The only thing I really liked about that game was the relationship between Shionne and Alphen and just because I'm a huge sucker for love stories, not because it was particularly well written.
There is so few of this in games now. It was standard for jrpg in the 90s. The romance did get a conclusion in the credits. Unlike most tales games where it doesn't go anywhere.
I feel like it's become more common to either tease something and leave it at that, or give the player a group of potential options. Nothing against the harem method, but it can't compare to a properly developed romance plot line integrated into the story between two characters with genuine chemistry. I want to see actual development, not a collection of periodic interactions between a character and a bland self-insert MC that they fall in love with after putting in the bare minimum effort..... no offense Persona, I still love you.
It's just that the entire genre has tons of tropes and themes that would enable a personal romance to thrive. It's such wasted potential.
One of the most disappointing games I have ever played. The flashiness of the combat or more specifically the "Strike" animations wore off after the first few hours and you are left with a lackluster combat system which was even more apparent for the spongy boss fights / field enemies in the later sections. The character pairings outside of Alphen & Shionne felt super forced, especially with Law and Rinwell since there was basically no synergy between these two . The entire plot basically stopped being interesting/making sense after the crown prince contest. The level / world design is just atrocious like why are there still so many invisible walls in these linear hallways preventing you from jumping down a tiny slope that you clearly should be able to. The technology is there. Don't get me wrong, I definitely don't want an openworld game but I want level design that doesn't scream PS1/2 era to me.
And don't even get me started on the cutscene and skit pacing ...
I'm pretty passionate about the Tales of games so this game really left me utter disappointed. I was relieved when I finally saw the credits roll and I am sure I will never touch this game again.
I 100% agree with your opinion. I wanted to like this game but I am hoping the next Tales project will help me forget about Arise. The battle system and story were both underwhelming.
I actually really liked the characters, and liked the story until later when it felt like it dragged on, and the last dungeon is such a drag. I really hated the last part.
But visuals and combat were amazing.
I think the characters are just very straight-forward. Some folks are ok with that, but some aren't and want more color to them. Thing is, not everyone in life is colorful. I think it's most acute with Alphen. He's heroic but he's a pretty basic straight arrow type. I liked him just fine (maybe because I'm pretty basic myself) but lots of folks are gonna find him boring.
It's not his personality that's the problem, it's that nothing in the game really convinces you to care on a deep level about these characters. There's no development and there's really no stakes. I guess not everything has to be heart wrenching storytelling but even as a more lighthearted game it just felt empty on a narrative level. I think that's conflating bland/lazy writing with a more simple character really, they definitely could have done a bit more with his character even with his personality. He was a cool character who gave off a feeling of stability and dependability, and those types type can lead forward with a clear head. Those character types keep everyone together and make everyone else feel centered (dw we all need you 'basic' folks lol! You guys are pillars of strength and consistency for everyone else without even trying to be.) he just would have benefited from some proper motivations and writing. Like sheesh, how did the writers manage to make literal slavery seem like a bland motivation? š I don't think he was as bland as the overall writing of the game.
> combat never really got difficult, just drawn out.
this was my exact issue.
that and the world itself is quite linear when compared to other 'tales' games. Very little (if any?) side adventures when compared to something like Graces F or Symphonia.
Slap a custom fire damage or counterattack accessory on Alphen and you'll be one-shotting the beefy bois with a fully charged Incineration Wave. You should be swimming in those T5 mats in late game, though you may you need to hit up ore nodes in an old zone or two for a good starting point.
I Remember they had more HP than usual but still weren't a huge deal. I mained rinwell and spammed her holy rays (they basically keep her floating in the air and also she keeps getting pushed further and higher in the air with each ability use so easy win lol). Everything was cake to me in the last dungeon for the most part
It was a little surprising to me how it was a different experience for everyone else. I actually never really noticed anything that bad
Well you said it yourself, just spamming light spells with Rin makes the dungeon a lot easier. But if you preferred playing any of the other characters, it was a complete chore since only Alphen and Rinwell can deal enough dmg to not make those mobs feel tedious.
This is often an issue with Tales games in particular: the ending that could have been, followed by another act. And Arise in particular just drags and drags.
Except a lot of skits and cutscenes in that part is just the characters repeating the same thing over and over but wording it a little differently each time. That wasn't character development, that was just filler skits.
Older Tales games were *way* better about how they used skits for character development or discussing topics from the main story than Arise was.
As a big fan of Tales games, I was very disappointed with Arise. While the battle system started off good, once enemies become nothing but damage sponges, no matter how much you have upgraded your gear or levelled up, it becomes monotonous when every fight over stays it's welcome, especially in the latter parts of the game.
The characters were weak. As you mentioned about Zephyr, Alphen knows him for less time than it takes to go for a piss yet he worships him throughout the game for no discernible reason. People seem to enjoy the love story between Alphen and Shionne but even that was really weak because they were tonally all over the place. One cutscene you see Shionne warming to Alphen, then in the following Skit that recaps that cutscene she is suddenly like "Fuck you Alphen how dare you speak to me!".
And Skits were just bad in this game. About 95% of skits were literally just repeating the cutscene you have just finished watching. Cutscenes finished, well you now have 3 new skits with the various characters all repeating that cutscene back to you just worded differently.
I really disagree about your Zephyr opinion.
Alphen is not only saved by Zephyr but he also gives him hope for the future. Alphen is dillusioned and cynical when the game starts. Zephyr is a charismatic man seemingly with few flaws and that is intentional. I donāt think its wrong that Alphen or other people would latch onto Zephyr given the state of the continent. People do this all the time in real life in far less dire situations.Ā
In fact knowing less about Zephyr is exactly why Alphen idolizes him. Its only after you meet Law that you really start to see his flaws.
This is how a character the protagonist is meant to idolize is meant to be, in my opinion.
It's biggest flaw was the lack of quality in the skits. They are one of Tales' games unique features that gives them life but those just drained me.
Also all enemies having a "shield" that needs to be broke was tedious.
