Now Playing: Tales of Arise

Because I can’t remember if I actually played Tales of Symphonia or not, I’m going to say that Tales of Arise is the first Tales game I’ve played and as such, I’m not really the best person to say if it’s a good ‘Tales’ game or not. I can’t compare it to other games in the series. I can’t say what it does better or worse. All I can can do is review what I played, and what I played I really enjoyed.

Tales of Arise begins with a mysterious masked slave living in the harsh realm of Calaglia. ‘Iron Mask’ doesn’t remember anything about his past, at least not until he encounters Shionne, a Renan woman on the run from her own kind. The Renans have enslaved the people of Dahna for 300 years, harvesting their astral energy as part of a contest to determine their next Sovereign.

The Renans come from the artificial moon of Lenegis, and they divided Dahna into five realms, each controlled by a Lord tasked within harvesting astral energy of a certain elemental type – fire, water, earth, wind and light. Iron Mask, who we later come to know as Alphen, decides to join the local resistance against the Lord of Calaglia, aided by Shionne.

As you can probably guess, the Lord is defeated, but then Alphen sets his sights on liberating all of Dahna, which means travelling to four other realms and defeating four other Lords, each with an affinity for a particular type of astral energy. Shionne has her own reasons for fighting against her own people, reasons that become more clear as you progress.

As far as setting up the plot goes, it seems fairly obvious how the rest of the game will play out. The first region is ‘fire’ based, so most of the enemies you’ll fight will have a weakness to water based attacks. The next is a region blanketed by snow so – you guessed it – fire is now your friend. As you progress through each realm you’ll encounter new characters who will join your party and your fight against the Renans.

It might sound fairly by the numbers but the game does eventually go in a direction that you might not expect. Liberating all of the realms isn’t the end of the story – far from it. There’s a lot more to the game and the story beyond this that I’m not going to spoil. And the story can get surprisingly dark at times, exploring themes like slavery, exploitation and genocide.

Overall, I really liked the story and the characters and the direction the game takes. I do have my issues with various aspects of it and I’d probably be dead of alcohol poisoning if I took a shot every time Alphen says ‘Shionne . . .’ in his concerned voice but overall, I liked it. If I had one major criticism of the story, it’s the pacing once you finish the fifth realm.

There’s a section beyond this where you feel like you’re just running from one cut-scene to another for a couple of hours. It’s just an endless series of info dumps and exposition scenes to set up the third and final act. The game also, for some bizarre reason, unlocks a lot of post-game content at this stage, but because there’s no indication for what a quest’s recommended level is, you’ll waste a lot of time travelling to these quests, only to discover they’re intended to be played post-game when you’re 10-20 levels higher.

Tales of Arise isn’t open world, more a series of smaller, interconnected levels which works quite well. It is a fairly linear path through each environment, but there are times where that path will branch, offering alternative ways forward, or optional enemies to fight in exchange for various rewards. And the environments, it must be said, look fantastic. The game uses this lovely ‘watercolour’ style and because each level is fairly small, they’re all well designed and highly detailed.

The character models are anime-as-fuck and they all look good, but I do wish there was a lot more costume / armour variations. The vast majority of armour you’ll buy or discover won’t actually have a visual model – they’re purely stat based. In fact, even by the end of the game you won’t have a great deal of choice when it comes to your character’s appearance. I do like that you can set their visual appearance separately to their equipped gear, but the range of gear that actually has a distinct visual appearance (and isn’t just a differently coloured reskin) is disappointingly small.

The enemies you’ll fight are all pretty cool, although there are a lot of reskins here too. As you might guess, you get elemental variations of a lot of the basic enemy types – the fire bird, the ice bird etc. But there are a good selection of unique enemies – Gigant Zeugles – to fight beyond the story based boss characters too.

In terms of side content, there are 70 side quests to work through which mostly just involve collecting various items (which you’ll probably already have if you harvested the previous area thoroughly) or killing specific enemies. There’s an arena based ‘training ground’ where you can engage in solo challenges for each one of your six party members, or a series of group fights. These are worth doing if you want to unlock more cosmetic customisation options for your characters and also for experimenting with each party member and their unique skills.

There’s also a lot of really enjoyable post-game content to work through and I’m pleased to say, none of it feels like a grind. I finished the main quest around level 60, but the game has a level cap of 100. I was worried the post-game content would just be one long grind but you actually have a series of fairly short but enjoyable dungeons to work through and you’ll level up to around 90 or so without the need to repeat any content or grind any enemies.

The only time I needed to grind a little was right at the very end when I was level 95 and I’d completed absolutely everything else – I just had to fight the final ‘secret’ boss 3-4 times to push me up to the level cap. And I’m not someone who typically bothers too much with post-game stuff. But I liked Tales of Arise enough to do everything – even the fishing. And I think that’s because Arise didn’t waste my time.

It always gave me new content to explore appropriate for my level from beginning to end. It didn’t require me to grind for experience, gear or items. It gave me a generous amount of fast travel points on each map so I didn’t have to waste time backtracking through previous areas. Even the fishing mini-game accommodates the player by telling them exactly what kind of fish are in each location and marking each type off as you catch them so you’re never struggling to recall what you need or where.

