an overall solid game, but a lackluster tales title, unfortunately dragged down by its' relatively short and rushed main story and very few interesting sidequests. it isn't my place to comment on wether the plot should've included the elements it did, but i will say that the slavery storyline felt poorly handled. the ideas were there but ultimately it ended up being another "you should forgive your oppressors and live together" fantasy racism plot ending, and while they did focus on the struggles of getting to that point they seemed meaningless in the grander scheme of things, especially with the god-awful endgame reveal that dahnans and renans are the same race and the 'real' villain wasn't the slave owners.

even putting aside the slavery plot, everything from lenegis onwards felt unnecessary to me. the red woman was the first tales antagonist i've been genuinely afraid of, so the reveal that she's an observant alien race fell flat, and the renan great spirit wasn't all that shocking to me, especially having played tales of the abyss and a lot of other jrpgs with similar sentience/will story beats.

the villains were incredibly bland and one-dimensional, and the brief attempt at humanizing the lords during the lenegis sidequest was frankly disgusting to play through; i really dont know what the team at bamco were thinking while writing that part. vohlran was almost interesting, what with his parallels to alphen, but his motivations and reasons were practically nonexistent and near impossible to understand. for most of the game i was praying for a well-written antagonist from a previous tales game like gaius, mithos or duke to show up but they never did. even heldalf from zestiria had more depth than this guy, and that's a very low standard to fail to live up to.

the highs of arise for me were the main party and the gameplay. every realm was distinct and a joy to explore, with ingredients growing around the map, secrets hidden in every corner and a lot to do and interact with. the cast were just as good as i've come to expect from the tales series, and while they're not top tier characters from an objective standpoint they're enjoyable and the party dynamic was always entertaining, especially with the characters warming up to each other and falling naturally into a found family trope towards the end.

nothing in arise felt particularly new to me; it was the same tales structure and plot twists (two worlds, bigger threat, fake endgame boss leading into the second half against said bigger threat, one world taking the others' energy etc etc) but aside from the incredibly uncomfortable and unfortunately prominent slavery plotline these tropes are so well-used because they work. yes we've heard the two worlds story done over and over even just within the tales series, but it's enjoyable enough and still engaging - it just saddens me that what could've been a great, if slightly unoriginal, story was overshadowed by fantasy racism being used yet again.

tales of arise was a fun experience, and i really do love the characters, but the story really felt like a few older tales titles thrown together and covered in a shiny coat of new-gen graphic paint and an overambitious racism plotline that tried to be revolutionary but ultimately fell flat. the only reason i give this game three and a half stars is for the gameplay and the cast - otherwise it would be a two, maybe three star experience at best.

I don't usually do long reviews on this website because they're honestly a waste of time to me and I got better shit to do, but since this is a new installment in my favorite gaming franchise I felt like I needed to give my honest thoughts on it in actual detail instead of some semi-meme that I usually do.

So.
After playing through Berseria for the 3rd time this year, as well as Zestiria for the 4th, I wanted to go into Arise with as low of a fucking bar as possible. I like Zestiria. Combat blows though. I fucking despise Berseria. Combat is even worse than Zestiria's somehow. fast foward a few weeks after finishing Berseria again and the Arise demo comes out, and I actually enjoyed my time with it. Combat was a massive improvement over Berseria and Zestiria's, so my expectations now were along the lines of Vesperia's, meaning "The story might be ass but at least the combat will be fun."

Finished the game four nights ago, had a blast the majority of my time playing it. That's about all I asked of this game after being severely disappointed with Berseria back when it first released and it delivered.

Do I got issues? Some. It's not perfect. I wasn't expecting the combat to blow me away like the Xillia's did. I've already fully resigned myself into the camp that there is never going to be combat in this franchise as good as those two games ever again. But it is good for what it is. I'm so fucking glad they brought back air combos and just, air anything in general. Truth be told I do not see what this fanbase sees in the Graces style combat it is so fucking shit. The magnet boot, never leave the ground shallow combat that these guys for some reason hail as the best combat this series has to offer is mind blowing because I've played Graces twice now and I still don't get it. But I digress.

~Combat~


Combat in this game is very fun when you're not fighting a boss. Being able to juggle enemies in the air so that you can safely do damage while making cool combos is the kind shit I live for, makes the player feel smart and good. Especially when you're doing it with Alphen because man does that dude gets mad broken with his air stuff by mid game. Like he can do actual fucking infinites later. Kisara can too but it's like one arte she has and it's A DLC arte so uhhhhhhhh yeah. Don't Count. I think the bosses are kinda trash. Okay not think, they're hyper trash. In old Tales games (Not Berseria though because Berseria sucks obviously) you could actually, I don't know, combo the boss? Being able to style on bosses is pretty cool and would be nice to do that since the game teaches you "oh yeah we have this really cool interesting combo system." And then the bosses are just "yeah you know that shit we just taught you? Doesn't apply here." They boil down to "use quick arte, use Boost Arte if they're doing something that can be countered by one or if Alphen's is ready for a free knockdown. Are they knocked down? Do Blazing Sword charge attack for big damage. No? Well knock them down dumbass." I despise game design like this quit teaching me shit if the bosses don't fucking work that way. Bosses are supposed to be a knowledge check and test how well you know the game. If I can't combo bosses since they don't stagger and are just walking walls that I can only smack with my safe quick artes, have bloated giant ass health bars, and just overall aren't fun to fight, MAYBE DON'T DESIGN YOUR BOSSES THIS WAY? Don't even get me started on how every beast boss in this game is the same fucking fight, man. See that glowing weak spot?Only aim for that to do big damage on the boss until it breaks. If it breaks, keep wailing on the boss, it'll come back eventually. Just keep dodging the pattern-less, monotonous boss, bro. It's fun I swear.

