system where I grab the gamepad and yell, “YES, THIS IS IT, HELL YEAH!" But nope.

The combat system is bizarre, and on top of that, the DLC structure ruins the whole vibe of the game.

Mini spoiler alert:
The main character wears an iron mask. YES, AN IRON MASK. And he cannot or should not take it off at the start of the game. But hey, if you buy the DLC costumes, you can just skip that whole storyline and show his face. Like, wtf?

Also, you can customize the outfits for your side characters, but guess what? You never see them in the world. They only pop up in combat and cutscenes. Even Sword Art Online games had your party running around with you. Are you serious?

---{ Graphics }---
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Not so special
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☑ Review later
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale >50%
☐ If it's on sale <=50%
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
☐ 2077 1.0

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

Great combat, engaging story. A fantastic modern JRPG.

I played on moderate difficulty with no dlc or boosts for reference. Moderate is between normal and hard. I mostly want to address a lot of the negative reviews about progression and balance.

Many people have said it's grindy or that the game is too stingy with skill points, money, and items but that part felt fair. At no point did I feel the need to grind for skill points or money. By the end of the game I had every passive skill that I actually wanted. If you're not wasteful or making tons of mistakes there's not a shortage of anything. The only grind I did was some occasional mining to make accessories. Yes, there are some balance issues but if you play within the system it's pretty smooth and a lot of fun. If you try and go against the system the game will mercilessly beat you down and drain your resources as you try to brute force it.

My only real issue was with the AI and accessory balance. If you're not good at managing the AI in the early-mid game fights you're going to have a bad time. You can only set very broad commands for the whole party which makes them very inefficient. Your characters will use attacks the enemy is resistant to when they have attacks that can hit weaknesses unless you edit their artes list for every big fight. They die all the freaking time without the right accessory. Many of the bosses hit incredibly hard and will kill your AI with a single attack without the right setup. I can see running out of resources if you don't have the right accessories and are trying to keep everybody alive for some of the early-mid game bosses. I solo'd several of the early bosses the last 10-20% because it wasn't even worth trying to revive the AI. Having the right defensive accessories to reduce damage 50-90% is about the only way to keep the AI alive. Once you have that you can go full offense on a character and they'll start melting everything. The mage in particular dominated the second half of the game under player control.

I'm very addicted in this game. The graphics was super awesome, the game stories and characters as well and lastly the animation of the skills of each character in the game.

Overall was superb and nothing much to say.

Great story and character development. Gameplay is pretty nice and the graphics holds up really well and is stunning.

Nice game, nice graphic, the story line is good..

good for those who like to play while enjoying the story line...

loving it so far. ^_^

Tales of Arise is definitely a game worth playing, and after completing the base game at 100% together with the DLC , I wanted to share some thoughts on this experience.

Let's start with the aspect you'll be facing the most throughout the game. The battle system. It may feel unspectacularly shallow in some cases. As you progress through it, though, its depth begins to reveal itself. Ultimately, the fights come down to mapping the most powerfully complex attacks - "artes" - to various buttons to pull off satisfying combos. This makes combat a matter of exploiting enemy weak points and chaining together attacks of your party members. The main character, Alphen, has a blaze sword that enables him to carry out fire-based attacks at the expense of his health. How one controls this trade-off between damage output and survival becomes mastered, especially in the harder difficulties where over-reliance on the powerful moves will leave you open in longer battles. In short, you'll need A LOT of healing . New mechanics are being introduced throughout at a good, steady pace, enough to give players some time to master each part of the combat before layering on additional complexity.

For the most part, the combat in Tales of Arise feels smooth, and generally speaking, there's not a lot of frustration comingfrom this particular aspect. The biggest issue, however, is party AI: your AI companions make some pretty "weird" decisions during the harder battles - particularly the boss fights - such as staying in dangerous areas or failing to dodge deadly attacks. It's not game-breaking, but at times, it makes the entire experience more annoying, as you're focusing on reviving/healing your party rather than killing the boss.

