LogFAQs > #961962439

23. Tales of Arise

The Tales franchise is a curious one. Its one of the longest-running gaming franchises, dating back to 1995 in Japan and 1998 in North America. Since then, it has seen nearly twenty mainline releases, most of which have been made available to Western audiences despite the series tendency to get relatively low review scores and sales. But the series does have a huge cult following, and its both loved and hated in numerous gaming circles. Specifically, titles like Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, and Tales of Vesperia have notable bunches of fans, with myself belonging to all of those. I like the Tales franchise, and have played every title released in the United States. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I am a fan of Tales.

But the series has been in a pretty weird state for a while now.I think it initially started with Tales of Graces f, a game which was very bad. For the first legitimate occasion, barring the severely dated Tales of Destiny and the bad port of Tales of Phantasia, I found a Tales game to be terrible. There was an initial shock to it, but it subsided when I played Tales of Xillia, which was very good. Then I played Tales of Xillia 2, which was not very good. Then I played Tales of Zestiria, which was not very good. Then I played Tales of Berseria, which was very good. Then I played Tales of Hearts R which was okay. As you can see, despite my honest intent to play every title in this godforsaken franchise, including Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology, has led to massive spikes and plateaus in relation to quality.

I think I can identify my own personal reasons for why I feel the series dropped so hard.See, Tales of Symphonia was a revolutionary title for me. At the time, my experience with RPGs was pretty minimal. They were more focused on turn-based systems or dungeon-crawling. It was a rare sight to behold a video game which had such a heavy focus on active combat with the flourishes of a detailed story and cast of characters. Similarly, each character provided their own unique play-style with their own technical skills and combo potential. I got pretty deep into the core mechanics of Tales of Symphonia, and while its admittedly shallow, the hundreds of hours I dumped into the game as a teenager were far more unique to me than most other games I had played at that point. When I was 14, I had dreams of becoming a game designer (which were immediately snuffed out the moment I tried to learn coding language two years later), and I was creating ideas for games I would one day create. One particular project was literally just a copy of Tales of Symphonia in both plot and gameplay, and I worked really hard on writing these ideas out. I was an idiot.

I would like to someday do a deeper dive into why this franchise initially resonated so strongly with me, but I feel games have evolved past the level of what Tales offered to me. I cant think of many games in the mid-2000s which had active combat systems with a heavy focus on statistical character growth and a large-scale storyline all wrapped into one package. Tales feels like a pioneer in that regard, though it likely wasnt the first franchise to do it, or the best at the time. I will not Google this to find out. The important thing to note is that those types of games started to become more common in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Games which scratched itches once found in the older Tales games with far more polish and intrigue. The Tales series has never been one to innovate itself, which usually isnt a problem, but the games quickly went from being unique and exciting experiences to relatively shallow ones, surpassed by what both AAA and indie markets were able to put out. Even the games I quite enjoyed, Tales of Xillia and Tales of Berseria, were far more due to story and characters as opposed to their combat. Hell, I barely remember the mechanics of most of the games beyond Tales of Vesperia because they simply arent intriguing.

The franchise became the butt of every joke leveled toward Japanese RPG storytelling and game design. The series was a prime example of one which refused to change itself for the better, slowly becoming more absorbed with an effort to innovate while lacking the creativity to do so. It all culminated into Tales of Zestiria, a game so maligned by the franchises fans that it is still talked about to this day as a massive failure. Its hard to get across just how bad Tales of Zestiria was. A lot of why it is so bad is due to its incredible start. The initial introduction of its characters and world introduce a wealth of intrigue. We are also introduced to the Fusionic Chain Linear Motion Battle System, which to this point was the best the series had seen. Complaints leveled toward the combat in Tales of Zestiria have a tendency to focus on a poor camera and bad AI, but I never experienced these as issues myself, so perhaps I am just a better gamer than you. The systems in Tales of Zestiria were kind of awkward and poorly explained, particularly how it handles equipment skills and fusion, it is a much appreciated effort to try and add depth to its combat.