Vamos la, meu único contato com a franquia Tales of antes de jogar esse jogo era somente por conta do anime de Tales of Zestiria, no qual vi todos. Antes disso, eu tinha a versão física do Tales of Legendia para PS2 la para meados de 2009, porém naquela época, não era muito fã de anime, então nunca cheguei dar uma chance para ele, mesmo possuindo.

Vi que havia entrado no catálogo do Game Pass e baixei para ver qual era a desse jogo da franquia, quando comecei, tive uma surpresa imensa vendo que o jogo possui uma gameplay de um modo à la hack & slash (a surpresa se deu ao fato de eu sequer ter acompanhado qualquer coisa dos jogos até então).

Logo no primeiro reino já me apaixonei pelo jogo, o combate por mais que na dificuldade que joguei tenha sido injusto, ele é bem fluido e divertido, os personagens são bem legais e carismáticos e o jogo é lindo, tanto em efeitos, ambientação, animações (tanto as em CG quanto as em formato de Anime).

A história do jogo dá uma arrastada ali para o meio em Mahag Saar, porém depois ele pega o rumo de novo e volta a ficar muito bom.

Acho que é isso. Joguei durante 75 horas e acho que foi um tempo bom para um jogo desse. Depois dele planejo jogar os outros jogos da franquia na espera de gostar tanto quanto esse.

Uma aventura de altos e baixos, mas que deixou uma boa impressão.

Este era um jogo que eu tinha uma certa expectativa, pois gostei da experiência que tive com a demo em 2021 e faz tempo que gostaria de experimentar a franquia Tales of. Agora posso dizer que essas expectativas foram atendidas parcialmente, e que pretendo jogar outros jogos da franquia.

História e personagens:
Eu gostei da party de Tales of Arise, todos os personagens me agradaram. Há aquela parcela de clichê neles, mas eu adorei a forma que eles interagem entre si, principalmente nos esquetes. Estas interações são mais curtas, relacionadas à acontecimentos que o grupo viveu ou alguma coisa aleatória, como por exemplo "como funciona usar sua arma?", "é muito difícil se aliviar usando essa armadura?" (essa e várias outras me renderam boas risadas).
Em relação à história, ela foi me ganhando conforme o jogo avançou. A expectativa aumentou conforme visitei novas regiões e vi o "problema" a ser resolvido em cada uma delas, porém começou a ir ladeira abaixo conforme os eventos finais se aproximavam por causa da exposição desnecessária. Infelizmente o jogo explica alguns assuntos importantes através de paredão de texto naquelas salas estilo "interaja comigo e entenda tudo que não consegui esclarecer no decorrer do jogo" :(

Gameplay:
Durante a demo, eu entendi absolutamente nada do que tava acontecendo nas batalhas kkkkk pra mim era só um action RPG com uma poluição visual que parecia divertida por algum motivo. Pegando o jogo completo, ele te pega pela mão e explica tudo timtim por timtim, então o que era considerado uma "bagunça" se tornou uma "bagunça compreensível" kkkkk. Além disso, quero enaltecer que não tem problema esquecer como faz algo relevante nas batalhas, pois a seção de ajuda do game é bem eficaz e organizada, assim como todo o resto dos menus.
Ainda em relação ao combate, há uma curva de aprendizado pra encontrar a melhor forma de confrontar os inimigos. Dominar o combate melhora a experiência nas batalhas, não deixando-as "fáceis", mas auxiliando em identificar o melhor comportamento para enfrentar os adversários.
As lutas de bosses e inimigos gigantes são ótimas. Várias delas possuem a grandiosidade necessária para o evento em questão, e os gigantes oferecem batalhas desafiadoras, só que às vezes rola uma exagerada. Eu senti que estava enfrentando algum monstro opcional de Final Fantasy XII em alguns momentos, pois quando os gigantes (bosses opcionais também) estavam próximos de morrer, eles entravam no modo apelão em que usam o especial com muito mais frequência, os ataques deles ficam mais difíceis de esquivar e as janelas de ataque diminuem... gosto desse fator quando aplicado na medida certa, mas às vezes eu empacava nos últimos 10% de vida do bicho porque conseguia fazer quase nada (faltou dedo mesmo hehehe).
Pra fechar com chave de ouro o combate, eu imaginava que seria divertido/eficaz jogar com 1 ou 2 personagens no máximo, mas felizmente subestimei o game. Cada personagem da party é agradável de controlar em batalha, e a arena em Visquinte incentiva a experimentar isso pra perder o receio de trocar de personagens no decorrer da história. Cansou de usar a espada flamejante do protagonista? Então troque para a Shionne e passe a usar rifles e magias, ou use algum outro personagem da party.

