Poll of the Day > Just beat Tales of Arise

(+) Yeah! (+)

Beat it after 101 Hours on Moderate. Enjoyable but flawed game. I didnt hate the story, but like most tales I kinda go eh near the end

Minor Pros;
- Besides Vesperia, This is the only game where I like every character. Alphen does get to be a bit much though. Shionne still has one of my favorite designs for a Tales character and characters in general.
- I was against the way skits were changed at first, but they warmed up to me. Still a lot of room for improvement.
- Dungeon Design hasnt really improved, but i did enjoy navigating areas much more than Berseria and the Xillias.
- I like how Mystic Artes and be avoided now
- Aerial Combat is back and its fun
- Decent amount of in-game content
- Truth be told, theres 2 fights that takes place in the final dungeon Elevator thats probably the most fun fight in the game for some reason.

Major Pros;
- Sound design is top notch, from running around in nature and dungeons, to all the slashes, spells and sound prompts.
- Best looking game since Vesperia. Elde Menacia, and Ganath Haros being highlights
- Equipment MATTERS in this game. Im constantly thinking of Accessory builds, and getting materials/ building isnt some huge chore like it was in Berseria.
- Combat against normal enemies and certain mini bosses are super fun and addicting, as it should be.
- Boost Strikes/Link Attacks are stylish and badass. Never gets old.
- All Characters are fun to play as. I mained Alphen and Rinwell, but really liked Shionne and Law too.

Minor Cons;
- Not a fan of the Battle UI. Too small, scattered and minimalistic. Menus are also kinda weak.
- Not a fan of how slow or laggy a lot of attacks are
- Boost Strikes/Link Attacks against boss are useless unless they have minions. BS in general has no benefits beyond OHKOs/ splash damage. If it returns, they should add buffs depending on whos in the BS, for more variety. Otherwise its almost always better to use Alphen or Laws BS.
- Yet another Average/ Below Average Sakuraba Soundtrack. Some good tunes here and there like the 1st 2 battle themes, 2nd Lords Castle and the Sewer/Cliffside Water dungeon. Otherwise a very generic soundtrack. Some areas and scenes just sound like noise. Xillia 1 tier in music

Major Cons;
- I'll be honest, these are probably the worst boss fights in the series. They are the complete opposite of the combat you do for the majority of the game. Combining all the special effects and and sometime very poor camera turns it into a clusterfuck of chaos, and not in the good way.

The 2nd & 4th lords, certain huge bosses, and the 4 Spirits are the worst fights in the game and franchise, holy shit its so bad and poorly designed.

- Bad AI, and no major or individual AI options = Babysitting. I cant believe the regressed all the way back near Symphonia 2 level options
- CP doesnt really add anything but act as a artificial limiter. Field actions feel dumb cuz its literally there to drain it for no reason (except Shionne) and it scales. For Bosses its a endurance meter, and the AI will make sure to run it out quickly. This mechanic was a afterthought and hope it doesnt return.

- Enemy and Boss Variety is very, very low, which is understandable because its a new engine, but holy shit how many times do we have to fight the same lizard, dog, mantis and ogres bosses?! If you want to get everything in the final dungeon, you legit have to fight like 2 dozen of these things
- Backloaded story and skits. Kinda normal for Tales, and I expected it, but it should have been better paced.
- Player Mystic Artes regressed back to almost Symphonia levels. being unable to activate it on your own is dumb, and sometimes has gotten me hurt because of its poor timing. Also they feel weak most of the time, so its a bit better as a soft reset button.

Overall, I give it a 8/10

Theres a lot of cons but I dont hate the game at all. Theres just a lot of weird design choices. I really enjoyed the game, but I also glad I only spent 40$. Like most/ all tales it drops the ball closer to the endings, and this is no different

What I really looking forward to is seeing if there is a Arise 2 or Another game on this engine. Whatever it may be its gonna be Xillia 2 levels of content and fun, since they can correct a lot of mistakes.

As far as Tales rankings, its now;

Vesperia > Xillia 2 > Berseria > Arise >> Symphonia > Symphonia 2 = Xillia >> Abyss (Didnt finish) >> Graces F

Basically summed up my exact thoughts on it. Normal combat is super fun, the characters are enjoyable, and the visuals are great, but super armor bosses were a drag and the story and pacing really takes a nosedive towards the end. I did enjoy it overall but I'm not sure how I'd rank it since my list changes all the time (Vesperia is always at the top, though)

it was so sad when sephiroth just killed her like that.

Nade Duck posted...

it was so sad when sephiroth just killed her like that.

The funny thing is that this game sorta kinda has a Sephiroth-like character and he does end up stabbing one of your female teammates

How did you feel about bosses basically being unstaggerable? I've been playing on unknown and hard and it's pretty absurd you can't do much. I had even one fight where all I did was run in circles for Vholran and the AI wittled them down. Not to mention Ganabelt's unavoidable mystic arte. You literally can't kill their clones fast enough no matter what on higher difficulties, your only option for survival is the elemental accessory that reduces that damage.