The CP (Cure Points) system is this games way of balancing healing artes and making orange/pineapple gels actually important. Everytime you use a healing arte or an arte that cures ailments, some points are taken off this meter according to how strong the spell was. The higher the spell, the more expensive the cost is. I like this in concept, because now orange gels and the like are super expensive (like 3k gald a pop in a game where gald ain't exactly growing on trees until the midpoint of the game) and it keeps the spirit of the Technical Points system alive in a sense since artes take up souls off the soul gauge now (I'm just calling it this because it's the same dumb diamonds from Berseria and that's what it's called there). However the problem shows itself with the game's ludicrously stupid AI, which also branches into another problem I have with the game. Strategy in old Tales games was very simple and easy to use, but in this game now it's super complicated for no reason. I can't set any of my casters to just "stay away from enemy and cast spells." because you can't turn off normal attacks like you could in older games and just have them spam spells, so they will walk up to enemies and bosses and star wailing on them with close range attacks, putting themselves in danger for no reason. This is especially bad on bosses because the AI has absolutely no sense of self-preservation and they will walk into shit that evaporates their health bar. So what does the AI do when someone is near dead/dead? Heal/rez them of course. So all those points that you would like to keep for later for really bad situations get funneled into your dumb AI party. And trust me, the higher the difficulty in this game, the worse this situation becomes because this game bloats health bars and enemy damage the higher the difficulty is set, but your AI teammates are just as dumb no matter what level it is. Truly baffling.

I guess Boost Attacks are okay. They all serve the same purpose of knocking down the enemy but with different conditions. Like Rinwell's consumes enemy spells that she can then use against enemies which is cool, Shionne shoots flying enemies down, Law breaks armor, Dohalim slows the mobility of enemies who dodge a lot, and Kisara blocks charging enemies. Oh Alphen's? Uh. Yeah. It's kinda just walk up and hit them with boost strike. Nothing special really it's just "did you hit them? Okay cool. They're knocked down now." Again they're not bad but they come off more like a gimmick than anything else.

Boost Strikes are basically Vesperia's Fatal Strikes but with no added benefit to doing them other than "this instantly kills the opponent you're attacking." In Vesperia's it rewarded you by giving you back TP or something along those lines according to which fatal strike you did, but in Arise it's mostly just "fill up instant kill bar" and it's easier to fill up that bar the closer to death the enemy is. It's another gimmick but it helps get encounters done quicker.

Not really a fan of how Overlimit is handled in this game because it just feels like a regression. I think Hearts R was the last game in the franchise to allow you to pop Overlimit whenever you wanted in the vein of Vesperia, but in Arise they went back to the old school "take a bunch of damage and then it'll pop" which sucks because it gives me less control over my moveset. Because like all Tales games with Overlimit, Mystic Artes are locked behind it. Playing well like getting a bunch of perfect dodges also helps pop it but it's nowhere near as fast as just getting wailed on by the enemy. You're rewarded more for playing bad than doing good which is never a good way to design a game. Bosses popping Overlimit in old games usually meant that it was time to drop everything and start running since they became super armored and if you got caught in an attack string you were gonna get hit with a mystic arte (depending on the boss). But in this game most bosses' MA's aren't actually threats and are easy to dodge because they're AOE attacks with a large margin for error in avoiding. Dohalim's boss fight is probably the worst case for this. Only got hit because I got greedy attacking him not because it was hard to dodge the falling meteors he was casting. And since the bosses are all super armored beasts all the time now, popping OL doesn't instill a sense of dread or fear in me like in the old games since bosses don't combo you into oblivion if you get hit like back then. They're designed to have slower, easier to react attacks for the most part which makes them incredibly boring. Old Tales games it felt like more of a back and forth between you and the boss. Also doesn't help that OL also gives you and the boss higher defense which turns the already boring, bloated health bar bosses into even more of a chore to fight since they take less damage during the duration of their OL. And boy howdy, I hope you like fighting some of these bosses because you're gonna be fighting a shit ton of recolored beast bosses in the latter half of this game. Fucking kill me.

I do like the changes made to the core combat though. Again, gone are the days of Arte trees/Railroad artes/magnet boot combat. You can use whatever arte whenever you want, you don't need to spam quickstep to move through the movelist to get the arte you want faster, none of that dumb shit. We're in the land of good combat once again, lads. Normal attacks? We got those, chief. No more "Every attack is an arte" nonsense. No more strings, do whatever arte you want freely, but don't spam artes. This game has something called Proration where you see diminishing returns on attacks that you spam back to back where enemies will recover from the stagger sooner. To get around this you have to vary your combo a bit. Haven't used an arte in about 4 actions? It should be reset to it's base proration by that point. It's honestly not a huge deal because I regularly do loops with Alphen but it's a nice thought that they didn't want people just spamming artes on regular enemies and wanted them to learn the system. Wish they extended some of this wisdom to the bosses though????

Yeah I got issues with the combat. Is it good though? Yeah, bro. Shit's fun. I must reiterate how shit the Graces style games are man. How can you play the Xillia's, the R games, Vesperia, and this and think "oh yeah bro, Graces had the best combat in the series." Fuck outta here with that shit.


I dabbled with a few of the characters enough to have an opinion on the combat of the cast so I think i'll just go by one by one and keep it somewhat short.