What really keeps you playing Arise though is the combat. You begin with just Alphen to control, but by the time you reach the fourth realm you’ll have a party of 6. You can switch between characters at will during a fight in order to utilise each character’s specific skills to their best effect. You have a basic combo move and you can set 3 different ‘artes’ for ground based attacks, and 3 for air. Later, you’ll unlock the ability to have a second set you can switch to on the fly for a total of 12 possible active artes per character, per battle.

The artes are your primary way to deal damage and chaining them together builds up your combo. They come in the elemental variations that you’d expect, so utilising the right kind of arte against the right kind of enemy is important – and you can switch them in and out mid-battle as much as you want. As you attack enemies each member of your party will build their ‘boost’ meter and once that’s full you can trigger a special attack. Boost moves aren’t just about dealing damage though as each character has a boost attack for a very specific purpose – one is used for breaking armour, another to interrupt enemy spell casting – so you need to use them at the right time targeting the right enemy for them to be effective.

Your artes cost ‘AG’ points to use and when you run out you’ll have to resort to regular attacks to recharge them – but you’ll likely also lose your combo. However, activating a boost attack at just the right time can immediately restore your AG, letting you keep pummelling away.

When you attack an enemy and whittle away at its health you’ll build a separate combo bar which, when full, will let you activate a ‘tag’ special move in which two of your characters (somewhat randomised, based on who you initially choose) will unleash a devastating attack. Your party can also enter an ‘overlimit’ mode in which artes no longer cost AG points to use, and by performing a combo combining a certain number of different artes, you can perform another special, very damaging attack.

As you can guess, it’s quite a lot to keep track of and when all of these various artes are popping off all over your screen at once, it can get a little crazy. But the game does ease you into all of this madness by starting you off with only Alphen and a limited number of skills. Of course, Alphen himself has some unique abilities in combat, with the ability to utilise the ‘blazing sword’ which can massively increase his damage output at the cost of his health.

Alphen is, more or less, the main guy you’ll play as because a) his boost ability to immediately down pretty much any enemy is by far the most valuable and b) his blazing sword is by far the fastest way to inflict heavy damage. That said, there will be fights and particular enemy types where it’s actually much easier and more efficient to switch to one of the other characters, or switch between them as the fight progresses. This will, however, depend upon your chosen difficulty.

Difficulty doesn’t really impact anything in Arise – I think you earn a little more level experience / sp points (used to unlock skills) per fight, but the difference is negligible. So you really can play on whatever you find comfortable but I’d actually recommend playing Arise on the Hard difficulty because that’s where, I think, the combat becomes a lot more interesting. On lower difficulties you can pretty much just button mash your way through fights. It’ll look cool, no doubt, thanks to the flashy animations, but it’s not much of a challenge.

On hard though, that’s when you really do need to think about how to approach each fight – which character will be most effective to control, who to switch to as the fight progresses, the timing of boost attacks and ensuring you have the right artes equipped based on the enemy’s elemental weakness. It’s also more important to set up your party tactics – specifically when to use certain items or healing spells based on the percentage of damage you’ve taken. You have a limited pool of ‘CP’ points in a fight you can draw from for healing spells, so you need to use them carefully.

Oh, I almost forgot! There’s also a perfect dodge mechanic in Arise which, if performed correctly, can trigger a damaging counter-attack. I knew I was forgetting something.

Party AI, when you’re not controlling them, is . . . okay. It’s not amazing, but it does the job. They don’t tend to prioritise artes with an elemental focus against an enemy weak to that type of damage, so that’s why it’s important to manually turn artes on and off for them when you’re not controlling them directly. They can also be really bad at the aforementioned dodging.

And this is why, even though I’d recommend playing on Hard, don’t be ashamed to knock it back down to Normal if a fight feels like too much of a grind. I had to for a couple of the Lord fights when they kept unleashing devastating AoE attacks that would totally wipe the other members of my party because rather than dodging, they’d just stand there and . . . die. You can only babysit them so much before it gets kind of annoying.

Overall, the combat has a lot of components, and it might sound kind of confusing, but the game does ease you into things, one step at a time, and by the time you reach the end of the game, you’ll be managing all of this stuff without any trouble. There’s a ‘flow’ to combat, a groove that you just kind of slip into – switching between characters, chaining together a combo, activating boost attacks, triggering a counter before finishing an enemy with a special before switching targets and moving onto the next. It’s great.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Tales of Arise. I liked the world, the story, the characters, the visuals, the music and – most importantly – the combat. My only real issues are the lack of cosmetic armour options and those few hours of what feel like endless cut-scenes following the fifth realm that totally kills the pace. Oh, and don’t be put off by all the DLC shit. The level boosts and gold packs really aren’t necessary at all so don’t worry about that. I can’t say if Tales of Arise is a good Tales game or not compared to others in the series, but I can say I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

8/10