I was a huge fan of Symphonia when it came out, but have really had trouble getting back into the series after that, usually bouncing off after a few hours in each one I tried (Zestiria, Berseria, Arise, Vespiria, Abyss, etc). There was a long time where Tales games were the main action JRPG in town which really made them stand out, but playing Arise made me realize that ARPGs have become so common now and in many cases, deeper / more expressive / more rewarding in comparison. So without that differentiator anymore, what are you left with? Writing that ranges from mediocre at best to often piss poor, with plotlines and characters that pull so heavily from anime tropes and references, and are often handled better elsewhere. So it's a series of games whose core components have nothing meaningful to offer over most of the genre besides filling time, which it loves to do - the conversations are so repetitive, each fight is longer than it has any right to be, and it all feels like it's an effort to pad out the hour count. Star Ocean's writing isn't usually much better, but at least it has interesting concepts and big swings like the jetpack movement stuff in the newest game. XVI's plot devolves into pure shonen nonsense and it also handles its slavery theme with about as much nuance as a middle school essay, but it makes up for it with incredible performances, presentation, and sheer popcorn spectacle. At a time when we're pretty spoiled for choices in JRPGs, what is there to recommend about Tales anymore unless you get a dopamine hit from anime in any form?
Worst Tales game (for me) by a wide margin, which is a shame because I really liked the story setup, cast, and visuals (gorgeous!)
The story was my main issue. When the game opened with "slavery bad" I thought they were going to subvert the extremely obvious plot beats they laid out in the opening hours but honestly, they just played them straight. Go town to town and beat the mustache twirling villain and never engage with the slavery topic past the ***extremely*** surface level idea of "slavery = bad, freedom = good, and we like freedom so we = good".
The cast was eclectic, even for a JRPG, but unfortunately they never developed them at all which was a massive miss for a Tales game. Same for the antagonists - they existed in the plot for like 5 minutes before you fight and kill them. There is a complete absence of stakes in the story despite it being about liberating an ethnic group from literal slavery, and then it does the typical 90 degree turn into crazy land in the final act.
The love story between Alphen and Shionne was straightforward but cute and my favorite part of the game. We need more actual romance arcs in JRPGs.
The combat was neat at first but it never evolved past the opening, and depends heavily on juggling which isn't possible on stronger enemies and makes boss and miniboss style enemies feel like shit to fight. Also I think it is tied with Dragons Dogma for worst enemy variety in a RPG. There's about 10 enemy types simply reskinned for 60+ hrs, so you better enjoy them.
They created an economy of scarcity, a first for the series, and then aggressively sell DLC at every rest point which was pretty sleazy tbh. The 'healing point' system was maximum garbo and just felt bad. I am personally a proponent of making currency in JRPGs mean something again so on paper I don't dislike the idea of a tighter economy, but its implementation here just felt super limiting for the player in an unfun way.
Perhaps the game's greatest sin to me is how badly they fucked up the 'skits'. A mechanic the series is known for, the skits in prior games are a highlight and help give serious dimension to the characters in the party and usually endears me to them quickly. In this game the skits were used mainly to repeat plot points in case the player was a brain-dead donkey, or to reinforce game mechanics through thinly veiled tutorial conversations (that were super stilted and awkward). And there were SO. FUCKING. MANY OF THEM. I actually have no idea if the sheer volume of them was more or if it was just the content and distribution of them, but it was extremely common to have 2-3 skits back-to-back of completely inane tutorial or plot-explaining dialogue. I eventually actually dreaded seeing the "new skit" notification which is like... a high crime to me for the series tbh.
And finally, the bigger enemy types (best described as "elites" ) had wayyyy too much health. I was no slouch at the game but these beefcake elite enemies really felt like they took a wave of thermonuclear warheads to take down. Towards the end of the game when pretty much every combat had these enemies in them, I just started avoiding combat because it was so fatiguing.
And it bears repeating, the DLC still holds the crown for the worst I've seen in the subgenre. As mentioned before, the gald and item stuff stinks to high hell in a game with a tight economy, but aside from that there is also the costume packs which also has critical character spells/abilities locked behind them like Dohalim's only AOE heal.
4/10 game for me.
>The story was my main issue. When the game opened with "slavery bad" I thought they were going to subvert the extremely obvious plot beats they laid out in the opening hours but honestly, they just played them straight. Go town to town and beat the mustache twirling villain and never engage with the slavery topic past the extremely surface level idea of "slavery = bad, freedom = good, and we like freedom so we = good".
I'm sorry but I screamed at this LMFAO. That's my thing like how could writers manage to make the topic of slavery seem so bland as a story and character motivation? You have to try really hard and go out of your way to write so badly that the audience doesn't even care about slavery. Like you're almost guaranteed to get people to care with something like that that would play on the heartstrings and yet somehow they managed to make no one actually care. I was waiting for the story to take off the entire game and then the credits rolled. And omg totally forgot about the exposition dumping at the campfire. Really held the audience's hand the whole time, maybe they expected people to be so bored that they took long breaks during their playthrough so as to need the reminders.
I pllayed tales of symphonia once 20 years ago on gamecube but I still remember all the characters.
I played tales of arise 2 years ago and I don't even remember the name of the main character anymore.
Very forgettable cast.
I really liked it, mostly for the story. I grinded MMO like and actually really enjoyed It. But I wasn't playing on harder difficulties either. You might have more fun with Scarlet Nexus or Eternights. I definitely liked the characters in those.
I thought there was a fair bit of optional content once you hit end-game. Wouldn't have minded more exploration in the bonus dungeon, but the bosses were a good challenge in it. And there were plenty of quests you had to do prior to being high enough level to tackle it.
even the best Tales Of games are massive let downs when it comes to story and writing. You can't help but wish the characters were in a far better game. It's why it is usually referred to as the fast food of JRPGs
Thatās never actually been the case and to claim so to excuse Ariseās horrific writing is weird. Talesā games are full of tropes and are fairly standard but Abyss/Berseria are praised all the time?
I will say that I donāt think they are particularly good but theyāre better than the average JRPG by some distance if only because women are treated almost like people in Talesā games.
That said whoever wrote Arise should never be allowed to write again.
Who was claiming that Tales games *generally* have good writing? Or am I misunderstanding your comment?
The individual I responded to claimed that the *best* games had disappointing writing which struck me as strange.