-Alphen-

Alphen is obviously the easiest to play and master because he has to be, he's the main character, thus joining the ranks of "OP main character syndrome." this series has kept going since I think Xillia now because he's so strong with very little drawbacks. He's great at crowd control, great at air combos, can knockdown enemies with no real problem, he excels at everything he's designed to do. His only drawback is the Blazing sword because using artes from it hurts you, but it's barely a drawback since you can usually just tell Shionne or Dohalim to heal you by just picking the spell on the pause screen. He's pretty OP, but not Ludger OP. Nowhere close.

His artes are really cool and fun to use, too. I really like Swallow Blade, the animation paired with the particle effects that follow its two slashes never fail to just make me happy in a dumb "ooo shiny" kinda way. It's also like your first arte too so you get to use it the entire game. It's probably your best safe damage tool for bosses as well. Honestly not taking Alphen into a boss at all is just a dumb idea. The amount of damage he racks up from his Blazing Sword attacks when they're fully charged is so ridiculously huge that you're actively putting yourself at a disadvantage by not using him. Speaking of those Blazing Sword artes (they're called Flaming Edge attacks, by the way.) I'm honestly not a huge fan of them? Like they're incredibly useful but I like utility as well because some of them have too much wind up to be used in an actual combo without using a Boost Strike, so they're in a position where you only use them on downed opponents. The ones I do like are Searing Gale and Rending Flash because they can be used in combos and allow you to reset your enemies and basically cause pseudo-infinites by sacrificing a miniscule amount of health (as long as you don't charge them, that is.) Explosive Ring is probably his best FE for downed opponents because it's his longest multi-hitting attack and when fully charged for nearly all your health it does massive damage, but it's not easy to combo into. I also kinda like Rising Phoenix since you can combo into it but it's only really good as a combo ender so once you unlock Rending Flash or Searing Gale it becomes obsolete, along with Incineration Wave and Infernal Torrent for that matter. The only reason I would ever think to use them after getting the other half of his FE skills is that you really like those attacks. I also really like Dragon Swarm. It's not as cool as Yuri's in Vesperia. Hell, no version of it is, but I like the animation and particle effects going on with it. I think my other favorite arte of his is Void Flash, which is an air juggle attack that allows him to spawn a small tornado on his opponent which creates a bunch of interesting combo routes if used right. I love looping it with Hurricane Thrust. Alphen is your basic sword guy protag that we've had since the dawn of the series with Cress all the way back in Phantasia. Outside of the Blazing Sword he wouldn't really have much identity of his own in terms of moveset and combat but he's still fun to play.

-Shionne-

I probably would have played her more if she wasn't one of my two White Mage's which is a shame. Her moveset is very fun to play around with. Using her bomb attacks as some sort of pseudo-set play straight out of fighting games is really cool. Really love some of her artes too like Annihilation which is just this wide spread laser attack that just sweeps everything about 30 feet in front of her, and Aqueous Impact which is basically Acid Rain from Devil May Cry where it rains down bullets after shooting up into the sky. Explode and Flare Tornado are cool spells I love seeing her cast those. I do think that having to reload her bombs in order to use them on a continuous basis is a weird gimmick that was probably added to make her offense balanced but it really doesn't add much when you can reload and then roll cancel out of the animation to get back into the fight faster with full bombs. But all and all, she's honestly a really cool and fresh take on the White Mage character type. She's not the first gun user but she is incredibly unique in how she approaches combat.

-Rinwell-

Honestly didn't play Rinwell that much. She's a more traditional DPS mage type that also has some melee type attacks but she honestly wasn't for me. Her arte storing ability is cool and allows her to access higher level artes that she normally wouldn't have until they're unlocked later when you use the same spell as the one you had stored back to back. This mechanic also doesn't get negated when you do unlock the higher tier spells because doing the lower tier one twice might actually be faster than just doing the higher tier spell raw. She even gets skills later in the game that allow her to cast spells faster if she does them in the middle of combos which is extremely useful. Celestial Hammer is probably my favorite arte of hers because she just shoot lightning beams from high in the sky down onto enemies, and Electric Discharge which is just her exploding with even more lightning. Her air artes are honestly really cool but that's missing the point of being a mage, isn't it? Again she's not really for me, but I've talked with a bunch of people that find her really fun.

-Law-

I'm really mixed on Law. He's probably your worst up close damage dealer because all of his artes are either slow as hell and leave you open to enemy attacks but do decent damage, or they have garbage hit boxes so his combos regularly drop, especially on enemies with a heavier weight class. He also has absolutely zero crowd control skills outside of Whirlwind Snap which is also pretty slow, much slower than the version Jude uses in the Xillia's. He even has the self buff skills of lights showing up on his hands and feet for playing well just like Jude does. Honestly Law feels like a really bad version of Jude. Jude had crowd control, his artes were fast and relatively safe, and they had fucking utility. Jude's Whirlwind Snap could be used in the air as well as the ground and could be used for movement to get around enemies safely. Law, doesn't exactly have that. Jude was just better in every way. It's hard for me to like playing Law when I know a much better version of him came before in the form of Jude. Very High Risk/Low Reward in his design. Also he's voiced by Bryce Papenbrook which is....yeah.