Ambientação e conteúdo opcional:
Os mapas de Tales of Arise são bonitos, refletindo bem o elemento (fogo, vento, etc) dominante de cada região ou o contexto daquela localidade. Eu achei os mapas pequenos e com muitas seções lineares, não senti a imersão que esperava ao jogar a demo... embora o melhor mapa seja esse que foi apresentado na demo risos. Como é meu primeiro Tales of, talvez eu tenha criado expectativas erradas pela falta de conhecimento sobre a franquia. Outro ponto que não me conquistou nos mapas é a falta de coisas pra fazer, isso é justificável pelo contexto do jogo, mas senti falta de mais atividades além de pescar e lutar na arena.
As sidequests foram interessantes pra mim por causa das recompensas e quando o objetivo era derrotar algum gigante ou boss opcional. Algumas sides mais pacifistas tinham diálogos mais relevantes ou engraçados, e poucas foram chatas ao estilo "me traga X unidades de tais itens" sem uma conclusão mais elaborada.

Embora o jogo apresente falta de variedade de coisas para fazer e a história tenha me decepcionado nos atos finais, eu continuei fazendo as sides no pós game e torcia para presenciar novos diálogos entre os personagens nos esquetes. O combate me divertiu horrores, a satisfação que eu tinha em criar combos enormes e aplicar as finalizações me impediu de cansar de jogar. Foram 60 horas bem jogadas, em que um jogo não precisa ser perfeito para proporcionar horas de diversão, risadas e desafios, basta ele atender seus requisitos pessoais mínimos.

This game had potential. The amount of repeated enemies with different color palates are numerous. Enemies are also really easy. Like, so much so, that there's kinda no point in this even being an action rpg. They're really tanky, you can't hit stun them unless you inflict break on them, and you have no way of knowing how close you are to actually getting them to break. Enemies fall out of your air juggles constantly, like all the time. Your skill tree upgrades are pretty fucking worthless. Most are very situational, and the semi useful ones don't actually tell you how much they increase things by. You know how elden ring bosses have insane tracking? Yea, this game is the complete opposite, nothing hits you. You have a dodge roll that can be used to avoid attacks, but you can just walk to the right or left and avoid mostly everything.

The story is pretty strange. I've played about 8 hours and for a game about freeing slaves and being oppressed by tyrants, it sure does not have that tone at all. It kinda has no tone at all. As I am writing this, I'm pretty stuck on trying to think about the tone or much else of the story. Like I know the general premise, but the story doesn't do much elaborating on the world, and the environments are pretty bland. One of my favorite rpgs, FF13, doesn't do much world building at all, but it does focus in on the characters stories. This game seems intent on making us forget about the main characters stories so they can info dump us near the end. Then what we're left with is the minuscule amount of world building and focusing on characters that I personally did not care for as the game made them sit in the background for a good chunk of the game. It's also really predictable, maybe I just played too many stupid anime games, but I could predict this game like I was in the future.

As this is my first game in the tales series, people have said others are better and I will be playing those, In particular, Tales of Berseria.

Wish this game had auto-advanced dialogue in all cutscenes. Initially, you think it does, but after the first 2 hours, a lot of dialogue needs you to constantly press x to advance.

One thing I do like is that in the skill menu, you can tag 1 skill per character in your party and the game will notify you when you have enough skill points to purchase the skill.