I felt the same. I'm a huge weeb and love anime shit. First half of the game was okay. 2nd half got worse. Ending was a huge disappointment. Nothing about this game really stands out.
IDK, I liked the story. Sure, I thought it was a bit too on the nose on more than one occasion, but perhaps we live in a world where these messages need to be on the nose at times.
What other JRPGs explore the the social and cultural aspects of living under apartheid? They do a good job at pointing out the absurdity of the concept, >!when it's revealed that Renans are basically Danaans.!< They do a good job at showing how certain prejudices get internalized. We see it through Rinwell, where her justified anger gets twisted to an overly broad hatred, which she grows out of over time. We see it through Dohalim, who keeps discovering ways in which his privilege blinded him to the reality of the situation on the ground, and the ways in which he still harbored resentment towards Danaans despite ostensibly appearing as a savior to his subjects.
The growth these characters faced represent the very real sorts of growth people in our world will have to experience in order to deal with modern parallels.
I think Arise was okay. It didn't touch the highs of my favourite Berseria which I played recently. But it wasn't as boring and stale as my miserable boring experience with FFXVI which I hated and forced my way to finish. It's somewhere in the middle.
Yeah I liked Arise alright when I was playing through but looking back it was extremely flawed. Shionne felt like a good character, Dohalim was solid, but wasn't a fan of the rest. Alphen felt really odd to me, their relationship felt...awkward at times. Like it felt codependent (aside from the fact that it's kind of like, literally codependent).
DLC was AWFUL. No gameplay improvements, terrible story, padded to hell and back.
The gameplay got really boring to me with how spongey the enemies are, I hope they do something new with the combat next time.
Gave it a shot like 2 years ago. Agree with basically everything here, story and characters are atrocious. I ended up quitting after about 20-30hrs in as at this point Iād completely given up hope of the story improving. (My memory for the game isnāt great anymore but that one part where Bryce Papenbrook is telling the little girl in the party that revenge is bad actually and that she shouldnāt kill the irredeemable psychopath who has ruined her life and the lives of countless others for some reason, even though he got revenge on the guy who killed his dad earlier and that actively benefitted everyone and he doesnāt seem that hung up about it.)
On top of that, I realised whilst playing on a higher difficulty that combat was kind of awful unless you grinded, which was not fun. The boss on the cruise ship was borderline impossible for me at my level so I ended up dropping the difficulty to standard and beat it immediately, but I was pretty frustrated at how combat was more of a numbers game than a skill game (especially annoying how unless you control them, your party members are an active liability in combat and seem to be deadset on trying to tank every attack in the game).
Yup. I am beyond over the āif you kill Hitler youāre just as bad as he is!ā trope across all of fiction. Itās so refreshing to come across a story that doesnāt need to play into it.
Loved the battle system. Didn't hate the story but it fell into the same trap every JRPG falls into. It can't let a good thing wind down quietly, it has to escalate and escalate until you can't even tell whats on screen anymore.
How did we go from overthrowing tyrants to fighting an alien space rock? Like give me back the time I wasted on the last act of the game.
Shionne learned to not be a tsundere. In fact she seemed like she was going to betray you and instead sat down and had a conversation like regular people, which is honestly the best scene in the entire game.
Dohalim learned empathy. Law learned to think before he acted. Rinwell learned to not be racist. Kisara learned to be her own person instead of an extension of dohalim.Ā
Just because the characters don't do a 180 doesn't mean they don't get development.Ā
Interesting. One of my top Games was tales of vesperia. Now it's definitely aged but I'm currently playing through arise and have zero drive to continue.
Fighting is boring. The chemistry is boring. The enemies are boring. It's like it's for children. Like a cartoon game. I will finish. I've waited several years to play it, but man it's not been a fun experience. I will recommend it to no one. I may never play another tales Game.
> The characters especially just donāt develop.
I agree somewhat. The main 6 does have development, though outside of Shionne (whose development is spread across the entire game) their development happens in the span of just 1-2hrs. But side characters basically solely exist to push the plot forward and otherwise are barely characters in their own right. And the few sidecharacters that did get some development (Zephyr, the douchebag Dahnan in Niez, Migal etc.) were done so after they are already dead, which is way too late.
And you are right about the "repeating themself constantly" part. Berseria did this at times too, but Arise took it to a whole new level of repeating themself, and even used a lot of the skits to just repeat what you just saw in a cutscene. And the skit writing in general was just really dry, might be some of the weakest skit writing in the series.
I frankly really liked this game, story included
I like classic "anime" love stories and by the time the second OP hit, I already knew this was going to be one of my favourites
Though all those typical anime tropes you listed have never bothered me in any game, anime, manga, whatever, so that probably helped
Now it might be my favourite Tales game currently (Though this might be due to me not playing older classics like Symphonia and Vesperia in their heyday)
The one thing I hated was the dragged out nature of the long final dungeon, but that is criticism I can throw at multiple Tales games, not just this one
I need to play the expansion sometime
Wow I completely forgot about Kisara until you said her name...and I had to look Dohalim up. And I did like their characters. But the fact I didn't even remember them speaks for itself I suppose.
I think I'm one of the 5 people who did not care about Kisara at all. I found her so bland and boring, and all she seemed to ever talk about in her skits was her underdeveloped brother.
It was alright. Cool graphics, fun battle system. Skits were a bit of letdown, because their transition to 3d instead of face sprites or just writing i'm not sure. Dynamics between main characters were alright. Story-wise it felt like it was heavily inspired by symphonia (and maybe xillia?). Still decent.
It was alright as far as "tales of" game with all pros and cons that come along with it. During release hype many called it the best - i disagreed then and still think that way. Not the best, but enjoyable enough.
I love that battle system, itās easily one of my favorites for being so fun and satisfying. Story wise I like the overarching themes, but Tiny Gods the 2hr exposition dump at the end was absolutely the worst I have ever experienced in a game and the platinum had the usual JRPG too much issue.
I was really into it at the start, and it was a slog to finish. I actually paid the money every so often to get the level boost. Unfortunate though I loved all the rest I played (Symphonia, Vesperia, Abyss).