-Kisara-

Man I love playing Kisara. Sure her fucking moveset is slow as shit and her artes are sometimes a chore to combo into because of how much wind up they have, but when they hit you FEEL that power behind this woman. I like a lot of her artes. Hurricane Slice (which is honestly just Swallow Dance) is pretty cool to look at and is probably your most reliable ground to air arte for her because Sadistic Descent can cause awkward hit box situations if done on certain enemies. I like the simplicity of Havoc Thrust just being a forward momentum kick in the air that gives surprisingly more juggle opportunity than I expected. Light Spear makes a return to the series, always nice to see and hers is also very good. She even gets an upgraded version of it called Blizzard Bloom which is an air to ground arte that is also pretty cool. She isn't even an air oriented fighter but her air combos are honestly still fun to pull off. I can go on and on about how much I love her artes. Tempest Wyvern with its sick mini tornado that raises enemies into the air, Inferno Crossing which makes a fiery X across your enemy, she's just so fucking cool man. I think the only problem I have is that a lot of her artes have huge wind up so getting a good amount of them to combo properly can be a bit of a chore. And her biggest sin is having without debate the worst version of Tiger Blade in the entire franchise. Another thing is that she's the only party member that doesn't dodge into attacks for perfect parries, she just RoyalGuard's her enemies which makes sense and all since she's lugging around a fucking door for a shield. She's mad fun. That's all I can really say.

-Dohalim-

Another case of "Man I sure would play you more often if you weren't one of my White Mage's." Because his actual offensive moveset is very fun. His perfect dodge allows his staff to elongate (shut up) so that he has a large hitbox and an easier time to combo opponents, which was basically lifted straight from Leia's moveset in the Xillia's. He's also got the problem that Law has where his hitboxes are a little wonky and his artes leave him open since a good amount of them are long and leave him exposed. The only thing that seperates them though is that Dohalim is actually good at crowd control. Crescent Flash spins his staff around and forms a tornado around him (a lot of tornado type moves in this game, huh?) which is good for situations where you're surrounded, Seismic Rupture as well since it also just kinda moves you out of harms way while clipping an enemy along with you. The simplicity of Catapult where he just throws his Staff at you and it spins back like a boomerang, pulling the enemy along with it is also cool. Eagle Rage is a good Air to Ground arte (which is also something he took from Leia) that is also good for moving around the map since it also has this unintentional glitch where if he lands awkwardly he will warp a long distance away from his original target with it. He has fairly standard Tales spells like Stalagmite, Air Pressure, etc. But I really like Execution because it's just a pillar of darkness that inflicts a good amount of damage when it lands. But I think my favorite arte of his is Sanguine Blossom which is just an incredibly long, flashy combo that ends with him forming a flower on an opponent that continually hits them while he turns his back on them. So unnecessary, so stupidly committal for no reason and I love it. I really wish I could play him more but not having a healer about on the hardest base game difficulty just wasn't a wise a idea.

- Combat Etc.-

Hey we got good Mystic Artes again. Okay well kinda. Not really a huge fan of the base MA's you get but I do think Dohalim's Tectonic Fission is really nice to look at despite how goofy the animation of him hitting the ground looks. I really like Alphen's 2nd MA Flaming Pillar: Pyre because of how hectic it is and the final flame pillar he sets while sheathing the Blazing Sword. But jesus fuck do not do that MA on a base PS4 it can barely handle it without the frame rate shitting itself. Not really a fan of either of Law or Shionne's to be completely honest. I like Rinwell's Aquarius Damnation since she just engulfs the field in a tsunami then calls down thunder into it. I just wish it ended with a more detailed explosion or something. I like both of Kisara's MA's, Final Prayer, her 2nd one, even more so than Flare Demolisher. Mostly because Final Prayer is just a savage beatdown with her mace before she fires a pillar of light down from the sky. Flare Demolisher isn't bad though, she basically enlarges her shield then causes an earthquake after she slams it into the earth.

This game has DLC artes and while they're cool for the factor that they're also references to older Tales characters (Kisara's Dazzling Spin hails from Flynn from Vesperia, Law's Flashing Savage Roar is a lightning version of Jude's Savage Roar, Shionne's Ray hailing from Raine from Symphonia, and Alphen's Howling Azure Storm which is a water version of Yuri's Azure Storm, and so on.) But some of these artes are a little...too good? Like kinda in a pay to win sense. Dazzling Spin is probably Kisara's best arte because it lasts longer than her attack animation thanks to the light pillar and has just enough hit stun for her to wait for the attack to end to reset into a new combo with no actual penalty unlike Alphen. Law's stronger artes that you earn in the game are either very long or have long start up animations but his Savage Roar is fast and strong at the same time. All of Alphen's DLC artes are strong, too. The only ones that are kinda balanced are the ones that were spells for Rinwell, Shionne, and Dohalim. I hope this doesn't set a precedent for the future because if it does I'm very worried.

