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.