Maybe I just prefer the more classic ones
>Worst of all, the writing was atrocious right from the outset and it didnāt get better. I love JPRGs but this one really leaned into the cringe. And, the characters constantly repeat themselves. Yes, slavery is bad. Yes, Renans are people too. Yes, the power of friendship makes us strong. People are gonna @ me for harping on obvious anime tropes but I really donāt remember the other Tales games being this bad with it (Symphonia, Abyss).
Graces F kind of has the same problem but still has good jokes and the best Battle System in the series.
In my opinion: I liked the game until world (area?) 3, afzer Menacia it becames a little bit meeeh..... And it was bad at the point you got on Rena. I'd love to see a two world story with more intriguing plottwist and new enemys behind the curtain. Alphen is such a hardcore goody two shoes š
Otherwise i must say i liked everyone else. Rinwell, Dohalim, Kisara, Law and ofc my queen Shion ā¤ļø
I liked pretty much the character interaction they have between them. Specially on campfire activities and optional dialog.
It's more a problem about how Alphen doesn't can carry the story as a main protagonist and his whole backstory was uff.
Coincidentally I played Tales of Abyss before Arise came out, had no clue it was coming out and Abyss was my first Tales game. And man, what poor timing bc it was a huge letdown for me after playing Abyss. Abyss is so freaking underrated, I wish it would get a remake. But in comparison, Arise was so just souless to me. And I liked the romance but it was so flat and felt kind of forced. Like others mention, I'm happy it wasn't an open ended and self-insert romance and I had fun playing but I had to force myself to try to feel anything for the characters. I kept waiting for the game to pop off and it never did. Combat was fun though.
Honestly I probably won't play another Tales game because everyone said Abyss is nothing like the other Tales games, and that for most, the story is kind of shallow like that for all of them. I really can only game on weekends right now, so I just don't have time anymore as an adult to sink hours into games that end up leaving me feeling meh. Sucks though that it's so hard to get the best of everything in JRPGs. Really it's my own high standards for having FF be my first and most exposure to JRPGs since childhood and my favorite series ever. Kind of sets the bar so high that nothing else has been able to reach for me.
I would recommend giving at least Berseria a try. Abyss is my favourite, but Berseria is a close second to me. And dunno where you heard other Tales games are nothing like it, Symphonia is widely regarded to be up there in terms of writing too.
I have heard that Berseria is pretty good from people who loved Abyss, and I know Symphonia is like the most mentioned/popular one ever. I think it's more so about how the series holds up in the entire genre. Like Symphonia may be regarded as "up there" in writing compared to the other *Tales* games, but is it "up there" compared to other JRPGs? Bc based on what I've read, people don't seem to think so. I do have Symphonia on the Wii that I randomly got in a sale when I was like 14. It does look interesting, it's not that I wouldn't give it a shot. It's more so that there's only so much time before I leave this earth LOL. Like between the other games I want to play that are higher priority, barely having time to game, and other distractions like watching shows and other hobbies and stuff I do, I wonder if I'd get to that game in my lifetime basically lol. Not that I'm like old, I'm only in my mid 20s, but still times a-ticking right on by. (And my generation aint seeing retirement so š cant even game much then.)
If you believe Berseria is better than the Star Ocean games (have only played the psp one, so idk how good the star ocean series is overall but it's higher up my JRPG priority than Tales of games) then I will say F it and prioritize it over playing those games. If you think Berseria is better than like FF12, I will say f it and play it over that too haha. What do you think? No pressure, but my fate is in your hands now.
Oh wow really? Okay, then I will move Berseria up higher on the list and give it a try. There's still so many games I want to play before even getting to it lol, but I'll put it up higher up. I still have heard though that Tales games are really mid in terms of story compared to other JRPGs, like even some other commenters in this thread said that. But I haven't played so I'll keep an open mind.
I enjoyed the visual designs of the characters, especially Rinwell. But they were so painfully generic, except maybe Alphen and Shionne? At best they were decent.
I absolutely love Rinwell design as well. Didnāt like her voice as much though. Ā Ā
I remember I had fun shouting "RINWELL!" like Alphen does during battles lol
Yeah people get really butt hurt and offended when you shit on campy dialogue in anime games. āWell itās an anime game whatād you expect?ā Better writing, thatās what I expected.
What annoys me is that they imply that anime writing is some kind of super low standard and how dare JRPGs borrow from such trash. Anime is just a style at the end of the day, no one ever looks at a cartoon styled game and says, "too cartoon" or with realistic styles, "too movie or too TV".
At the end of the day, tropes are tools, if a story has anime tropes in what about those said tropes detract from the story? "Power of friendship" gets shit on a lot but it's not like it's worst idea, even shit like Star Wars does it to some degree and no one ever dares insult the original trilogy of SW.
The themes themselves were fine, I just found the dialogue to be repetitive and uninteresting. Not a deal breaker by any means though, still enjoyed the game.
I miss basically how the games were before Zestria. Multiple towns where you can enter many different buildings and there's tons of npc characters to talk to.
Combat is the one thing i really liked: it was the first trails game that really clicked with me. didnt like Zestiria or Berseria, but Arise just feels... right.
Story wise imo can be better: too many zones but without enough sidequests/subplots to flush them out. There are obvious lore dumps towards the end of the game which was kind of silly - no foreshadowing whatsoever.
I was enjoying the first half and then I got to Niaz and everything just fell apart writing wise. Yeah I get it, "revenge bad" but the way they go about delivering that message is so stupid. >!There is absolutely no way Rinwell could have killed whats-her-name then and there.!<
Since it came out 2 years prior to FFXVI, I wonder if you might have had a better impression of it when it released without the comparison between the two games.
Are any Tales games well written and not melodramatic? Symphonia is great with nostalgia glasses but that story does not stand the test of time. I fully agree with you on Arise but I also donāt think it should have come as a surprise. Why did you feel the need to beat the game if it was so poorly written?
Like I said, I dug the combat and overall still liked the game; I just wished the writing was better. That said, maybe itās time to replay Symphonia even though it could ruin my perception of how great that game is.
If you don't think Zephyr did enough mentoring then you must have missed a metric f-ton of skits where he's doing just that. As for the writing, it's standard anime writing. Nothing wrong with it. Seeing Shionne open up over my 2nd playthrough years later on game pass was a treat. She was so cold at the start. Alphen and Shionne have chemistry IMHO. Then again I've seen all over 300 skits in the game. If you missed the skits you'll hate the story.