One of the more welcoming aspects in Tales of Arise is for sure its approach to difficulty. Sure, battles on higher difficulty can still be challenging without becoming unfairly punishing. Unlike some other titles in the series, like Berseria, which made experience gain much lower upon raising the difficulty, you can revel in the intensity of the combat without superfluous grinding in Arise. Each party member offers up a different method of fighting, really, as you find yourself switching between characters with great regularity depending on the approach taken by the player. This all does keep the combat fresh throughout the whole playthrough, and a more challenging "Chaos" difficulty unlocks toward the end for those that want a real challenge.

Speaking of rewarding things, I must mention the exploration as a whole. There are various treasures, upgrades, and crafting materials waiting to be discovered around the world. The game does a really good job at encouraging players to explore every possible corner . The cooking and fishing systems add a nice layer of depth to exploration, together with buffs and bonuses that make striking off the beaten path worth it. Side quests are largely entertaining, though they do share one major misstep: there’s no indication of recommended levels. You’ll more than occasionally accept a quest only to find the enemies far more powerful than your current party.

Tales of Arise’s plot is one of an underdog story whereby the oppressed citizens of Dahna rise against the ruling class from Rena. At the front of this charge is Alphen himself, a former slave now broken free, and Shionne from Rena, who has her own reasons for wanting to take down the oppressive regime. The story then unfolds into a grand conflict with deeper mysteries upon both worlds as the group travels across different regions to defeat the ruling lords. It’s a fun story at first, but some of those bigger narrative moments in an epic feel underbaked by the time you finish. That said, the journey itself stays quite pleasant thanks to shifting character dynamics and a few plot reveals here and there.

Characters are sure energetic, although it does tend to lean heavily into some familiar anime archetypes. Alphen’s of the "clueless hero" archetype, while his companion and love interest Shionne is an easy fit for the "tsundere," quick to mask her feelings behind a veil of sarcasm and mock anger. The rest of the party members all fit into similarly recognizable roles, yet manage to stay interesting through unique interactions and personal growth. The real charm is found in frequent skits and side scenes the game provides for each character; they truly provide some great humor. It does not bear on the core story but does add a little more to understand the personality and dynamics of the characters.

Where Tales of Arise truly comes into its own, though, is in the presentation. It feels more like the environments were handcrafted with beautiful backgrounds, adding significantly to immersion. For the most part, each area feels different. Compared to other recent games in the series, like Zestiria and even Berseria—both of which bear large marks of reused assets - Tales of Arise feels like a quite significant leap forward in terms of visual design.

Overall, Tales of Arise is a nice introduction to the series: well-rounded, with an experience that mingles satisfying combat and impressive visuals with a decent story. There are certainly several flaws, AI control and the absence of co-op chief among them, but all in all, they can't detract enough from this game’s many virtues. The game will have a lot to offer either to a complete newbie or a veteran. Tales of Arise is a satisfying RPG that’s at the very least worth spending time with.

Regarding Beyond the Dawn DLC - It adds another 20 hours of content, continuing the story a year after the events of the main story. It gives players an opportunity to see what happened after the conclusion of Tales of Arise, reuniting you with the familiar cast while providing a couple of new challenges for good measure. This feels more like a natural continuation of the game if you enjoyed the combat and story in general. While the DLC does manage mostly to recycle the maps from the base, it does inject some freshness into these by introducing new dungeons to blast through. It doesn’t introduce any kind of plot twists, earth-shattering or otherwise, but it does serve up meaningful character development for Alphen and his crew. Only worth buying if you enjoyed the game or on a sale.