Though, I'm not a fan of the game's lock-on mechanic. I played on manual. It uses an automatic hard lock-on that allows you to switch between targets except you can't turn off the lock-on and your character doesn't face the enemy that is locked on so it is very normal in this sense to attack and miss because your camera isn't always following the locked-on target as one would expect. However, it mostly works out because it's clear that the game doesn't want you to always move around during combat. In that case, doing combos and landing attacks works better because a lot of moves have gap closers. There is still the big annoyance of the fact that the camera doesn't follow the enemy that's locked on nor will it automatically change to the nearest enemy unless you press the lock-on button again.

Combos are handled in a manner where the game encourages you to not just spam the base three-hit combo nor should you spam the same power moves, aka artes. Instead, you want to mix them up because if you spam your base combo, your character stops moving for a full second after it ends and if you spam the artes within a four-combo string, they will do less damage to the enemy and have reduced stagger ability. On top of that, you have the burning sword which allows you to do special moves that deal more damage than a typical arte but at the cost of health instead of AG.

I was not a fan of the balseph boss. Readability is an issue due to the amount of bullshit effects that he does that obscures the screen.

Ganabelt is a tough boss, a very tough boss. I died 5 times back to back against him. The fight has the same issue as Balseph with too many effects happening on the screen at once. Ganabelt uses a lot of projectiles with particle effects and the game also specifically wants you to use boost attacks frequently to break his shield, this leads to a messy mirage of blue, red, & green lights all blocking the screen at once. Far too much visual noise in the game in general. It is disheartening in games like this where you can do 6 back-to-back super moves on a boss and you barely remove 1000 health in his 24000 health bar. This type of game design is not something that I like at all.

It's also from this point onward that I realized that every major humanoid boss will enter their super mode where they can't be stunned and they can spam astral artes once you reduce their health down to 50%, and many of them will typically take 10 - 15 seconds to charge their ultimate move in which they're stationary and you're allowed to do a bunch of free hits on them but you can't interrupt the ultimate move. Ultimate moves typically cover a large portion of the battlefield with a huge damage area of effect attack. The issue with this is that while you can't interrupt them, they can certainly interrupt you because these ultimate moves always play an unskippable cutscene. There are quite a few moves (boost strikes and mystic artes) in this game that have unskippable cutscenes mid-combat that have pros and cons. The big pro with them is that they typically do a good amount of damage, the bad news is that they interrupt whatever the party is doing and reposition the enemy. If you or an AI party member is doing a high damage attack, charging up an arte, trying to heal, or mid-combo, the cutscene will play and completely stop that, and once the cutscene is over, it will move the enemy away and reposition the camera too. The fortunate thing is that it also resets the enemy's movement so you can get breathing room if a group of enemies or a boss is kicking ass. It's shit though if you're doing really well and you have to be forced to stop because an AI party member did a mystic arte. Fortunately, you can disable those artes from AI usage like you can disable just about every other arte in the game. It's just typically beneficial to enable them because of damage and usefulness.

Most side quests are broken up into kill all enemies, fetch items, or heal people quests. They're not spectacular, however, I love the fact that you can complete some side quest objectives before you even meet the quest giver. So if a dragon is terrorizing an area and you encounter the dragon and kill it or if you went to an underground cavern and killed a powerful zeugel - then later on stumble on the quest giver and they ask you to kill a dragon in the field or kill a zeugel because merchants want to use an underground tunnel for quick travel, your party members will tell the quest giver that you already killed the dragon or zeugles in the underground area. Too bad main quests aren't like this, they're more linear and their quest items and objectives won't even appear until you progress in the story. For such a long game, there isn't much enemy variety. I understand this because each party members boost attack directly counters or interrupts a specific enemy type but you quickly realize that you're fighting the exact same enemy over and over and it eventually got annoying. It's not the worst implementation of low enemy variety but directly coming from Kingdom Hearts 1.5, it was a surprise.

Overall though, the game world design and quest structure are very linear - not in the shimmy through tight corners like FF7 remake linear - but in the quest objectives only have one way to complete them and only one area you can through. In the manner that even though the main plot of the game is to kill 5 Renan lords and liberate 5 realms of the Dahna homeworld - you will only do it in the exact order that is outlined in the game. Even within the main quests, you will be obstructed by invisible walls for areas that the game doesn't want you to go to yet.