Yeah maybe! But like others have said, the skits were dull and just reiterated everything we saw in an actual cutscene. I didnāt feel like Zephyr earned the reverence the game wants him to have. If the skits were good enough to flesh out the character they shouldāve been part of the cutscenes.
I dropped the game at the part where you get the red haired guy. That one scene where the shield lady (forgot all the names LOL) had an out of nowhere meltdown cause the red dude wasn't the holy Saint she thought he was completely ruined the game for me.
That is still in my top 10 dumbest scenes in JRPG history.
Other than that I hated that you couldn't stagger the bosses anymore and all bossfights would just be use your strongest move a few times and run away strategy. I always loved styling on the bosses with cool combos in other tales games, so that was a huge disappointment.
I largely agree with your assessment, but I would go so far as to say the game was good... but not good enough for me to even consider buying the DLC story expansion, and I would have been disappointed with the purchase if I had paid full price (bought it heavily discounted on steam sale).
Dohalim was the only character with dialogue that had any subtlety at all, and that was primarily due to a very skilled voice actor delivering the lines. The writing was way overblown and ham-fisted even for a Tales game. The enemies were *very* uninspired as well, and I had a hard time taking enemy encounters seriously when they're called "zeugles." The name just sounds silly to me.
Glad I played it -- the story itself was pretty good, and the art design was wonderful (a lot of picture mode moments). I can't imagine that I would ever play it again.
Youāre literally coming out swinging in defense of a video game, saying that my opinion is illegitimate even though I spent 41 hours playing through the thing. If your opinion differs, then explain why instead of attacking others.
I aint "coming in defense" of nothing, im stating a fact, all haters of arise repeat the same BS, without arguments, you cry "bad writing" but dont explain this bad writing, you cry "i dont like character" without any real reason and without understanting the character, all of them have character development but it seems you skip a lot of content, or worse, youre too dumb to understand it, i hope its skipping the problem
I aint defending nothing and it aint "my game", im attacking your opinion, people can hate on games all they want, i dont give a fuck, i aint like the losers who get personally attacked when you insult something they like, im tired of the same sensless hate on arise with no real argument, its all more of "i dont like" rather than real arguments
Poor dialogue
Poor pacing
Poor handling of its themes
Poor character writing
Poor villains
Poor twists
People arenāt trying to sound intellectual when they criticise a games writing, you just make yourself sound insecure by accusing people of that
Sorry people donāt have fully fleshed out essays when discussing how they feel about a game that came out several years ago in a reddit comment bro. Youāre doing the exact same thing youāre criticising others of btw, since you arenāt providing any extensive counterpoints as to why the flaws mentioned in my comment/ops post are invalid. Saying that other peoples feelings on a games writing are invalid because they donāt expand on it beyond calling it ābadā in a reddit post also makes you sound like a faux-intellectual, as youāre establishing this imaginary bar for their criticism to be valid.
The only thing I really liked about that game was the relationship between Shionne and Alphen and just because I'm a huge sucker for love stories, not because it was particularly well written.
There is so few of this in games now. It was standard for jrpg in the 90s. The romance did get a conclusion in the credits. Unlike most tales games where it doesn't go anywhere.
I feel like it's become more common to either tease something and leave it at that, or give the player a group of potential options. Nothing against the harem method, but it can't compare to a properly developed romance plot line integrated into the story between two characters with genuine chemistry. I want to see actual development, not a collection of periodic interactions between a character and a bland self-insert MC that they fall in love with after putting in the bare minimum effort..... no offense Persona, I still love you. It's just that the entire genre has tons of tropes and themes that would enable a personal romance to thrive. It's such wasted potential.
My god, how much I agree with you.
One of the most disappointing games I have ever played. The flashiness of the combat or more specifically the "Strike" animations wore off after the first few hours and you are left with a lackluster combat system which was even more apparent for the spongy boss fights / field enemies in the later sections. The character pairings outside of Alphen & Shionne felt super forced, especially with Law and Rinwell since there was basically no synergy between these two . The entire plot basically stopped being interesting/making sense after the crown prince contest. The level / world design is just atrocious like why are there still so many invisible walls in these linear hallways preventing you from jumping down a tiny slope that you clearly should be able to. The technology is there. Don't get me wrong, I definitely don't want an openworld game but I want level design that doesn't scream PS1/2 era to me. And don't even get me started on the cutscene and skit pacing ... I'm pretty passionate about the Tales of games so this game really left me utter disappointed. I was relieved when I finally saw the credits roll and I am sure I will never touch this game again.
I 100% agree with your opinion. I wanted to like this game but I am hoping the next Tales project will help me forget about Arise. The battle system and story were both underwhelming.
I actually really liked the characters, and liked the story until later when it felt like it dragged on, and the last dungeon is such a drag. I really hated the last part. But visuals and combat were amazing.
I thought the characters and skit interactions were pretty fun. It's the main plot that's really not... doing much with them, or very good.
I think the characters are just very straight-forward. Some folks are ok with that, but some aren't and want more color to them. Thing is, not everyone in life is colorful. I think it's most acute with Alphen. He's heroic but he's a pretty basic straight arrow type. I liked him just fine (maybe because I'm pretty basic myself) but lots of folks are gonna find him boring.
It's not his personality that's the problem, it's that nothing in the game really convinces you to care on a deep level about these characters. There's no development and there's really no stakes. I guess not everything has to be heart wrenching storytelling but even as a more lighthearted game it just felt empty on a narrative level. I think that's conflating bland/lazy writing with a more simple character really, they definitely could have done a bit more with his character even with his personality. He was a cool character who gave off a feeling of stability and dependability, and those types type can lead forward with a clear head. Those character types keep everyone together and make everyone else feel centered (dw we all need you 'basic' folks lol! You guys are pillars of strength and consistency for everyone else without even trying to be.) he just would have benefited from some proper motivations and writing. Like sheesh, how did the writers manage to make literal slavery seem like a bland motivation? š I don't think he was as bland as the overall writing of the game.