~Story and Writing~

Damn Berseria was it really this hard to tell a decent story? Again I played Berseria and Zestiria again earlier this year to set my expectations for the game as low as humanly possible so I guess you can say what I expected out of the story was "Just be better than the last two games please" and honestly I don't even hate Zestiria's story but it's not great. The character interactions Zestiria had kept me hooked because the cast are just so fun to experience even if the overall writing around them is sub-par, which isn't exactly a praise I extend towards Berseria. However, good writing (for the most part) is a praise I will extend towards Arise because the writing is solid for the majority of the story. Like yeah it's honestly kinda easy to write a story where its main theme is "Racism/Slavery is bad" but the writing around this theme, which can be a bit cheesy at times, is told earnestly and with effort and the right amount of respect and tact the topic deserves. The worldbuilding of the realms is also top notch as well. The fire realm of Orbus Calaglia being an intensely oppressive giant slave labor camp with the intense heat constantly bearing down on Dahnan slaves, the portrayal of people's corpses being strewn around areas, the absolute despair the living feel while they toil everyday wondering if today is the day they finally keel over. It's fantastic. It establishes the Renan oppression over the Dahnan's so well. It's a great way to open the game. With each new Realm you discover different ways Rena has subjugated Dahna. Some with underhanded tactics where the Dahnan citizens will sell each other out for mere scraps just to get by like in Cyslodia, or through complete fear and brainwashing like in Ganath Haros. But I think my favorite realms are Elde Menancia and Mahag Saar. Elde Menancia being ruled by a Renan Lord who would rather not rule by fear, but show actual kindness to Dahnan's, which makes the only peaceful realm in all of the 5 realms. The problem is that this creates an underbelly of Renan Loyalists who work in the shadows to subjugate Dahnan's in their own way, unbeknownst to Dohalim. Mahag Saar is also cool because it also isn't another "Free the slaves" area because the slaves freed themselves already, but the damage done to their capital, Niez, and the power hunger the slaves feel proves that even the Dahnan's are capable of being just as cruel as the Renan's. It's too bad once you finish exploring the realms the second half of the game starts and the themes get dropped completely for a really bad twist, but I'll get there when I get there.

The overall character writing for Arise is...okay? Could be a lot better. Seems like half the cast got effort put in, and the other cast not so much, because a common complaint that I share with people is that characters like Law and Kisara get a short, quick character arc and then they're exactly the same and don't grow at all for the rest of the game, which is really disappointing. The same criticism can be lobbed at Alphen too, which is really bad seeing as he's the main character. In fact, I was kinda worried this would happen when I first found out Alphen was an amnesia character back in 2019 when the game was first announced, because amnesia characters have hardly any character, and their arcs usually revolve around getting those memories back to make them slightly more interesting than they are, but with Alphen he's probably handled the worst out of all the main characters in this franchise who did have "amnesia" like Luke from Abyss and Emil from Symphonia 2. Luke and Emil had amnesia (Luke not really but it's kinda the same plot line since he couldn't remember anything before his 10th birthday) but their characters grew in different ways outside of just being defined by their amnesia, which made them very engaging. But Alphen is solely defined by it because outside of that he's a boring good guy with incorruptible morals who only slightly doubts himself after getting his memories back because of what he remembered, but quickly gets over it. It might as well not have happened. It's very disappointing. But we have Dohalim, Rinwell, and Shionne around to pick up the slack for the other half since they actually grow and change throughout the entire story. It sucks too because Alphen's entire life has been completely ruined by the Renan's. He's a living relic. He's actually around 300 something years old because he's been in cold sleep since the original Sovereign trials because he was the only successful Dahnan to become a Sovereign before Vholran. And in learning why he had amnesia he remembers that during a ritual that would absorb energy from the planet of Dahna, he lost control and got so many people killed. This is the part where I start comparing him to Luke again because when something similar happened with Luke in Abyss it was handled and written so much better. When Luke's massive fuck up got an ENTIRE TOWN wiped off the face of the planet, he was kicking himself for it the entire rest of the game, his attitude changed completely. He was incredibly arrogant, self-important, and just generally unpleasant of a person before this happened, but he dedicated the rest of his life to trying to make the world a better place, slowly growing throughout the rest of the game after this. Alphen just kinda gets bummed for a bit, then gets over it because "oh fuck I gotta save Shionne, right." He's just so boring, man. Just play Abyss if you want a good version of Alphen's character arc.

Rinwell starts off overtly racist towards all Renans, acting with intense venom and vitriol towards both Shionne and Dohalim because of obvious reasons, and due to the fact that a Renan Lord, one of the main antagonists, murdered her parents in front of her. But as the game goes on she gets to know Shionne and Dohalim better and changes her ways, probably being one of the most active players in liberating Dahna and working for a path towards Renan/Dahnan coexistence.

Dohalim's character arc is a little bumpy but it still ends up in a good place. Dohalim may be a Renan, but Renan's aren't exactly strangers to oppressing even themselves, seeing as they have their own class system that's dictated by how strong of a magic user they are. Dohalim was born with a high aptitude for magic, but never really cared for being a Renan Lord or becoming a Sovereign, who leads the entirety of the Renan Race. He had aspired to be a musician with his closest friends, but had that ripped away from him. And as misfortunate as it is, in a battle to dictate who would be the next Renan Lord of Elde Menancia, Dohalim had to kill one of those said friends in self-defense, and having another vow revenge on him for it, mentally scarring him for life. It was these events that would lead him to be a just ruler of Menancia, but even he admits that it wasn't all out of the kindness in his heart, but to no longer hear the pained screams of slaves, as it reminded him of the friend he killed, and the pained wails of the one who loved him. This was all written pretty fucking well, right? Too bad you won't get the continuation of it for like another 20-25 hours of gameplay, where he reconciles with his friend and tries to be an actually selfless leader among the Renans to honor the memory of the friend he killed. The pacing on the character writing in this game can be pretty bad, unless you're Rinwell or Shionne I guess.