However, I do like the progression systems in this game. They're divided into levels, skills, and arte proficiency.

You have levels that you progress through by gaining xp which increases your 6 stats. XP is only gained in battle.

Each party member has their skills divided into multiple skill trees. Most skill trees are unlocked by completing objectives like cooking x meals, saving x NPCs, finding x owls, creating x weapons, destroying armor with your arte x times, etc., and individual skills are unlocked by using skill points. Skill points (SP) are gained by winning in combat and completing quests. So they're separate from just leveling up. Then you have your arte proficiencies which is where you increase the efficiency of your activated skills by using them more in combat. The only downside is that you won't unlock certain skill trees till you progress deep into the main story because certain side quests, NPCs, recipes, owls, etc. aren't encountered until then and this is a very linear game.

Then after that, you have combat points and the battle chain bonus. After every combat encounter, you are graded based on how quickly you killed your enemy, what moves you used, whether your party was knocked out, etc. You gain XP and SP, then you get a multiplier bonus to XP & SP if you did well and you get none if you did bad such as winning but having all party members knocked out. What the battle chain bonus does is give you even more bonuses and a greater item drop chance on top of the previously mentioned bonus if you keep on doing well in many combat encounters within a short period. I'm surprised more JRPGs don't have this mechanic because it ridiculously alleviates how long one spends grinding if they choose to do so while also giving an even greater incentive to continue combat. It only sucks that the battle chain isn't unlocked as a mechanic until you reach the 3rd realm of the game. Overall, leveling up and upgrading skills is very slow in this game. You will still gain just enough XP & SP to be roughly the same level as the major boss of the main area/dungeon. Outside of that, even defeating 20+ enemies that are each 20 levels higher than your party won't net you 1 level up. All of this level pacing gets thrown off within the end game. Right about that point you'll unlock side quests that will give up to double XP. Those quests have some of the hardest boss fights in the end game and you'll likely lose them if you aren't on the same level as the boss and if you lack healing items. By that point, all that's left is to beat the game. When you get into the post-game content, however, this game has a good amount of it. You can now fight against all the previous major boss fights except this time they're all buffed to the max level of 99. There are 6 new dungeons in alternate worlds and four new real boss fights in this, the other two are rehashes of bosses in the base game. It is important that I point out that leveling went through the roof in post-game. Within 4 hours, I was able to get 30 levels in the post-game. That's more gains just in the post-game with no farming, just fighting through each area once and their boss. It's a bit ridiculous because this pacing would've been significantly more rewarding for the preceding 100 hours. On top of that, you unlock the "devil arms" for defeating each of the bosses of this area with one caveat. 5/6 of these weapons have worse stats than the next best weapons in the game, but devil arms can be upgraded to 9999 attack, elemental attack, & penetration. They increase in all these values for every enemy you kill. I didn't waste time doing this because by this point I had already beaten every boss in the game and had no interest in farming low-level enemies to increase damage. My only thought from there is, why not introduce devil arms at an early or midpoint of the game? From there, you'd have more incentive to try using a weapon that starts with lower stats but can eventually become one of the best weapons in the game, instead of getting it after you already beat the game. On top of that, there's a new game+ with many difficulty modes. I haven't tried the hardest difficulty mode, just hope it isn't BS with giving bullet sponge enemies even more health.

Even as a party-based action RPG they've been able to severely minimize how much micromanagement you have over your party by giving you a heap of options. You can play the game manually, semi-auto where you don't need to control your movement in combat, or auto where the game plays out combat for your main character and party without your inputs. You can switch to any of your party members mid-combat and take control of them or you can leave them to act on their own. The upside of not controlling your party members is that they have access to all their active skills/artes and can use them as they please, if you control them you only have access to six ground-activated artes and six activated air artes. The AI is good enough to control your other party members good enough to fight on their own if set to manual, however, when set to auto with AI controlling the entire party there are things that aren't good enough. For one, I realized that the AI won't use dodge counterattacks, counter edge, boost attacks, or a boost strike which is weird as fuck. I understand why you wouldn't want AI doing boost attacks because they're more situational and take a while to regenerate, but the player would always want to use a boost strike on normal enemies to instant kill them and always want to do counterattacks and counteredge due to the fact that they instantly cross the battlefield to the enemy and have huge invincibility frames.