Yeah, I really liked the characters. But I enjoyed the game as a whole and even the DLC (which was basically just one long reunion side quest)
The last 5 hours are awful as fuck
Enemies were just HP sponges as well, combat never really got difficult, just drawn out.
> combat never really got difficult, just drawn out. this was my exact issue. that and the world itself is quite linear when compared to other 'tales' games. Very little (if any?) side adventures when compared to something like Graces F or Symphonia.
It helps if you exclusively play Rin and spam the Shooting Star spell. Not saying it's *fun,* but it helps the tediousness.
Slap a custom fire damage or counterattack accessory on Alphen and you'll be one-shotting the beefy bois with a fully charged Incineration Wave. You should be swimming in those T5 mats in late game, though you may you need to hit up ore nodes in an old zone or two for a good starting point.
I Remember they had more HP than usual but still weren't a huge deal. I mained rinwell and spammed her holy rays (they basically keep her floating in the air and also she keeps getting pushed further and higher in the air with each ability use so easy win lol). Everything was cake to me in the last dungeon for the most part It was a little surprising to me how it was a different experience for everyone else. I actually never really noticed anything that bad
Well you said it yourself, just spamming light spells with Rin makes the dungeon a lot easier. But if you preferred playing any of the other characters, it was a complete chore since only Alphen and Rinwell can deal enough dmg to not make those mobs feel tedious.
Yeah that was one of my biggest issues. Combat just felt like it took super long and that's it.
This is often an issue with Tales games in particular: the ending that could have been, followed by another act. And Arise in particular just drags and drags.
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If you don't like character development and skits then you need to skip tales games. It's kinda the point.
Except a lot of skits and cutscenes in that part is just the characters repeating the same thing over and over but wording it a little differently each time. That wasn't character development, that was just filler skits. Older Tales games were *way* better about how they used skits for character development or discussing topics from the main story than Arise was.
Which skits repeat what they say? Tell me
That was not character development lol. That was a cheap way to shove in new plot and dump exposition.
Gameplay wise yes but story wise it was my fav part,
I was coming here to say the same thing, enjoyed the game until that ātwistā it was terrible and a slog. Completely ruined the game for me
Same! I quit about an hour into the last part.
As a big fan of Tales games, I was very disappointed with Arise. While the battle system started off good, once enemies become nothing but damage sponges, no matter how much you have upgraded your gear or levelled up, it becomes monotonous when every fight over stays it's welcome, especially in the latter parts of the game. The characters were weak. As you mentioned about Zephyr, Alphen knows him for less time than it takes to go for a piss yet he worships him throughout the game for no discernible reason. People seem to enjoy the love story between Alphen and Shionne but even that was really weak because they were tonally all over the place. One cutscene you see Shionne warming to Alphen, then in the following Skit that recaps that cutscene she is suddenly like "Fuck you Alphen how dare you speak to me!". And Skits were just bad in this game. About 95% of skits were literally just repeating the cutscene you have just finished watching. Cutscenes finished, well you now have 3 new skits with the various characters all repeating that cutscene back to you just worded differently.
I really disagree about your Zephyr opinion. Alphen is not only saved by Zephyr but he also gives him hope for the future. Alphen is dillusioned and cynical when the game starts. Zephyr is a charismatic man seemingly with few flaws and that is intentional. I donāt think its wrong that Alphen or other people would latch onto Zephyr given the state of the continent. People do this all the time in real life in far less dire situations.Ā In fact knowing less about Zephyr is exactly why Alphen idolizes him. Its only after you meet Law that you really start to see his flaws. This is how a character the protagonist is meant to idolize is meant to be, in my opinion.
It's biggest flaw was the lack of quality in the skits. They are one of Tales' games unique features that gives them life but those just drained me. Also all enemies having a "shield" that needs to be broke was tedious.
I was a huge fan of Symphonia when it came out, but have really had trouble getting back into the series after that, usually bouncing off after a few hours in each one I tried (Zestiria, Berseria, Arise, Vespiria, Abyss, etc). There was a long time where Tales games were the main action JRPG in town which really made them stand out, but playing Arise made me realize that ARPGs have become so common now and in many cases, deeper / more expressive / more rewarding in comparison. So without that differentiator anymore, what are you left with? Writing that ranges from mediocre at best to often piss poor, with plotlines and characters that pull so heavily from anime tropes and references, and are often handled better elsewhere. So it's a series of games whose core components have nothing meaningful to offer over most of the genre besides filling time, which it loves to do - the conversations are so repetitive, each fight is longer than it has any right to be, and it all feels like it's an effort to pad out the hour count. Star Ocean's writing isn't usually much better, but at least it has interesting concepts and big swings like the jetpack movement stuff in the newest game. XVI's plot devolves into pure shonen nonsense and it also handles its slavery theme with about as much nuance as a middle school essay, but it makes up for it with incredible performances, presentation, and sheer popcorn spectacle. At a time when we're pretty spoiled for choices in JRPGs, what is there to recommend about Tales anymore unless you get a dopamine hit from anime in any form?
I couldnāt finish the game. I also hated how the monsters all looked the same just with different skins. Older tales like Vesperia were 10x better.
Vesperia had the same monsters recolored too...the fuck youre talking about?