This Tales is a solid 8/10 Here is why:
It's the tale of a Lady and a Knight, both with great visual appeal. Their chemistry and relationship seems genuine and well written and that helps the story moves forward.
The story it's quite extensive and they constantly throw you skits in every new area, those are great and a mixed bag of funny and relevant. Sometimes they feel like they talk a lot but that's how the game is.
It makes a homage to the "Man in the iron mask" and I liked it very much, you will have to deal with this until the end of ACT ONE with a great plot twist. There is also one crazy antagonist running rampant who likes to butt heads with you, and he is clearly bloodlusted.
The combat it's acceptable since other tales did it better but the loading times are fast to make up for the grind.
So why 8/10?
-They keep playing it safe with the map design and invisible walls.
-They added DLC and paid stuff like the postgame? dude that's ilegal I paid a full game and you took the Epilogue?
-The grind it's rampant and playing it over 2 or 3 hours can bore you.
-You can save everywhere via the menu which takes away the adrenaline of reaching the next save point, the game also autosaves like every 5 minutes and new areas removing the RISK and REWARD system...

8/10, This is the first "Tales of" game that i completed and it was an amazing experience.

What a wild adventure! I finally finished this story. I'm a casual gamer and the fact I could use a semi auto combat system made my enjoyment of this game so much better. Without giving away spoilers I really enjoyed the story line, when I thought it was finished I was surprised by something else that continued the story. I can't wait to jump back into the clear save and see what new quests and adventures have been unlocked! I also still have the DLC to play!

After just finishing the game here are my thoughts.
Overall: 6/10 game

Likes
* Interesting drama
* Lots of voice acted lines
* Likeable characters

Dislikes
* Clunky graphics
* Clunky battle system
* Dungeon running with repetitive enemy battles
* To actually listen to half the conversations you must stop moving otherwise they get cut off. There is always a character talking about something in the background and you never know if its actually important.
* Weird anime sections of the game which are a definite visual downgrade to the actual 3d characters.
* Often strained/ forced drama and scenes very unnatural/ predictable

Last thoughts: Its worth $15-20 if its on sale but I wont be replaying nor buying the sequel. This game feels like it needs a remake.

This game is 10 times better than Zestiria & Berseria.

Support 120fps (cutscene locked at 60fps tough)
Battle done right. No mash to win & tag team done right
The story actually hook you up
No religious theme (that was a huge turn off from Berseria & Zestiria)
improved sparkle

Other then Tales of Xilia 1 & 2 I have played every single tales game released in the west so I had certain expectations from the game.

I was expecting this game to be similiar to Zesteria and Berseria (which I liked!) but it's not like that they tried something new with this one and changes a lot of the stuff you expect to see and honestly it doesn't feel like a tales game at all to be honest.

It's not a bad game by any means it's your typical JRPG with some tales elements thrown around and a few new systems they put in. You'll likely like it if you are a fan of the series but it certainly isn't the best game in the series, far from it.

Beautiful game.
A very good gameplay, Music and Story. It has amazing combat difficulty, easy to learn/hard to master and I love the cinematic combo finisher.

An average grind level unlike other tales series that decrease exp gain the higher your difficulty is set.

The sub quest are not annoying to do and the rewards are worth it.


Remembering Tales of abyss that i played (2009) my first tales game while playing this, And i hope to see more tales series in the future. Let me enjoy your game more.

SOLID 10/10

It's been awhile since I played a legitimately good JRPG. As in all Tales games, the amount of enjoyment you get out of the story will depend on how much you like the characters and themes. In this case, this is a slow burn romance with themes of rebellion, oppression, and freedom. All of the characters are well done and I found them all likeable -although I did miss the relentless ball of rage that was Velvet from Berseria (no one in Arise is as unhinged as her). I will say that the character designs are top notch, as everyone and their outfits in Arise looks amazing. The world and its mechanics are well explained and make sense. There are great emotional moments and a ton of content. The game takes place in two major halves. The first half is some of the greatest JRPG content I've played. There are a lot of great emotional moments as you pass through each area and fight the oppressive lords. The second half burns slower and is more expositional. While some people say they didn't like the second half as much, I liked both.

