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Tales of Arise review

The positives (mostly)

+ Stunning visuals and a titanic leap in terms of production values for the Tales series. It helps my opinion that the PS5 is a performance beast so the game not only looked great but it played like a well oiled machine too.

+ Amazing atmosphere for most of the areas in the game. Elde Menancia in particular is one of the most breathtaking sights I have seen in a video game. It is up there with the likes of scaling the monasteries of Tibet in Uncharted 2, flying around in a Skell over Sylvalum in Xenoblade X or see Death Mountain there in BotW. Unfortunately I think they either ran out of budget or ideas when it came to the last few areas because it was very lackluster in comparison. Realms 2, 3 and 5 though, just so fucking beautiful so nothing can take that away from the game.

+ Solid overall story with endearing characters and mostly well written dialogue (there are some ridiculously bad writing in random parts that kinda come outta nowhere which had me laughing, most notably the part in the fourth realm). The pacing however is all over the place. From the supersonic speed the plot goes through from realms 1-5, it slows down to crawl in the last two areas especially. I'm not gonna beat on that dead horse because I think I made my grievances very clear on that one in this topic. Overall though, I view the story in very positive light but it does have its share of flaws.

+ Great gameplay, great combat with many QoL improvements for the series. I say great combat but I wouldn't call it an all timer. It can get a little tedious at times because you find a strategy that works and you repeat it the same over and over (which I am not complaining too much about since mosr RPGs are like that but just pointing it out). The party members' A.I can be idiotic sometimes like rushing in to attack when a Boss just unleashed its mystic arte but lets be real, when have we every gotten perfect party members' A.I in a JRPG unless you are controlling them yourself?

+ I'm personally happy with the amount of content in this game. I got 65hours out of it doing everything possible in the game on a single playthrough and the post-game. That is a little lower than what I get from the usual 80 hours from Tales games doing everything in it (and then 100 and more since I usually do a New Game+) since Symphonia but I welcome this change. Vesperia and Berseria, the two standout games in the series since Symphonia had a lot content that should have been edited out but were kept there simply to make the game longer (Abyss, Xillia and Graces f had even more) for the sake of JRPGs having to be long games. Arise has barely any menial tasks or filler to advance the plot so that is a step in the right direction for the series.