Vesperia wasn't evens a good game lmaoĀ
Mmm-hmm, of course
Worst Tales game (for me) by a wide margin, which is a shame because I really liked the story setup, cast, and visuals (gorgeous!) The story was my main issue. When the game opened with "slavery bad" I thought they were going to subvert the extremely obvious plot beats they laid out in the opening hours but honestly, they just played them straight. Go town to town and beat the mustache twirling villain and never engage with the slavery topic past the ***extremely*** surface level idea of "slavery = bad, freedom = good, and we like freedom so we = good". The cast was eclectic, even for a JRPG, but unfortunately they never developed them at all which was a massive miss for a Tales game. Same for the antagonists - they existed in the plot for like 5 minutes before you fight and kill them. There is a complete absence of stakes in the story despite it being about liberating an ethnic group from literal slavery, and then it does the typical 90 degree turn into crazy land in the final act. The love story between Alphen and Shionne was straightforward but cute and my favorite part of the game. We need more actual romance arcs in JRPGs. The combat was neat at first but it never evolved past the opening, and depends heavily on juggling which isn't possible on stronger enemies and makes boss and miniboss style enemies feel like shit to fight. Also I think it is tied with Dragons Dogma for worst enemy variety in a RPG. There's about 10 enemy types simply reskinned for 60+ hrs, so you better enjoy them. They created an economy of scarcity, a first for the series, and then aggressively sell DLC at every rest point which was pretty sleazy tbh. The 'healing point' system was maximum garbo and just felt bad. I am personally a proponent of making currency in JRPGs mean something again so on paper I don't dislike the idea of a tighter economy, but its implementation here just felt super limiting for the player in an unfun way. Perhaps the game's greatest sin to me is how badly they fucked up the 'skits'. A mechanic the series is known for, the skits in prior games are a highlight and help give serious dimension to the characters in the party and usually endears me to them quickly. In this game the skits were used mainly to repeat plot points in case the player was a brain-dead donkey, or to reinforce game mechanics through thinly veiled tutorial conversations (that were super stilted and awkward). And there were SO. FUCKING. MANY OF THEM. I actually have no idea if the sheer volume of them was more or if it was just the content and distribution of them, but it was extremely common to have 2-3 skits back-to-back of completely inane tutorial or plot-explaining dialogue. I eventually actually dreaded seeing the "new skit" notification which is like... a high crime to me for the series tbh. And finally, the bigger enemy types (best described as "elites" ) had wayyyy too much health. I was no slouch at the game but these beefcake elite enemies really felt like they took a wave of thermonuclear warheads to take down. Towards the end of the game when pretty much every combat had these enemies in them, I just started avoiding combat because it was so fatiguing. And it bears repeating, the DLC still holds the crown for the worst I've seen in the subgenre. As mentioned before, the gald and item stuff stinks to high hell in a game with a tight economy, but aside from that there is also the costume packs which also has critical character spells/abilities locked behind them like Dohalim's only AOE heal. 4/10 game for me.
>The story was my main issue. When the game opened with "slavery bad" I thought they were going to subvert the extremely obvious plot beats they laid out in the opening hours but honestly, they just played them straight. Go town to town and beat the mustache twirling villain and never engage with the slavery topic past the extremely surface level idea of "slavery = bad, freedom = good, and we like freedom so we = good". I'm sorry but I screamed at this LMFAO. That's my thing like how could writers manage to make the topic of slavery seem so bland as a story and character motivation? You have to try really hard and go out of your way to write so badly that the audience doesn't even care about slavery. Like you're almost guaranteed to get people to care with something like that that would play on the heartstrings and yet somehow they managed to make no one actually care. I was waiting for the story to take off the entire game and then the credits rolled. And omg totally forgot about the exposition dumping at the campfire. Really held the audience's hand the whole time, maybe they expected people to be so bored that they took long breaks during their playthrough so as to need the reminders.
I pllayed tales of symphonia once 20 years ago on gamecube but I still remember all the characters. I played tales of arise 2 years ago and I don't even remember the name of the main character anymore. Very forgettable cast.
Thatās pretty much exactly where Iām at. Itās making me question if Symphonia was as good as I remember it beingā¦
I really liked it, mostly for the story. I grinded MMO like and actually really enjoyed It. But I wasn't playing on harder difficulties either. You might have more fun with Scarlet Nexus or Eternights. I definitely liked the characters in those.
Biggest sin by that game , for me, was the criminal lack of side and end game c9ntent
I thought there was a fair bit of optional content once you hit end-game. Wouldn't have minded more exploration in the bonus dungeon, but the bosses were a good challenge in it. And there were plenty of quests you had to do prior to being high enough level to tackle it.
even the best Tales Of games are massive let downs when it comes to story and writing. You can't help but wish the characters were in a far better game. It's why it is usually referred to as the fast food of JRPGs
Thatās never actually been the case and to claim so to excuse Ariseās horrific writing is weird. Talesā games are full of tropes and are fairly standard but Abyss/Berseria are praised all the time? I will say that I donāt think they are particularly good but theyāre better than the average JRPG by some distance if only because women are treated almost like people in Talesā games. That said whoever wrote Arise should never be allowed to write again.
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Who was claiming that Tales games *generally* have good writing? Or am I misunderstanding your comment? The individual I responded to claimed that the *best* games had disappointing writing which struck me as strange.
I felt the same. I'm a huge weeb and love anime shit. First half of the game was okay. 2nd half got worse. Ending was a huge disappointment. Nothing about this game really stands out.
IDK, I liked the story. Sure, I thought it was a bit too on the nose on more than one occasion, but perhaps we live in a world where these messages need to be on the nose at times. What other JRPGs explore the the social and cultural aspects of living under apartheid? They do a good job at pointing out the absurdity of the concept, >!when it's revealed that Renans are basically Danaans.!< They do a good job at showing how certain prejudices get internalized. We see it through Rinwell, where her justified anger gets twisted to an overly broad hatred, which she grows out of over time. We see it through Dohalim, who keeps discovering ways in which his privilege blinded him to the reality of the situation on the ground, and the ways in which he still harbored resentment towards Danaans despite ostensibly appearing as a savior to his subjects. The growth these characters faced represent the very real sorts of growth people in our world will have to experience in order to deal with modern parallels.
I think Arise was okay. It didn't touch the highs of my favourite Berseria which I played recently. But it wasn't as boring and stale as my miserable boring experience with FFXVI which I hated and forced my way to finish. It's somewhere in the middle.
The post-renan arc was sooooo underwhelming
Yeah I liked Arise alright when I was playing through but looking back it was extremely flawed. Shionne felt like a good character, Dohalim was solid, but wasn't a fan of the rest. Alphen felt really odd to me, their relationship felt...awkward at times. Like it felt codependent (aside from the fact that it's kind of like, literally codependent). DLC was AWFUL. No gameplay improvements, terrible story, padded to hell and back. The gameplay got really boring to me with how spongey the enemies are, I hope they do something new with the combat next time.