They go even further by giving you a strategy menu where you can detail exactly how you want your computer-controlled party to fight with tactics such as "use the skill "steel" once when encountering an enemy that is at least 1 level higher" or "use an ailment removing arte on anyone affected with an ailment while having 25% or more CP". It's great and I'm surprised more of these non-turn-based party-based RPGs don't have this. Dragon Age: Origins did but I wished the FF7 remake had this.

However, the game starts to spoil itself later on after the fourth major region by having a lot of combat encounters back to back. The hitboxes and button presses in this game are imprecise at times, and once you lose Shionne you lose your best healer. Dohalim isn't as good of a healer as Shionne because the game's AI wants him to engage in combat more frequently than her, even if you set the strategy to focus on healing.

Even earlier than that, after the 3rd major region, the game massively inflates the health of every single enemy. Combat now becomes extremely tedious because you need to mash a large series of buttons constantly to take down enemies that don't necessarily require better tactics than what you had in the early portion. It makes combat incredibly tiring and especially annoying. Seriously, you'll fight bosses with 150,000 - 200,000 health where your regular attacks do 90 - 150 damage and they can do 1000 - 2000 damage to your meager 2800 health bar with one hit. Far too many damage sponges as the game progresses.

This is a good time to start discussing healing and the CP system. Healing through artes/spells/skills in this game is done with a shared pool called CP. CP is also consumed by non-combat optional things like breaking scripted boulders, ice, magic barriers, and/or healing people. The only way you can heal without using CP is either sleeping in an inn, or camp, using restorative items that you buy or find in the world - though there are a few of them, and healing in a magic light right before major boss fights. This sort of healing makes you have to constantly consider how much you want to heal because you have a limit to how many healing items you can hold at a specific time. It becomes significantly more punishing mid-game because of the lengthy dungeons with no camps/inns, very few healing item drops that aren't locked behind a CP-required interaction event, and the large number of damage sponge enemies you have to fight. While you can fast travel out of dungeons and fast travel into certain floors of dungeons, doing so will respawn every enemy. This creates a weird loop where you must be fairly prepared before going into one of the major dungeons, you'll kill many enemies and eventually fight 1 or 2 major bosses and a few minibosses, get good item loot, but you can't forge those better weapons and buy the better armor unless you leave mid-dungeon so you're strong enough to fight the bosses. Without doing so, those bosses are an annoying affair with huge hitboxes and massive health bars. So you're heavily incentivized to beat every major side monster boss because they will expand your CP.

As for money, I think the game does a fine job with the economy. You have things you should be buying because forging weapons costs gold, creating accessories costs gold, and buying items costs gold. You have to forge all the weapons in the game since there are no weapon drops. While there are few pieces of armor you can find in the world, most of the armor you wear has to be bought. Same for restorative items. If you don't farm, early - mid-game you'll have to somewhat spend time worrying about not having the absolute best gear because you likely don't have enough gold or you haven't encountered the enemies that drop the necessary crafting items for better weapons. Mid-late game, however, you'll typically have more than enough gold to buy all you need because the lengthy dungeons have huge stashes of gold and items to sell.

So far my biggest gripes with the overall story is how it treats its setting, side characters, and pacing. As I progressed, I realized that each subsequent realm in the game engages in some form of oppressive government between the renans and the Dhanans.

