Played: December 2021
Tales of Arise makes interesting choices then repeatedly cuts itself off at the knees, which makes a generally fun game also a bummer. Actually, story-wise, it's kind of a catastrophic bummer.
The art direction is gorgeous, and the environments shine, but the lack of aesthetic and dialogue personality across NPCs makes the world feel hollow. A small touch like giving them first names instead of "Dahnan Woman" could've gone a long way. I'm playing Dragon Quest 11S for the first time, and while they are also anonymous, the NPCs are given flavorful mini-narratives that make them at-home in their surroundings.
The franchise-famous skits do a lot to make even the blandest of the cast affable after 70 hours, but that ceiling is only as high as the characters are compelling. The voice acting is charming enough, but only Dohalim and Kisara's story gave me something to chew on. Our leading man Alphen does fine as a straight arrow but suffers from "main character syndrome". Our leading lady Shionne promises a mystery that under-delivers and leads to some of the biggest characterization inconsistencies between main cutscenes and skits. Rinwell and Law might actually fit the tone of this story most accurately, but they're also constant reminders of how much of this game's worldview is just not for me. Hootle, though, is very very cute!
Here's the thing. Arise's narrative commits the cardinal sin of trying to tell a story about something it cannot handle. You cannot power-of-love your way through contending with 300 years of slavery. The occassional skit or line that attempts nuance just feels like plausible deniability, and the narrative ultimately places systemic oppression at the feet of individual grievances even when explicitly saying it isn't. I'm trying to keep this spoiler-free, but here's a broad sketch of an oft-repeated cycle: The party will stumble across a grey situation, ponder its complexities and conclude there's no easy answer, then end with our hero speechifying an easy answer. The didactic tendency to just conclude "there's good and bad on both sides" betrays an adolescent understanding of humanity. And I don't mind simplicity! But if you're playing with the fire of slavery -- an evil that's as scarring and institutional as anything any world has ever seen -- then you gotta bring your A-game.
I'd also add that when the narrative veers into other-worldly territory in classic Tales fashion, the lack of grace with which it marries the human politics and the cosmic conflict really de-legitimizes whatever it's trying to say about oppression. I get that JRPGs and Tales games have this vestigial genre need to tie the at-present story to their universe's creation myth, but I just lost complete interest by the time we got to the big true-nature-of-the-world revelations.
There's a 15-hour version of this game that's just a two-hander following Dohalim and Kisara dealing with shit that I could love.
Honestly, the gameplay is a good time. The day-to-day minutiae of adventuring and world-traversing is fun, the combat is a riot (I'm a sucker for repetitive battle dialogue), and it's even got some of my favorite fishing in recent memory. Soaking in the wonder and landscapes of a new region never lost its luster. I want all the quality of life upgrades to stick with the franchise forever, and I really would love to see this art style continue.
Our main man starts off with amnesia, which actually made the core beat to beat mystery of the plot interesting despite how glaring the thematic stuff got. It's just too bad the writing's reach extends so far past its imagination's grasp.
Tales of Arise makes interesting choices then repeatedly cuts itself off at the knees, which makes a generally fun game also a bummer. Actually, story-wise, it's kind of a catastrophic bummer.
The art direction is gorgeous, and the environments shine, but the lack of aesthetic and dialogue personality across NPCs makes the world feel hollow. A small touch like giving them first names instead of "Dahnan Woman" could've gone a long way. I'm playing Dragon Quest 11S for the first time, and while they are also anonymous, the NPCs are given flavorful mini-narratives that make them at-home in their surroundings.
The franchise-famous skits do a lot to make even the blandest of the cast affable after 70 hours, but that ceiling is only as high as the characters are compelling. The voice acting is charming enough, but only Dohalim and Kisara's story gave me something to chew on. Our leading man Alphen does fine as a straight arrow but suffers from "main character syndrome". Our leading lady Shionne promises a mystery that under-delivers and leads to some of the biggest characterization inconsistencies between main cutscenes and skits. Rinwell and Law might actually fit the tone of this story most accurately, but they're also constant reminders of how much of this game's worldview is just not for me. Hootle, though, is very very cute!
Here's the thing. Arise's narrative commits the cardinal sin of trying to tell a story about something it cannot handle. You cannot power-of-love your way through contending with 300 years of slavery. The occassional skit or line that attempts nuance just feels like plausible deniability, and the narrative ultimately places systemic oppression at the feet of individual grievances even when explicitly saying it isn't. I'm trying to keep this spoiler-free, but here's a broad sketch of an oft-repeated cycle: The party will stumble across a grey situation, ponder its complexities and conclude there's no easy answer, then end with our hero speechifying an easy answer. The didactic tendency to just conclude "there's good and bad on both sides" betrays an adolescent understanding of humanity. And I don't mind simplicity! But if you're playing with the fire of slavery -- an evil that's as scarring and institutional as anything any world has ever seen -- then you gotta bring your A-game.
I'd also add that when the narrative veers into other-worldly territory in classic Tales fashion, the lack of grace with which it marries the human politics and the cosmic conflict really de-legitimizes whatever it's trying to say about oppression. I get that JRPGs and Tales games have this vestigial genre need to tie the at-present story to their universe's creation myth, but I just lost complete interest by the time we got to the big true-nature-of-the-world revelations.
There's a 15-hour version of this game that's just a two-hander following Dohalim and Kisara dealing with shit that I could love.
Honestly, the gameplay is a good time. The day-to-day minutiae of adventuring and world-traversing is fun, the combat is a riot (I'm a sucker for repetitive battle dialogue), and it's even got some of my favorite fishing in recent memory. Soaking in the wonder and landscapes of a new region never lost its luster. I want all the quality of life upgrades to stick with the franchise forever, and I really would love to see this art style continue.
Our main man starts off with amnesia, which actually made the core beat to beat mystery of the plot interesting despite how glaring the thematic stuff got. It's just too bad the writing's reach extends so far past its imagination's grasp.