Rating: 8/10

Tales of Arise marks a stunning entry in the beloved Tales series, seamlessly blending captivating storytelling with dynamic gameplay. Set in the vibrant worlds of Dahna and Rena, the game follows the journey of Alphen and Shionne as they strive to free Dahna from Rena's oppressive rule.

Story:
The narrative is rich and emotionally engaging, exploring themes of freedom, identity, and the consequences of war. The character development is exceptional, with well-crafted backstories that add depth to the overall experience.

Gameplay:
The combat system is fluid and exhilarating, offering a perfect balance between strategy and action. The introduction of new mechanics, such as the Boost Strike, enhances team synergy and makes battles more dynamic. The graphics are breathtaking, with beautifully designed environments and character models that draw players into the world.

Overall, Tales of Arise is a remarkable RPG that successfully revitalizes the franchise while remaining true to its roots. It offers a captivating experience for both newcomers and longtime fans alike.

verii gud game !!

Play this game on Gamepass till late mid game and decide to buy it on Steam cause it's on sale. Lucky me that they allow you to convert the gamepass save game to steam.

- The overall visual is very beautiful for a stylized anime game, character design is good too.
Not much of skin or customization on character and most of the cosmetic DLC is not worth it (most of it is just the base skin + some color variant).
- Combat gameplay don't have much depth just like most of "Tales of" games (for casual gamer you can chill and turn on auto combat and can still win even at high difficulty).
- Story is amazing, have some serious and some goofy moments and some fan services non-sense but overall it's enjoyable.
Total: 6.5/10
The base game is good and worth it if you buy it at sale (the Beyond the Dawn DLC IS NOT DON'T BUY IT even at sale).

jogo bom. 👍

a really good game for those who want to start playing tales of series or jrpg in general, and a great game for tales of series fans.

ファイナルファンタジーと並べるぐらいとても良い作品です。

very fun game, some things aren't explained very well but it is overall a very fun game with a gripping story and fun gameplay. I particularly enjoyed the fights, and the interactions between the characters made me laugh on several occasions

NOTE: Before you just see this as a positive review rating and skip the review, I urge you to read this review as games can't be tagged as positive with an '*'. Skip close to the very end to see what the '*' would be about (if you don't wish to read about the positive)

So the graphics are gorgeous. This comes down to really REALLY well placed and talented shaders. The different realms you travel to are generally different "biomes" and each biome has its gfx that really portray a realistic feeling of those environments. The snow realm is dark and cold feeling. The overall deep and dark blues of the moonlight lighting and the texturing of the cliffs, the snow on the cliffs, and the snow on the trees combined with the eternal night in that realm REALLY make you, as the player, almost feel the invigorating yet cold crisp chill in the game's air as if to remind you of what it feels like stepping outside your house at night time during the holiday season to get in the car and check out Christmas lights. It's not a bitter frigid cold feeling like so many games overdo and make an environment completely un-relatable; it's JUST right enough to make the experiential-feeling relational to the player. Which is a REALLY neat effect (graphically sure, but more experientially so).

There's another area where the realm is a lush and beautiful nature realm with the overall color tones in greens, purples, and bright blues are a welcome change to the cold snowy area but nonetheless remarkable on its own without the contrasted-comparison against the snow realm. The cliff faces are textured using almost like a relief type of effect providing shader. This makes the undulations and the many hard-edge faces of any cliff faces not only look more pronounced but in doing so makes them appear (and thus feel) also sharper, and harder in terms of material-surface. There's an ever so slight and constant kind of white'ish fog / mist that wafts around in the screen that really seems to actually make the lush green biome really pop! It has water mists, and even rainbows in some areas. All of these effects working together really make the biome come alive visually. When the sun starts to go down and you camp under a tree, it really really makes you wish you were there and when you awaken and see a bright blue sky, it's hard to not feel like you want to stay there in the game forever. The realms capital city is equally as detailed, if not much more so. The city wasn't just some detailed buildings plopped down in a way that looked ok and then called good. The city not only looks and feels alive (with NPCs running with crates in their arms going from point A to point B), but the city has a TON of little extra visual details that make the city look as if it were how a city would actually look in real life just by way of people living in it and town events going on throughout the year. In this game's case, for example, the city has like ribbon banners that act as sort of a canopy to many parts of it that add to the overall beauty and care you'd expect a city (the people managing it) to have of itself. In areas where there's waterfalls, the water doesn't just roll over the edge and fall down, it also has some orthagonal-projection (perpendicular) out from the plane it's traveling -- this is more akin to how water would behave in real life if massive gallons of water were just falling.