Shionne's arc is very basic but it has very well-written moments in it that make her stand out. She starts off very stand offish because of the fact that if people touch her, her body unleashes thorns that cause searing pain to said person who came into contact with her. But underneath her hardened exterior is a person who honestly cares about others, but is just never given an opportunity to because of those thorns. Her own brand of kindness is shown in how she noticeably stands away from people in cutscenes, or how she will always take time to heal people who are hurt when given the chance. She even helps Alphen come to terms with a friends death after getting rid of the lord who took their life. Her relationship with Alphen is very charming to see unfold, in the scenes where her and Alphen talk alone before going to sleep, she is still putting on the facade of being cold and hard to communicate with, but with a hint of that kindness shining through. Especially in the scenes where she tries to reach out to Alphen as he's the only person she can touch due to his being unable to feel pain. This comes full circle in the scene where Alphen gets his memories back and tries to save her from being kidnapped. At that point in the story, they're used to being able to touch one another, but with Alphen's memories returning, so too does his sense of pain. When Alphen recoils from feeling the first pain he's felt in ages, Shionne mentally breaks as the only person she was close to shows fear at her curse, and lets herself get kidnapped. It's such good shit. I can go on and on with how well-written she is, but this shit is already long enough as is.


The villains are BLAAAAND. None of them stand out. The things they do are heinous yeah but, like, that's what villains are supposed to do, bro. they're one dimensional to the very last, and the big twist "villain" is fucking awful. Vholran is the only noteworthy one worth talking about because he's in the same boat as Alphen. They're both Dahnan's that were taken from their lives and forced to be used as experiments to become Renan Sovereigns, because the main dividing point between Renans and Dahnan's is that Renan's can use Dark Magic, and Dahnan's can use Light Magic. Renan's absorb Astral Energy (mana) from Dahnan's as a part of the Crown Contest to dictate new Sovereigns. But this is a part of the twist where the Crown Contest is just a ploy to absorb Astral Energy for the REAL big bad, since all the Renan Lords are just pawns in a greater scheme. None of them in history have ever become a Sovereign, only Dahnan's can. and in 300 years, only two people have successfully been experimented on to become one. Alphen and Vholran. Alphen is the Sovereign who is righteous and just, while Vholran is the Sovereign who is wicked, corrupt, and sees people as tools, whether they're Renan or Dahnan doesn't matter to him. It should create an interesting clash in their ideologies as Dahnan's subjected to the cruelest types of punishment for some twisted game made by the Renan's, but their opinions on life were drastically changed by them in different directions. But that doesn't ever really happen. You never get a real explanation as to why Vholran became that way, and Alphen and him never have a conversation where they argue about their ideals, which would have made for some actually good character writing for the both of them. It's a very odd direction for this game where back story is everything to their character writing, to the point where it's some characters only writing.

The Helganquil. The Planet Rena itself. Those are the true, twist, big bad of the game. And I hate it. I hate it so much. The Helganquil are the true denizens of Rena. The Renans you know throughout the entirety of the game, aren't really Renans. Shionne, Dohalim, the lords, none of them are. They're Dahnan's. They're Dahnan's whose ancestors were experimented on centuries ago in a large ploy to absorb the planet of Dahna of its Astral Energy. The fake Renans live on the satellite of Lenegis. Somehow nobody ever bothered to ask "Hey does anyone actually live on our home planet?" Why, pray tell, is this happening? Because the actual planet of Rena is basically dead. The game will establish in the second half that planets have wills of their own. It takes form in the Astral Energy the planet has. Rena is dying and has barely any energy left, so its will awoke because it concentrated in a specific spot where some of its life still exists to an extent, desperately clawing for more energy to keep itself alive, and the closest planet it could drain was Dahna, its sister planet. Dahna's will exists, but has no sapience because the planet isn't dying. It only develops that once it starts having its energy drained and it all gathers at the point where it's being sucked up. The will of Rena is the whole reason why Lenegis exists. It subjugated the Helganquil to do its bidding, it told them to kidnap Dahnan's and turn them into "Renan's", it created the Sovereign/Maiden program that ruined Alphen's life and created Shionne's curse, and is the sole reason behind why Renan/Dahnan hatred exists. It's fucking terrible. The theme's the game has brilliantly written throughout the entirety of the game, have now been completely thrown aside for this incredibly stupid twist. All those hours getting you to care about the plight of Dahnan's, the cruelty of the Renan's, all of it. It was all because of a planet. Not because Renan's thought themselves to be superior, but because of a literal planet. The planet couldn't have been dying out because of the arrogance the Renan's have? And no, don't use the "Well if we did that it would just be Xillia again" excuse because we are LONG past the point where this series lifting creative ideas from older games is a big no no. Xillia lifted ideas, Vesperia did it, Symphonia did it. We've been doing it for a long time, guys. I don't care. It would have made more sense and been in line with the themes you were writing. You fucked up. Hard.

~Closing Thoughts~

Despite the issues I have, I do like this game a lot. Ever since this game was announced I have been dreading its existence for a solid two years now. Berseria fucked me up, dude. Not even Graces could put me into full blown doomer mode because I know we got 2 of the best games in the series right after it. But the combination of Zestiria's garbage combat, and Berseria's garbage everything instilled in me this perpetual anxiety for Arise. And not gonna lie, it's not completely gone. I will continue to worry about every future installment in this franchise to some extent due to how fluctuating the quality of these games can be, but at least it won't be anywhere near as bad as it was in the four year time span between Berseria to Arise. I'm glad I can like this game. I really am. I was able to reclaim a bit of that childlike wonder I had towards Xillia when I played it for the first time when I was playing Arise. There was a point where Shionne, Kisara, and Rinwell were all just talking with each other and enjoying one another's company where it hit me that "Man, this is why I love Tales." The endearing characters, the fun combat, the creative worlds, that's Tales for me. And Arise delivered.