The first realm was a slave state where the renan lord was cruel and harsh and ruled over every dhanan with an iron fist and kept them in chains. The second realm was more of a police state with a Gestapo in which the Dhanans feared for their lives and snitched on their fellow countrymen for food and safety but the dictator restricted them from owning things and letting his Gestapo run the place arresting and torturing people. The third has a benevolent Renan ruler that liberated the dhanans from slavery and gave them equal treatment and position within his realm 7 years prior. Due to that, the Dhanans don't want to leave the realm nor do they want to support a major rebellion. The fourth realm's rebellion was led by a successful dictator who sacrificed his people to drive out their old lord, but he ruled with an iron fist. The big issue with all of this is that all these ideas aren't explored in-depth and just feel very surface-level because we don't spend too much time within all these areas - just about 5 or 6 hours total - and all the side quests are very simple as previously mentioned and don't aid in large scale worldbuilding or characterization. Each of these realms could be its own game or could be vastly longer, but by the time you follow the main quest and kill the lord of the realm, the only reason you need to go back is typically one side quest that's about the aftermath of liberating that specific realm because the story is urging you to move forward > kill lord > and immediately go to the next region. There should be more engaging side content revolving around the setting because the premise in itself is interesting to require that. Insofar as dialogue and character interactions are concerned, there are 300 skits in this game which are pretty much companion cutscenes where they discuss and comment on the other characters, events, locations, politics, and their feelings toward what's happening within the story. It's great because you get to know more about what your party thinks and it provides large amounts of exposition. Just think this sort of thing would be better if it was done in a side quest or in a more environmental manner from the other characters within the story than short stilted cutscenes from your party.

Ultimately, the game was vastly longer than I expected. I ended at a little over 100+ hours which I didn't expect. I am not a fan of the latter third of the story with all the alien, conspiracy, and friendship nonsense that the game devolved into. It was almost a very expected result according to the battle shonen I've played. I don't know why they didn't just spend more time giving the previous main plot of slavery, Dahna, and Rena depth instead of the whole great spirit manipulating aliens manipulating humans thing. By the end game the game dumps a lot of exposition through many cutscenes and hallway > loading screen dungeons while having a very lame villain in Vholran. I didn't talk about accessories because I don't think there's much to talk about. It's the only real way to build your party that doesn't always have one good choice. It will make you properly strong in the endgame once you start finding 5* ores to create accessories. I ended up enjoying my time with the game.

out of all jrpgs i've played (which tbf aren't many) this was easily the least fun to actually play

fighting any enemy is an absolute chore as they all have insane amounts of health compared to the little damage you deal to them

story and cast were good tho

I feel pretty bad for giving this game a rating this low. There's so many things going for it, like good music, graphics, and some of my favorite combat in the series, but it HARD drops the ball when it comes to the story and especially with later bosses. I could excuse the mediocre story if it weren't for the terrible bosses that went against everything the combat went for, as the permanent super armor made combos, the most fun part of the game, completely obsolete, and just overall souring my taste on the game. I feel this game is unused potential.

The gameplay is good but...
- You fight the same type of enemies the whole 40 hours
The zones are varied but...
- You fight the same enemies in all of them. Just with different elements, size or hp multipled. For 40 hours. The worst is that you are forced to fight them to level up. I decided to put the game on easy and play on automatic because it became way too repetitive.
The Story, Characters and World are good enough but...
- They can't stop repeating stuff we already know. Just phrased differently or coming out of the mouth of a different person. For 40 hours. They literally can't stop! Half way through the game I decided to skip every facultatif dialogue because it was just too much. Even in the mandatory dialogues they still repeat everything the whole game to make sure you remember every single plot point and exposition dump.

At some point in the game I thought I was close to the end after 25h. But then I figured out it was only the first half. I expected new types of enemies but didn't get much. Enemies you fight in a game that is 40h long must vary more than that to keep encounters fresh. Each fight felt the same after the first 10h.

WHAT A TORTURE (2/5)

Bom, vamos falar de mais um jogo que está na minha lista de desejos há tempos e que só tive a oportunidade de jogar graças ao Game Pass, Tales of Arise é o nosso jogo da vez. Geralmente, eu sou muito cauteloso com jogos de "anime" ou jogos da nossa querida Bandai... e bem, esse jogo em questão é um pesadelo para mim, afinal, ele une as duas marcas: Bandai + jogo de anime.

