Game #1117: Tales of Arise

  I think.... the Tales series has just grown the beard.

 It's been a long while since I last played a Tales of game, the last one being the disappointing Switch port of Vesperia, and an even longer while since the last, new game in the series, it being Berseria. Tales of Arise captivated me since the very first reveal trailer, which is why I avoided any and every new piece of information that came out since, which means I had quite a few expectations out of this game.... and, thankfully, they delivered.

 While Tales of has always gone for generic anime aesthetics, and this game is no exception, character proportions in this game are a bit more realistic than before... which goes hand in hand with the new art-style they went through, as characters and environments look beautiful thanks to a cellshaded filter that makes everything look as if colored by pencils. It's gorgeous, and everything feels a bit more mature than before. The story involves slavery in its different forms, and while it's not the only game that has dealt with this subject, like Symphonia did before, it does a much better job at it, and does an acceptable job at portraying how characters deal with it and the discrimination that it implies. Tales of games, even the darker ones like Vesperia, have always been pretty half-baked with their themes, always shying away from more mature explorations of their themes, and while this one isn't quite there yet... I think it took multiple steps in the right direction, making characters a bit more mature helped immensely with that. On the other hand, there are the mandatory and exploitative hotsprings scenes found in most games of the series, so... yeah.

 The game has taken a few pages from other games Namco Bandai has published, namely, the Souls series. Basic attack is now bound to the R1 button, and dodge to R2, plus, enemy encounters respawn when you sleep at bonfires, which restore your HP and CP. Artes, special moves, are now performed with X, Square and Triangle, and later down the line you can unlock a secondary set of Artes by holding down L2. All six party members have their own fighting styles and peculiarities, and you can call on them with the directional pad, yes, even the two members who are currently benched. And you'll need to. Some enemies are shielded, so you'll need Law to break their shields, other enemies are nimble, so you must call upon Dohalim to root them, etc. The main character, Alphen, is a bit less specific, but he can 'down' pretty much every enemy, letting you land a few free hits on them,

 Combat is fun, it really is, however, pretty early on you'll realize that enemies and bosses are HP sponges, being able to tank a ton of hits. Two thirds into the game I lowered the difficulty to Story and never looked back, because even in that difficulty, dealing with enemies was taking too long, which made the game get a bit stale for me. Even on the default setting, bosses where a bit harder than you'd expect because, except Alphen's boost attack and triggering a single-time event, there's no way to inflict the 'break'/'down' status on them. Money in the game is very hard to come buy, and the really useful items, like Orange gels, are super expensive. Orange gels restore CP, a shared pool of points necessary to perform healing artes AND to break down certain barriers, so expect to spend a few orange gels and life bottles on every boss. This pseudo-artificial difficulty might have a reason to be... Namco is offering paid microtransactions for Gald, among other things. Sure, if you are having trouble you could always lower the difficulty setting, but still. In my case, I felt like the default difficulty setting was just right, I had to spend a few items on bosses, enemies were easy, if time-consuming, but I found a few people complaining about the difficulty online, so this might've been a bit scummy on Namco's part. Still, I'm willing to let it go since the Story difficulty setting lets you skate by, although even fights against lower-level enemies will still take more time than I would've liked to get through.

 Titles in this game double as skill trees-kinda. Every title you unlock, either by progressing through the story or by fulfilling certain conditions, comes with 5 skills, one unlocked by default and other four you can purchase with SP earned from battles. if you get all five skills you'll get a passive bonus to that character stats. This way you can slowly build your characters to your leisure, as skills go from new Artes, to extending the window for a Perfect Dodge, increasing your stamina(which is used to pull off Artes), how quickly your stamina recovers, how many basic attacks your character can link together or other, character-specific buffs. Skill Points are earned rather slowly, so you have to be careful with how you spend them, although eventually, probably on New Game+, you'll be able to unlock everything for everyone.

 The game took me about 40 hours to finish, and 50 to Platinum, since I really liked the game all things considered. It's about what you'd expect out of an RPG, and there are tons of sidequests to fulfill, as well as a decent amount of bonus bosses to take down. As per usual in the more modern entries, in-game customization items are fairly... disappointing. Most costumes are either boring or just recolors, and every accessory veers towards the goofy, so you probably won't use them. There are some better, cooler costumes... if you pay for them.

 Skits are back, and there are over 300 of them. Last time I watched Skits in the series they played out through character cut-outs, now we get barely-animated comic-book cutouts, which are still fairly low-budgety, but a step-up from what came before. Cooking is back too, and you can do it at Inns or Bonfires, conferring party bonuses for a specific amount of time. As with 80% of modern games, collecting tons of garbage from fallen enemies as well as form the environment is a must, as new weapons are not bought, but rather crafted, and you'll need specific materials to do so. I was never at a point in which I had to go out of my way to grind for materials, so it's not too bad.

 For my money, I think this one is one of the better Tales of games in the franchise. I'd probably place it on my top 3 next to Symphonia and Graces F. I love the new art-style, I love the more mature narrative, I really liked what they did with the combat and other systems, such as how titles work. I really feel like the Tales of series should continue down this route, y'know, I've liked the series ever since I first played Phantasia, but they've always tried being Anime so hard that they always felt a bit bland. Be it the generic anime artstyle or rather trite and cliched characters, and while this one doesn't stray too far from what came before it, it does so in enough ways as to stand out from them, and to show just how much better the series could be if it was a little less anime.

 8.5