People ding the game on it's dialogue, I actually don't see see it. I enjoyed the dialogue and as your party grows, micro-relations start to form, and you begin to see how the characters of the party interact with other members of the party instead of just interacting with you as the player. This is evident in the mini-story scenes, and even in the in-battle and post-battle dialogues. It's a fun little thing that allows for some minor character development to flesh out the characters and make them feel as though there's more to them individually and thus more real.

Now the '*'... It's unfortunate, but the heavy '*' to this game is the financial greed. I don't know if it were the developers that decided to do this or the publisher pushed for it. There is a huge real-world money financial greed aspect to this game. So the game is approx. $40 (US dollars). In my opinion, this is about right for a game this quality. However buying the game isn't where the financial investment ends. The first financial incentive is obviously an option one, there's DLC for various costumes / outfits for the characters (you can wield and wear the equipment you want but have them look a different way with "outfits" -- which some are unlocked without real-world money). This ordinarily wouldn't be that much of a red flag except there's TONS of DLC costumes which belies the developers (or publishers -- whomever is responsible) intentions that they're they only put those out there as little fun one-off things. Just the sheer number of them is what belies it, not that they exist, but that there's so many of them. This isn't in and of itself the problem. It, in my opinion, furthers my argument about the second financial incentive of the game. Normally, in a JRPG, you can "grind" enemies and not just level higher, but actually GAIN money in the long run so that you can buy better equipment, etc. However, you don't get gald (the money in this game's world) as part of a battle's reward. You get the traditional exp, and sp (skill points used to spend to unlock "artes"). But you also get material drops. These are items that can be used to craft weapons, craft accessories, or enhance accessories. Where the problem comes in, is the game is so very incredibly balanced that just to restock your healing items from any battle, you wind up selling nearly all of the item drops you received from those battles. Meaning you're ALWAYS just breaking-even. Many times, you're often at a HUGE deficit because of boss battles and the item drops aren't nearly enough to cover the restocking cost for your inventory. This may not seem like it was deliberate, until you come to find out, there is DLC for sale (for real-world money) that provides you in-game gald! I'm sorry, is this game free-to-play? I must've been confused. Probably because I had already shelled out $40 bucks for it. Why are you recognizing the difficulty in making gald in this game by SELLING dlc for that? So it's being openly acknowledged that the game is either overly difficult to get ahead (and refused to re-balance anything), or they did that deliberately. It's kind've scummy and that's the '*' (or giant dark black-eye the game has). Fortunately, with Cheat Engine, I haven't needed to buy any of the gald DLC (even running the game on Linux and using Proton), that's also why I would only recommend this game on a PC platform since you wouldn't be able to use Cheat Engine on a console. It's a shame. They have an incredibly solid JRPG that they gave a black-eye simply because of, what I perceive at least to be, greed.

You could expect this from an indie company, but since it's Bandai Namco, the laziness is really evident in everything.

Let’s start with the story. It begins, as always, more or less like any Tales of game—there are some bad guys, and they’re using your energy for... blah blah blah. Nothing particularly new, but that’s not the main issue.

The tension builds up and... you’re sent off to who knows where to get a dress for your main character. Later on, the dialogues continue in the same fashion, as if they were written by an insecure teenager. Sometimes it’s downright ridiculous. It’s like an indie studio that couldn’t afford a decent writer.