I'm surprised you rated Graces so low, that was the combat I enjoyed the most to be honest. Making sure you hit every weakness to stagger the enemy felt more tactical than in this game where you just equip high penetration weapons and pray to god you get a break on them to combo the non boss enemies down.

I've yet to beat arise, only like 40-50 hours in? We're about to fly to the moon or whatever most likely after the red lady did her nonsense.

I could never really get into that series. The same style of, well everything, made the games sorta meh to me.

I did literally everything and it took like 70 hours how tf did you put in 101

badjay posted...

How did you feel about bosses basically being unstaggerable?

They are too different from normal combat for my liking. I didn't mind it too much for certain large bosses but for human bosses it's awful. They are small and all the effects from attacks completely covers them up sometimes so you can't see what they're doing next. Alphen's Boost Strike becomes a work horse in these fights.

CinderLock posted...

I did literally everything and it took like 70 hours how tf did you put in 101

I played on Hard and it took me 90+ hours. I was trying to get all the skits, cook every recipe, fill out the collector book, etc. even though there are no trophies attached to 100% completion for those. I also talk to all NPCs which adds quite a bit of time lol

Bosses being unstaggerable was definitely the root of the problem and highlights a bunch of issues at once.

- Aerial Combat goes out the door unless you want to stay safe or chip them away very slowly
- Bosses are surrounded by effects but ignore them to hit you, so their attacks are hard to telegraph.
- Any long-winded attack is out of the question.
- Law is a huge liability as a AI.
- Your team will eat a huge amount of attacks, even on the Do Nothing Setting. Your best answer is to draw aggro away from them and hope the fight doesnt
- I should have put this as a Major con but I forgot. Enemy HP starts to skyrocket after the 2nd lord and it becomes very apparent when you start fighting bosses without weak points. TBH most bosses just start not having a weak point to go after, which is supposed to provide 2x damage and a way to stun them for a bit.

With all those, boss fights devolved into projectile spam + Reigning Slash + Explosive Ring depending if I wanted them stunned/ hit hard at that moment.

I liked the 2nd Lord fight, but I also hated it.

I like with Graces F combat and Pascal, but everything else brings it down. Characters, Dungeons, Story, Setting, Tutorial, Titles and Possibly the worst soundtrack I've heard in a video game, Its one of the few games I actually hate

SilentSeph posted...

Alphen's Boost Strike becomes a work horse in these fights.

Ah yes I forgot to mention that fights literally become build up boost strikes knock them down and unload on them. That or play Rinwell and spam spells. I forgot to mention this. Don't forget spamming reigning slash for maximum memeage. This is coming from a hard/unknown difficulty guy.

MechaKirby posted...

I like with Graces F combat and Pascal, but everything else brings it down. Characters, Dungeons, Story, Setting, Tutorial, Titles and Possibly the worst soundtrack I've heard in a video game, Its one of the few games I actually hate

Ahh k, I can say I loved Graces F's combat but enjoyed Vesperia's story, combat there was decentish too.

I have to say I love playing as Law, but it's sad he has no cancel for his long winded artes other than just boosting out of them...which you definitely don't want to do.

I guess I didn't mention this, but I've been playing the game with my brother. There's a mod that let's you play multiplayer which is what's increasing the value of the game to us. Absolutely bullshit they took coop support out of the game. Playing the mod I realized that they didn't have a way to fix the camera for two or more players, but even then it works fine and is serviceable. It makes unknown combat much more bareable when you have someone who you know isn't going to die stupidly. Or can work on taking out two enemies and making sure they don't move and explode Shionne or Rinwell.

Putting ToS that low makes your comments null and void.

Overall pretty fair review. I liked the music more than you, thought the 2nd and 4th lord fights were ok (3rd really annoyed me...), and hated the lore dump a lot more than you did apparently. And I kinda liked CP as a limiter, but yeah having field skills always consume 1/10 of it made them just annoying.
I'd say it's my favorite Tales game. Really loved the non-boss combat, the characters (first time I didn't hate any of the cast), the art design, skits, and plot for the first half before it fell off a cliff (but I've yet to see a Tales game w/ a good plot, so it's still about tied w/ Symphonia for best Tales plot, lol)
Probably also 8/10 for me.

Arise > Symphonia > Vesperia
I haven't played too many Tales games... Still have Berseria on Steam, need to get into it...

badjay posted...

I had even one fight where all I did was run in circles for Vholran and the AI wittled them down.

Counter-edge and the skills that buff it (extended time window and more damage when counter-attacking) really freaking help in that battle, lol
Yeah, it was crazy. Just running away and dodging till you get the opening to use flaming edge arts.

I've yet to beat arise, only like 40-50 hours in? We're about to fly to the moon or whatever most likely after the red lady did her nonsense.

Oh boy... You're about to embark on by far the worst part of the entire game. Prepare yourself for several hours of walking around reading about lore and watching cut scenes and skits. I swear, at one point I would take a few steps, cut scene, 3 skits in a row pop up, walk a bit more, cut scene, 3 more skits pop up...
If it weren't for that section, I'd have rated the game a whole point or so higher.