This game gave me everything I wanted - generic cleaning and painting for hours on end. It's exactly what I've been looking for and it's so good to wind down with. My only complaints are that some things needed for completion are utterly obscure and not explained anywhere - like tiny light fixtures that you have to be standing directly under and completely lined up with the exact pixel to even get the command to fix it, with no prompts of hints telling you that it's what you're looking for. It's small things like that which make this feel even less complete than it feels like otherwise, but it's still a great experience if you can get around that.

Tales of Arise had a ton of hype for it, and a lot of advertisement to boot to really help sell this game. Despite it's initial problems of no co-op multiplayer, the series was honestly looking like it was going to be a smash hit. The graphics looked good, the gameplay looked fun, and the story looked interesting from what was shown. Yet as time moved on I didn't really hear much about it. In fact, if I did hear anything, it was likely about how the game kinda fell off during it's last act, or that the story wasn't has good as previous games before it. So when I did decided to play it, I was wondering to myself what the big twist was and bracing myself for Zesteria levels of writing and bad pacing. Sadly, I hit the part that ruined a lot of the game for me, and yes it's really as bad as people said it was. Honestly this is the most disappointing Tales of game I have played in my life.

Mind you that Tales of Arise, functionally, is an amazing game. The combat system is once again revamped, and honestly the fighting has never been better. The amount of combos, supers, and mystic artes you can do has never felt easier to handle, and combat really gets as combo heavy as a typical fighting game does. Each character controls a bit differently, and while some are easier to wield than others, I have heard plenty of people play the game as nearly every character in the party. The chemistry with the characters and relationships is honestly as strong as ever, and it really helps that a lot of the gang kinda trauma bonds over their living situations. The graphics look amazing, although a lot of the first few areas don't give you much imagination for it till you finally leave it, and the enemy designs are at a peak. The games UI, and leveling system has been simplified to the point that all micro managing just helps a little over being a necessity like it was in previous games. Really, just a lot of the mechanics of a Tales of game is done extremely well here, and it's fined tuned to the point that I don't want to see a newer system in place for future games. Tales of Arise is Tales of games functioning at their peak.

Yet, I still have to inform you that this game is a disappointment, and for that reason we have to blame the second act of this game's story. The story's first act is rather interesting as a sort of rag tag group of individuals slowly topple down the royalty that has ruined the lives of many given kingdoms. Each chapter focuses on acquiring a new character, learning more about them, and about the situation that area is having trouble in. Near the end of the half way point we finally get our whole group, and the dynamics of each members finally start to show. So far, everything in act 1 has been great, and paced itself well in terms of explaining itself.

Sadly Act 2 opens up on a 3 month time skip that doesn't address why Alphen and Shionne haven't really been talking, gives the group dynamic googly eyes for each other like we are pairing heterosexuals like our life depend on it, and literally kicks off with a beam of light from the sky hitting the world. As much as I want to give you more information on this nonsense, the best I can really say is the game doesn't really give you a reason for said nonsense. Just all the characters suddenly want to smooch each other, questions or motivations are answered further with wilder and wilder things, and a ton of plot threads just spread out to the point of wondering where it came from, and where it's going. I get that the writers probably wanted to tell a grander story, and they probably had trouble getting things finished on time or didn't have the budget to do it, but honestly the biggest problem isn't so much the grand reveal, but everything that surrounds it too. I really can't express how odd it was to see a Tales of group really dive into more romantic tendencies, and the whole second act ships everyone so hard with each other that it's blatant at the very end who the game wants you root for. Shipping and romantic undertones is fine for any given games, even a tales of game, but the way that Tales of Arise does it feels so jarring, and tries to make callbacks and give unearned plot threads that act 2 simply decides to go with. Act 1 really doesn't have much romantic tendencies, and a lot of this is tribute to the group dynamics that the Tales of series is known for. Furthermore the themes of the first Act and the themes of the second Act just don't match up. It really gets to the point where the game as tone deaf as it can says that the oppressors are also oppressed. I get this was probably not written by an American person, but it really feels like they should have consulted some outside sources with that one.

I could probably go on and on about the major problems with Act 2 and the story as a whole, but I rather keep this as spoiler free as I can. The major takeaway is that Tales of Arise is a game full of contradictions, and I really wish it wasn't. If the game just let me play through a longer Act 1 I would have loved it, sure it might have felt samey, but sometimes that's just a better fit than trying to make a big twist when you didn't budget correctly. Tales of Arise is still a wonderful game under the awful story, and it's kinda the reason why I say this game was such a let down.