As for the combat—it’s interesting at first, but after five hours of gameplay, the variety of monsters boils down to 3-4 types. Eventually, new ones appear, but they’re just palette-swapped versions of the originals. Typical indie issue—seems like they ran out of creativity.

Every 2-4 minutes, the main characters, who are supposedly saving the world, start spouting nonsense like, "Oh, you're hungry? Why didn’t you tell us?"

TL;DR: It’s really sad to see the series going downhill, becoming something for insecure kids. You’d be better off replaying Tales of Symphonia. Sadly, there’s nothing here but the graphics.

I came into this game hearing lots of great reviews and great things from people. I love JRPG's and was excited to see what this game has to offer. I think I got to the second lord of the game and yeah... I can not recommend this one. I thought the narrative starts out really interesting and I also loved the dynamic with Alphen and Shionne. However, the overall game play loop I found was very lack luster and the combat was hard to get a grip off (great visuals though). Especially when it comes to the bosses where it feels the game difficulty spikes exponentially (looking at you Lord Ganabelt).

I would suggest doing some research before purchasing to see if this one is for you.

Interesting story and complex but also easy to understand combat mechanics with nice pacing

It should be a good game for a teen. The story is that bad. Another thing that I didn't like was how close the camera was to the protagonist, meaning that most of the time, I get 50% of my monitor occupied only by the back of the character. Also, for a party-based game, it is ridiculous that you can't see your party members while exploring the world.

I don' play much jrpg's, but this game is amazing and as my first Tales game it is amazing. Nier Automata was great with combat, but this is by far better looking and better combat. Not finished yet, but definitely looking forward to it.

My first tales game and I did the demo play though. Game is very nice play and story is good too. Worth a try if your looking for something off stream to play

I don't remember the combat in Tales games ever being this good. This is a proper action game that enables player expression, complimented by good party member A.I., rich and unique skill mechanics and progression for all characters, and the ability to flex party A.I. mid-battle. The story itself isn't bad, it's a throwback to games like Final Fantasy Adventure actually. The pacing is really good and compliments the combat flow. Great game, I'm glad I picked it up.

I have played and finished 9 "Tales of" games since the first one, Tales of Phantasia, and for me, Tales of Arise is not only the worst without a doubt but also one of the worst RPGs I have ever played.

THE GOOD:

• Graphics: The game looks really good, with a stylized aesthetic that stands out. Some locations are jaw dropping.
  
• Dungeons: These are a step up compared to Tales of Berseria (but in Berseria suck so it’s not really a compliment).
  
• Combat Animations: The combat animations are excellent, some of the best in the series without a doubt.
  
• "Combat": It can be really fun at times, and when it works, it’s amazing. But…
  
• “Story”: Some parts are well done, with well-written dialogue.
  

THE BAD:

• Combat: Despite some good moments, the combat ultimately sucks. Enemies have way too much HP and poise, even the weaker ones, making every battle drag on for too long. It’s not hard, but it becomes a chore after a while. The enemy variety is even worse. I think this game has less enemy variety than Final Fantasy 1—no joke.
  
• Skits and Cinematics: The Tales series has a feature called “skits” where characters interact, giving players funny moments and/or more information about them. This game has an achievement for listening to 300 skits. There are way too many of them, and because of this, 90% of them are a waste of time. They're presented using the 3D models, which, without much movement, look stiff and lifeless. In contrast, some of the cinematics are really well animated and look amazing.
  
• Dialogue: The game has far too much unnecessary dialogue. They talk about going to a place, then talk again about going to that place, and then on the way there, they talk again, repeating everything. When you finally get there, they talk five more times about the SAME THING they’ve already repeated like 50 times, adding nothing to the story. This goes on and on, and it reaches ridiculous levels in the final dungeon.
  