-Etc.-


This is pretty much the conclusion of the review. I might go back to add more later if I feel like it but this shit took way longer than I expected because I had a lot to say, but tried to keep it somewhat brief. I love the graphics. Best a Tales game has looked. The hop to Unreal Engine 4 was a smart move. Too bad the game has performance issues on base ps4's (which I played this on) and has pop in issues, but honestly pop in is just how mid-tier jrpg's roll now. If it bothers you then im sorry but you're stuck with it. I wish areas were more interesting to traverse. The hallway simulator is still strong with this series. They desperately need to bring back puzzles for dungeons and shit to make the game feel not as monotonous because relying solely on your combat to make people engaged really only works with traditional action games more so than ARPG's. Sidequests are boring and uninteresting still since a lot of them are either fetch quest or fight boring beast boss. Fishing is fun in small doses. Getting to stare at Kisara's perfectly sculpted ass is always a plus. bring back more interesting unlockable outfits instead of recolors and locking cool outfits behind paid DLC, and stop advertising DLC to me in game. That shit is mad annoying.

And finally: Hibana is a fucking banger and I won't hear any different.


KEEP THE FLAME ALIVE.

I like the story a lot, though I agree with the take that the first half was better paced. Still enjoyed the second half primarily because of Shionne and Alphen, who kinda carried this game for me. Don't get me wrong I like the rest of the cast but these two were always the ones I thought of when thinking of this game's good scenes and lines. The only really bad part in the plot was the exposition scene after Lenegis that felt like it took half an hour. It was just a big lore dump, nothing too compelling or exciting, and I'd already predicted most of it anyway.
The combat was good overall. I think in terms of series it's almost the best but Xillia 2 still beats it. This is one of those games where you can tell the combat was designed for the normal encounters. Normal encounters are very fast, flowing, and exciting. The boss fights on the other hand all feel very long due to how much HP the bosses get, and the combat feels a lot more like doing the same combos into a wall over and over again until it falls down.
The difficulty could've been better balanced, as it felt like using multiple items was very necessary for success in pretty much any boss fight on moderate or higher. That wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't for how expensive the consumables are. However I'm not too upset about it given that Tales difficulties can be changed in a snap.
Another minor problem is with the way they did the DLC. For starters, the game initially had DLC advertisements on the campfire menu, but those were taken out with a patch, so I'm not letting it affect the score. The only thing that bothers me now is that I feel like the purchase of DLC has a significant effect on how hard of a time you have with the game, and the suspicious part of me suspects that this was intentional. I did not purchase any DLC and as the game went on I had to steadily decrease the difficulty mode as the game went on in order to keep up with the levels of the bosses, which were sometimes 15 levels higher than me despite me fully exploring all areas and not even avoiding encounters. (For the record, 10 levels costs about $2, and you can get about 50 levels worth of these. I chose not to purchase them out of principle.)
Listing all the problems out like that makes it look worse than it is, the game still deserves a 9/10

this review, like this game, will age horribly. i know this. i know this game can be incredibly scuffed in some places, but none of it stopped my enjoyment of the game, enough to 100% it. it took me 80.9 hours according to steam. (admittedly with leaving the game open when i went to go do shit around the house). I preordered the ultimate edition in july, so i spent $110 on this game, and ive been waiting for it to come out for 2 years. I was not disappointed.

Ill start the actual meat and potatoes of this review with my complaints on this game i rated 5 stars
My biggest complaint is without a doubt bandai namco's horrid dlc policies, even with the ultimate edition you dont get everything. it gives you all the costumes and a few items that give you a discount at the store (about 33% in total if i did the math correctly). what it doesnt give you, that is of actual substance, is the ability to carry more than 15 of one consumable. 15 is the series standard, but not a good one because it encourages hoarding. the character models are going to look like dookie in 2-3 years. ill talk about the story, especially the second half, near the end of this review
as far as gameplay goes, this game is fucking CLEAN. it takes berserias stamina over mp formula but adds a basic attack for combo extension/doing something while waiting for stamina to recharge. this sounds so basic but it adds a lot to a decent formula. i have 0 issues whatsoever with the gameplay. shared CP instead of individual MP is also a good thing because it lets you waste less orange and pineapple gels. i was so used to being an mp hog that i stopped myself from using double demon fang because it was a goddamn mp blaster in the past games.
some people have problems with the localization, such as the VAs and constant typos, but i think the voice acting is perfect, and the typos add soul, so i think its a good localization.

