I spent just under 60 hours in this world so I must have enjoyed it. It is pretty bog-standard stuff held together with a daft plot, usual tropes and repetitive, terrible dialogue but it did the most important things I want from a RPG.

The cast are a lovely bunch to spend time, there is always a sense of wonder when you get to a new area thanks to the amazing art, and there is always a constant sense of progression. As long as you take your time and not speed run the thing, it never gets grindy too.

I played on easy as I'm generally rubbish at ARPGs but I did enjoy the combat where I threatened to make it become annoyingly trivial and timewasting. You still get a sense that you're working out how best to quickly and efficiently carve the monsters up and the bosses still give some challenge. Some of the powers you get are samey but there is enough variation so each button does something different and useful.

The rest of the combat is controlling where and when you use the team's special powers that mostly boil down to knocking monsters on their arse if used at the right time. One is useless unless it's in the air, another useless unless they're brewing a spell, etc. It sounds like on all difficulties the team-mates do a good job of not dying or getting in the way too.

The first half is definitely better than the second half. It felt like it hit a point where all the chat in the combat was exactly the same. It's not a big budget game, it's punching above it's weight and that's one of the examples of where it cuts corners. Doors open with a slight gesture and a fade to black, the occasional cel animated cutscenes look out of place but I guess it's a cheap way to outsource some work, and it's pot luck if dialogue is voices. There seemed to be no reason or rhyme to that.

But it gets the basics right and I'd love another one please!!!

compared to basically every other Tales game, the formula is massively different here. there's a far greater focus on story, and characters, especially characters. the cast is front and centre here with conversations being fully dynamic rather than just flat 2d talking heads. good.

the downside is that the combat, the main draw of a Tales game, feels like its been severely munted. for reference, the previous instalment, Tales of Berseria has a fucking insane combat system with a billion systems that all barely interact with each other. The big problem with the franchise is that it heavily suffered from system creep. an earlier game like Tales of Symphonia is pretty much just a bare essentials 3d brawler with a large sprawling moveset, and as you continue through the franchise, you get button-based Free Run, weapon-based skills, more fluid combat, better on-the-fly custom arte sets, constant free run. the system creep meant that if you went from Berseria to Symphonia, the game felt like shit, (maybe an overstatement - the game felt noticeably older and less realised).

so for Arise, they took Berseria's crazy-open combat and then shot it in the foot. Berseria gave you 16 artes (moves) on the fly at your disposal, Arise gives you 6 on land and 6 in the air. some characters like Kisara don't get much in the way of aerial attacks so you aren't even getting 12 artes.

there is something about Tales of Arise that is not fun to play. i can't figure out what it is. its partially the really limiting arte set, partially the fact that the limiting arte set means that i have to manually change artes in my arte set whenever an enemy weakness changes, partially because like every character is just missing elements to attack with, realising that almost none of it matters because the game only cares about combos and burst artes and not exploiting weaknesses.

the death knell for me is that I do not think the plot is good. it's really basic. its pretty bad. The final act of the game is a slow bleedout to a un-notable finale. a rough way to go out.

I really enjoyed my time with Tales of Arise. It took me 76 hours to beat the game as a whole before doing any post game stuff with doing most side quests and I now sit at 88 hours after doing most of the post game stuff. There's some I didn't do like getting characters to max level and stuff because that just seemed like a grind. But I did do all the fishing!

Overall I really recommend this game. This was a fantastic game. It's not without it's faults. The pacing between story beats can be slow sometimes, there was certain plot points that just left me with a "Why did you just do that" feeling, and then some of the characters are a little tropey. But I think overall the package is really great. I will say that there were certain spots in the game where I considered putting it down but I pushed through those parts and I'm really glad I did.

The combat is fantastic and addicting, there was never a time I dodged out of combat other than maybe to conserve healing/restorative items while dungeoning. It was also extremely customizable. Not necessarily in terms of weapons but in terms of the artes you get. The weapons I will say left a lil more to be desired because it was always just raw stat boosts. Not necessarily bad, completely serviceable for what else is there but it is worth noting. But you also get this experience with every character in the party. You can play and customize everyone and they all play dramatically different. I spent most of my time playing as Alphen just because I felt the most comfortable with him but I can see people spending their entire playthrough playing as all of these characters depending on what you like. Especially Dohalim or Law.

The characters while I mentioned were tropey I grew to absolutely love. Tales games are usually renowned for their good characters, while only playing this one and Tales of Symphonia I can say that so far in my experience this is true. I don't think I like some of the characters as much as some from Symphonia but I do love all their interactions together and towards the end it really felt like they were a super cohesive family/friend group. It was fun seeing their interactions. And seeing all the skits. Although the skits are dispersed a little unevenly. There will be times where I get 3 or 4 skits at a time. I was compelled to watch them when I saw them, but there was a lot at once sometimes.

I won't touch too much on the story or give any spoilers but it starts out really strong and intense and then can kind of peter out towards the middle of the first act. The act then ends strongly though and I was pretty much hooked afterwards. I will say the 2nd act I can see being very hit or miss for people. It very much has that JRPG off the rails vibe to it, but it had been awhile since I played a JRPG that kind of got that crazy that I actually really liked it. I think I also genuinely enjoy that trope in JRPGs as well.

But if you're looking for a JRPG with really fun action combat, almost akin to a character action game like Metal Gear Rising (only one I have a frame of reference on, not an exact comparison) that's also super customizable, learning and meeting new characters and seeing their interactions and bonding with them, also doing goofy things like dressing them in bunny pig gloves or if you just really love shonen anime then I totally recommend this game. Because this game essentially feels like playing a Shonen anime.

I look forward to checking out more Tales games.

This being my first Tales games I will say it was enjoyable. The best part is the combat which is far better than I was expecting. A lot of combos and a good variety of attacks with different playstyles for each character. For a JRPG it is definitely better than the norm. The story is alright, it's decent and nothing too crazy. Straightforward plot with decent world building. The two problems I had with the game is the ending and bigger enemies. Considering everything we knew beforehand, the ending is extremely optimistic and way too wholesome for my liking. Bigger enemies like in most games with big enemies are just immovable damage sponges that you either CC to death or play around. They aren't much of a threat, they are more threatening than the normal enemies but aren't difficult or unique. Overall though it's a solid JRPG I'll more than likely only remember the combat though.