• Story: It has a good premise, but the execution is terrible. The dialogues are mostly cringe-worthy, and the game has about 5 fake endings. The characters are poorly written and full of clichés, and the story has a lot of face-palming moments. The story loves its drama, but unfortunately, it’s not good drama… Did they fire all the writers from Berseria? What happened!?
  
• The Final Dungeon: It’s disrespectful to the players. I don’t know what else to say. It’s long, boring, filled with the same 10 enemies you’ve already fought a million times. It feels like it’s there just to extend the game, and it’s plagued with hundreds and thousands of unnecessary dialogues.
  
[*] Secondary Quests: They are given by generic looking NPCs, about mundane things like going to kill 3 enemies. They suck.

It's a fairly mediocre game but it has one crucial flaw; it has at least one game breaking bug. I was 11 hours in before I had to abandon my game because I became soft-locked in Cysloden. I couldn't leave and I couldn't progress the story. I could run around in circles. That got boring real quick. 0/10.

Overall 8.5/10. Great value if you buy it on sale.

Classic JRPG story with modern graphics and character modeling. It also has a HUGE amount of interesting conversations, skits and interactions between characters.

Battle system is well-designed, so it's very smooth for me to play through under Hard difficulty. I didn't spend any time on level grinding, but completed all sub-quests out of interest anyway. In addition, each character has its unique skill/accessory build, and I absolutely enjoyed trying out new builds.

I love "tales of" series, really. And I really wanted to get into this game and finish it, but I couldnt. Graphics are awesome and combat system is fine. English dubs are very very bad, bland, dull, it just feels weird. Also story is kinda cringe and obvious, probably the worst story and worst MC, but its my opinion. Berseria was way better than this (ok a bit unfair since Berseria is goated).

Idk, cant think of any reason to recommend. Its just a letdown. Hope next series are better.

How did they go from Berseria to this? What happened to your skits? The skits are my favorite part of Tales of games. They serve to develop these characters and add charm to the journey. Instead they decided to rehash the story we just saw during cutscenes in the skits... and now you have tedious and mundane skits with very little character development. Honestly having stale skits and getting rid of victory scenes really destroys the charm of this series. Yeah the graphics and engine is better here, but what is the point when you got lackluster character development? It takes away the joy from their journey! I love Berseria and its simple story of revenge and the best part was the journey and character development told through the skits. You find a city, go to to an inn and settle down and see a skit were Velvet loves cleaning her room while singing. That adds character development to the cold-hearted Velvet! There are so many humorous skits in this series like the Bazongas! Instead in Arise, we just get boring skits where they are retelling the story we just heard 5 mins ago... The presentation of the skits in Berseria was also miles better than what they did here... The animated HD 2D art just looks better than the models in Arise.

Also what happened to the writing??? Berseria's script and character writing is miles better than Arise. It's like they fired the writers and decided to wing it to save on budget... Maybe they thought fans of the series wouldn't notice the atrocious writing? It's so baffling and an Insane loss of quality from Berseria to this. I was so bored towards the end that I put this game on the back burner and that has never happened with previous Tales of titles I played. I play Tales of games for your character development/quality and that is a big reason why I play Tales of games over the other franchises, but y'all done goofed Namco. Your next game I'm buying on sale if the quality continues to diminish and I recommend y'all do the same!

I never leave reviews, much less bad ones, but my god the writing in this game is so terrible, i have no clue how they went from Berseria to this. half the conversations are nothing but exposition, and any other dialogue is cringy garbage where theyre just repeating the same ideas over and over again. by far the weakest cast of any tales game ive played, and the plot is honestly pretty bland and boring too. Tales games are supposed to be centered around the cast, with all of the members having fully fleshed out characteristics and personalities, and while common tropes are still present, each party member is still unique and have compelling character arcs. The Arise party is nothing but shallow boring poorly written cliche nonsense that no matter how hard i tried to like and connect with them, the immersion kept repeatedly breaking do to how artificial every interaction they shared with eachother was. Do better Tales, youve done it before.