now for the story: FULL SPOILERS BELOW
the game starts off pretty decent, i think that for a jrpg this is a good time between opening up the game and getting to play the game. you start as iron mask who is a slave in generic fire land #37, but one day you find a renan, the people who have been enslaving you, running away from her own kind, shionne. blah blah blah she stole the fire master emerald and has a curse that makes it so that anyone who touches her goes into excruciating pain, but also lets iron mask use a flaming sword that just looks like a stalagmite in a volcano. you go with the rebels and wowee kachowie, you kill the first boss whos name sounds like ballsack after you learn iron masks name is alphen. after you beat him theres a girl from the next area, winter area #71, coming through the door that you just destroyed. you go with her and the old fart dad thats going to die (ooooh who coulda guessed)
and then the rest of the game sort of follows this formula of you go to area and discover whats wrong and meet the local resistance and fight some bosses and then a big one, a lord in area 1 2 4 and 5, and just an annoying enemy in area 3. i know this review makes me sound like im being harsh on this game, cause tropes and whatnot, but the game actually presents all this really charmingly and changes up the formula enough to keep it fresh.
in grasstopia you learn its a paradise with equality between renans and the slaves (dahnans, i never mentioned that renans are from a nearby other planet). after you dick around for a while and be mean to the local black man (im like 95% sure that dohalim is the only black character in the game) you discover a conspiracy to turn all the dahnans into a giant soup. when dohalim finds out about this you have to fight him, and then go to the castle and fight the asswipe responsible for this's monster. the next area is actually really fucking awesome, you get there just after the rebels "successfully" overthrow their lord, and since you have 2 renans with you (shionne and dohalim) the leader acts like a dick to you and gives the nice guy bad intel so you waste your time in a pointless dungeon that you have nothing to show for doing. while you were doing that, they actually found her and you go to the execution. this is legitimately the coolest part of the game, because you get to see this saturday morning cartoon villain just fucking kill hundreds upon hundreds of people all at once by turning them all into soup. it fucking rules. after you go and catch up with her boat, you learn that the girl from the ice land (rinwell) actually saw that lord kill her parents. yadda yadda, you win.
the next area is so bizarre, because you dont have shionne with you after she got kidnapped and this weirdo psycho whos actually the fifth lord kidnapped her, and broke the rest of alphens mask, making his design 20x more boring. you learn that everybody is a mindless drone that just goes off to their deaths, and the renan soldiers are basically just robots. after you fight the fifth lord, you learn that theres more to the game and a red-clad woman steals all of the chaos emeralds and the master emerald that comes from getting them all. this part did such a good job at being absolutely terrifying.

PART 2 IS HERE

after this, you just sorta go around dahna solving problems until you finally get the balls to go and defeat the big baddie and go fight a giant spirit. after this you go and find a spaceship to lenegis, renas capitol, which is basically an artificial moon. when you get to lenegis, you learn that the caste system makes renans themselves on the same tier as what dahnans were treated, all depending on how much magic they could use. you fight dohalims hypnotized friend, and then steel yourself for what is going to happen on rena. when you get on your starship, you see that rena is actually fractured and unwhole, and see lenegis boost all of dahnas energy into rena, and see it start blooming a giant flower. after this, a bunch of red women teleport you to somewhere where they think youll die but you dont you get your ship fixed by a purple version of their true form and a bunch of runaway renans.
i think now is the perfect opportunity to explain alphens stupid yet funny backstory. the whole point of the slaves is to win a lord the title of sovereign for 7 years. this is actually all just a front for collecting magic to make rena whole again. The sovereign is actually a dahnan that they tried to make super strong and able to get the astral energy absorption shit right. alphen is actually the first of 2 sovereigns, and he is also 300 years old. the maiden (role that is only relevant after you learn all of this) was shionnes ancestor, and now is shionne. the fifth lord is also a sovereign but went crazy, and his maiden is a room of artificial life that hes been chained to, because the last maiden (shionnes ancestor) was too emotionally unstable and caused alphen to go nuts and kill a bunch of people.
after you learn literally everything, you go to rena and go through the least obnoxious final dungeon in tales of history, albeit way too long. the final boss is a materialization of renas astral energy (also known as energy earlier in this review) but after you fight him you actually fight the crazy guy! wowee! no you cant know how he got there. it is a complete and total cutscene boss. in the credits sequence you see alphen and shionne live together and get married in the last image. its cute.
for the postgame shit you can do a boss rush with the lords and the old fart where theyre all level 95-100, and a couple of really small dungeons with 3 bosses from the past 3 games, eizen, edna, and chronos. chronos is the easiest superboss ive ever fought, and a total exp bitch, so you just need to fight him 4-5 times and youre level 100. just spam double demon fang and dodge roll.
overall i legitimately loved this game, but will never replay it because not only is it a 70-80 hour jrpg, but also im scared i wont adore it as much the second time.

I was really surprised how much I ended up loving this game. The first 80% is incredible and rarely misses a beat. Exploring Dahna and liberating the different sections of the world was incredible and it really hit some topics and followed through with some punches I really wasn’t expecting it to. My biggest problem was that each area ended with a dungeon that went on a little too long and was uninspired in their layouts. I really feel like the game could have ended at the halfway point and that would have been a great game on its own right, but to have the balls to go “alright now play season 2 fuckers” and throw you into the aftermath of that first half is incredible.

The point the game started to really stumble is when you can tell Bamco told them “no we can’t delay anymore ship it” because that’s when they really start to fumble the themes of the game up to that point and the dungeons get bad. What started as “unbridled hate begets more hate so learn to hold those responsible accountable while not turning that hatred back on the innocent” became “my friends are my power” and while I love these characters a lot and think they hold up the worst parts of the game that message didn’t really gel with the world they had created at this point, at least to me. The game as a whole really stumbles at the end though, the final dungeon is just horrible. If your idea of a difficult final dungeon is making almost every enemy encounter a mini boss that is probably about 5-10 levels higher than the average player at that point than you fucked up big time. The final dungeon alone took me as long as one of the main areas of the first half of the game. In the five hours I spent in the final dungeon, I could have started a fresh save and beat Balseph. That is unreasonable. The final boss rush was really cool at least and that final battle at the end was the best fight in the game. Even if the game stumbled the landed a bit, I teared up seeing all the art of everyone living their lives in the credits, with the shot of Alphen and Shionne in wedding garb hitting me like a truck and really making me realize how much I loved these characters. If nothing else, they really, REALLY nailed the party members.

I just wish Ray Chase could miss once.