Eu, particularmente falando, já tive diversas experiências com a série Tales. Apesar de não ter jogado todos os jogos da série, joguei muitos e de certa maneira podemos dizer que gosto da saga, pelo menos o suficiente para ter coragem de encarar um jogo da Bandai novamente, já que recentemente só bomba vem dessa empresa.

No jogo, começamos nossa jornada com nosso protagonista tentando libertar seu povo de um governo tirano. É intrigante essa parte da história, porque Arise conseguiu trabalhar muito bem o enredo nessa parte. Tudo poderia ser mil maravilhas, mas a realidade é que nada é fácil para nossos protagonistas e muitas reviravoltas vão acontecer quando você menos espera.

De maneira geral, o jogo em sua jogabilidade é um típico JRPG e por isso mesmo eu já adianto a todos que ele não é exatamente um jogo que eu sinceramente recomendaria para qualquer um. O jogo é bem lento em vários momentos e seu ritmo muitas vezes é cortado por diversas cutscenes em sequência, coisa que é bem típica de acontecer em diversos jogos japoneses. Admito que quando você está imerso na história, você consegue levar esses cortes bem de boas, porém, se você for um cara mais da jogabilidade, certamente esses cortes bruscos seguidos de cutscenes longas podem sim estragar um pouco sua experiência e baixar demais a sua expectativa para o jogo.

Falando da minha experiência, eu achei o jogo incrível. O primeiro chefe de Tales of Arise é um confronto massivo e me pegou simplesmente de surpresa, porque até aquele momento a gente não tinha nada parecido com aquilo. O jogo mantia um ritmo mais pé no chão e lento como disse anteriormente, mas quando chega no primeiro chefe, tudo isso muda, o jogo se transforma completamente e esse primeiro chefe é uma luta tão linda que facilmente se você falar que aquilo é um boss final para um amigo random, ele acredita na hora.

Quando a gente fala dessa luta em específico, ela reflete muito sobre tudo o que o jogo vai ser ao longo das horas que vão se passar e o que para mim torna essa luta tão incrível sem sombra de dúvidas é a ambientação, gráficos e o roteiro, que todos eles casam perfeitamente do início ao fim do jogo. Basicamente tudo o que você vê no jogo também está ali por uma razão e quase tudo no jogo vai agregar algo para sua história e todo o mundo construído nesse jogo. Basta você fazer comparações com outros jogos japoneses do mesmo gênero, geralmente esse tipo de jogo é cheio de quests secundárias imbecis que não agregam em basicamente nada, estando ali apenas para encher linguiça. Aqui no jogo é nítido que a quantidade de quests secundárias é bem menor que o convencional e todas elas ou grande maioria delas, agregam em algo na sua história. Existem algumas, é claro, mas é uma rara exceção, quando o jogo deixa de lado a narrativa e simplesmente pede para você para coletar um recurso X ou matar um inimigo Y.

No final das contas, Tales of Arise consegue uma façanha rara: ele parece ser um JRPG construído para os fãs tradicionais de JRPGs, mas é bem moderno e não preso ao tradicional. Ele não tenta ser algo mega inovador, nem está tentando redefinir os JRPGs. Tales of Arise é JRPG de ação e é isso.

E falando sobre o nosso combate em si, Tales of Arise é um pouco diferente dos jogos da série, ele faz algumas mudanças sutis nessa jogabilidade com a intenção clara de ser um pouco mais acessível a novos jogadores, então se você é novo na série pode ficar tranquilo que o jogo tem uma IA bem competente ao seu lado e muitas vezes vão te dar suporte e combater de maneira brutal. Em contrapartida, se nossa IA de parceiro é muito boa, a gente não poderia deixar de falar também da IA dos inimigos, principalmente no que diz respeito a chefes. Os inimigos são bem inteligentes e possivelmente se você não entendeu as mecânicas e a jogabilidade do jogo de primeira, tomar um pau deles é quase inevitável até mesmo nas dificuldades mais fáceis.

Falando isoladamente dos nossos gráficos, o jogo possui gráficos que ao você olhar os traços dos personagens e a modelagem geral deles você pensa "hum, mas eu já vi isso em vários jogos de anime", porém quando a gente olha o mundo, a paisagem, iluminação e toda a ambientação do jogo é aqui que Arise se destaca. Andar pelo mundo do jogo é tão lindo e a cada fase que você passa tem uma qualidade diferente, de modo que, em nenhum momento, você pensará que essas fases estão se tornando "repetitivas". Aliás, por falar em mundo, é justamente por conta dele que olhar para seus protagonistas e personagens no geral do jogo se tornam o ponto mais negativo nesse sentido. Como eu disse, não é nada que você já não tivesse visto em qualquer outro jogo de anime meia boca da Bandai, realmente destoa muito mesmo nossos personagens do resto do mundo do jogo.

Tales of Arise é um jogaço e o trabalho que fizeram nele é incrível. O sistema de combate é muito bom e oferece muita complexidade, ao mesmo tempo que é acessível para novatos em Tales ou pessoas que só querem experimentar a história. A arte e a estética são outro ponto muito bom no jogo, é um jogo que sem sombra de dúvidas eu recomendo de mais vocês jogarem.

Pontos Positivos:
- Combate
- História
- Visual Incrível

Pontos Negativos:
- Existem picos de dificuldade que eu senti que são um pouco desproporcionais no

I'm gonna be honest, I got my hands on this game last year, I played the first few hours and then I dropped it. I wanted to like the game but I couldn't get into it, so I decided to drop it.
However, I pushed through the game recently, and well...
The story follows a premise of taking down 5 Lords and it tackles interesting themes, but unfortunately, it feels consistently monotonous and underwhelming. Once you take down the 5 Lords though, it all goes downhill from there; it becomes a jumbled mess of nonsensical, ridiculous plot points, exposition dumps, plot holes and a rushed ending. It gets really bad!
The characters aren't as bad as the story, but some of them are annoying and they make questionable decisions at times for no reason.
The combat system is good at least, it's not deep enough but it's fun and it looks cool.
Also, the art style is very good and the music is serviceable.
With that being said, while the gameplay is fun, the experience is brought down by uninspired level design, poor enemy variety, damage spongey bosses that make the game hard to play through and absolutely terrible pacing; oh my god, the pacing in this game is painful at times! It's genuinely some of the worst pacing I've experienced in any videogame, ever. It always makes things more complicated and tedious than they should be, and it tries to extend the length of the game by throwing damage spongey enemies everywhere, unnecessary cutscenes with repeated dialogue every few minutes, and even entire filler dungeons!
After the first 10 hours of the game, I was already feeling exhausted, seriously.

Pros:
+ Enjoyable combat system
+ Great visuals
+ Decent music

Cons:
- Very bad story
- Dull level design
- Enemy variety
- Damage sponges
- Awful pacing

Narrative: 2/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Content: ?/10
Characters: 4/10
Music: 6/10
Art Style: 8/10

Final Rating: 4/10
- Weak -
I'm disappointed in Tales of Arise... I really am.
I got into the game expecting it to be an exciting, intense Action JRPG, and I got a generic, boring and forgettable JRPG that I was longing for it to end.

Do I recommend it?:
No, there are much better RPGs out there.

There's definitely some good here, and I can see why this series is popular - but for me the problems with 'Tales of Arise' made it too much to persevere with.

I need to qualify that this is my first experience with a 'Tales' game and first impressions were fine, if slightly underwhelming, given the grandiose intro cutscene. The story works well enough, focusing on an oppressed race of people being enslaved and then rising up against their totalitarian and more evolved overlords isn't exactly original, but the telling of this is precise and clear. The world building in general is probably the best thing about the game in truth. The gameplay is also serviceable enough, all battles are arena based and are usually quick enough to not outstay their welcome. I do though wish there were more layers to the combat as the battles are never as spectacular as what the flashy special moves would indicate. I was never at any point blown away with anything with 'Arise' but the loop and story was enough to keep me coming back, but then a grind became encouraged (which I ignored) and I was underleveled for a boss. I could've went back and farmed for a counter-gem and killed some more minions, but if a RPG wants me to retread old ground it needs to make it worth my while. 'Arise' fails here due to its small scale world, mediocre mob variety and corny characters