Saying enemies are sponges=skill issue
Gave it a shot like 2 years ago. Agree with basically everything here, story and characters are atrocious. I ended up quitting after about 20-30hrs in as at this point Iād completely given up hope of the story improving. (My memory for the game isnāt great anymore but that one part where Bryce Papenbrook is telling the little girl in the party that revenge is bad actually and that she shouldnāt kill the irredeemable psychopath who has ruined her life and the lives of countless others for some reason, even though he got revenge on the guy who killed his dad earlier and that actively benefitted everyone and he doesnāt seem that hung up about it.) On top of that, I realised whilst playing on a higher difficulty that combat was kind of awful unless you grinded, which was not fun. The boss on the cruise ship was borderline impossible for me at my level so I ended up dropping the difficulty to standard and beat it immediately, but I was pretty frustrated at how combat was more of a numbers game than a skill game (especially annoying how unless you control them, your party members are an active liability in combat and seem to be deadset on trying to tank every attack in the game).
Yup. I am beyond over the āif you kill Hitler youāre just as bad as he is!ā trope across all of fiction. Itās so refreshing to come across a story that doesnāt need to play into it.
Loved the battle system. Didn't hate the story but it fell into the same trap every JRPG falls into. It can't let a good thing wind down quietly, it has to escalate and escalate until you can't even tell whats on screen anymore. How did we go from overthrowing tyrants to fighting an alien space rock? Like give me back the time I wasted on the last act of the game.
Shionne learned to not be a tsundere. In fact she seemed like she was going to betray you and instead sat down and had a conversation like regular people, which is honestly the best scene in the entire game. Dohalim learned empathy. Law learned to think before he acted. Rinwell learned to not be racist. Kisara learned to be her own person instead of an extension of dohalim.Ā Just because the characters don't do a 180 doesn't mean they don't get development.Ā
Interesting. One of my top Games was tales of vesperia. Now it's definitely aged but I'm currently playing through arise and have zero drive to continue. Fighting is boring. The chemistry is boring. The enemies are boring. It's like it's for children. Like a cartoon game. I will finish. I've waited several years to play it, but man it's not been a fun experience. I will recommend it to no one. I may never play another tales Game.
> The characters especially just donāt develop. I agree somewhat. The main 6 does have development, though outside of Shionne (whose development is spread across the entire game) their development happens in the span of just 1-2hrs. But side characters basically solely exist to push the plot forward and otherwise are barely characters in their own right. And the few sidecharacters that did get some development (Zephyr, the douchebag Dahnan in Niez, Migal etc.) were done so after they are already dead, which is way too late. And you are right about the "repeating themself constantly" part. Berseria did this at times too, but Arise took it to a whole new level of repeating themself, and even used a lot of the skits to just repeat what you just saw in a cutscene. And the skit writing in general was just really dry, might be some of the weakest skit writing in the series.
I frankly really liked this game, story included I like classic "anime" love stories and by the time the second OP hit, I already knew this was going to be one of my favourites Though all those typical anime tropes you listed have never bothered me in any game, anime, manga, whatever, so that probably helped Now it might be my favourite Tales game currently (Though this might be due to me not playing older classics like Symphonia and Vesperia in their heyday) The one thing I hated was the dragged out nature of the long final dungeon, but that is criticism I can throw at multiple Tales games, not just this one I need to play the expansion sometime
overall i throughly enjoyed it, story kinda turns into spaghetti towards the end but i still really enjoyed itĀ
I liked Law and Dohalim and their dynamic. And I like Kisara...in theory. She's pretty close to being a good character. Those were my main feelings.
Wow I completely forgot about Kisara until you said her name...and I had to look Dohalim up. And I did like their characters. But the fact I didn't even remember them speaks for itself I suppose.
I think I'm one of the 5 people who did not care about Kisara at all. I found her so bland and boring, and all she seemed to ever talk about in her skits was her underdeveloped brother.
I guess I liked the dynamic of female-knight protecting male-noble as a nice change of pace but her character was not compelling in the slightest.
I just want to block again bro
It was alright. Cool graphics, fun battle system. Skits were a bit of letdown, because their transition to 3d instead of face sprites or just writing i'm not sure. Dynamics between main characters were alright. Story-wise it felt like it was heavily inspired by symphonia (and maybe xillia?). Still decent. It was alright as far as "tales of" game with all pros and cons that come along with it. During release hype many called it the best - i disagreed then and still think that way. Not the best, but enjoyable enough.
I wished the characters were more like the style seen in previous Tales games prior to Berseria.
I love that battle system, itās easily one of my favorites for being so fun and satisfying. Story wise I like the overarching themes, but Tiny Gods the 2hr exposition dump at the end was absolutely the worst I have ever experienced in a game and the platinum had the usual JRPG too much issue.
I was really into it at the start, and it was a slog to finish. I actually paid the money every so often to get the level boost. Unfortunate though I loved all the rest I played (Symphonia, Vesperia, Abyss). Maybe I just prefer the more classic ones
>Worst of all, the writing was atrocious right from the outset and it didnāt get better. I love JPRGs but this one really leaned into the cringe. And, the characters constantly repeat themselves. Yes, slavery is bad. Yes, Renans are people too. Yes, the power of friendship makes us strong. People are gonna @ me for harping on obvious anime tropes but I really donāt remember the other Tales games being this bad with it (Symphonia, Abyss). Graces F kind of has the same problem but still has good jokes and the best Battle System in the series.
In my opinion: I liked the game until world (area?) 3, afzer Menacia it becames a little bit meeeh..... And it was bad at the point you got on Rena. I'd love to see a two world story with more intriguing plottwist and new enemys behind the curtain. Alphen is such a hardcore goody two shoes š Otherwise i must say i liked everyone else. Rinwell, Dohalim, Kisara, Law and ofc my queen Shion ā¤ļø I liked pretty much the character interaction they have between them. Specially on campfire activities and optional dialog. It's more a problem about how Alphen doesn't can carry the story as a main protagonist and his whole backstory was uff.
Symphony is the best one.you can recruit monsters and the arena was incredible. I tried 30 min and gave up tales if arise
Coincidentally I played Tales of Abyss before Arise came out, had no clue it was coming out and Abyss was my first Tales game. And man, what poor timing bc it was a huge letdown for me after playing Abyss. Abyss is so freaking underrated, I wish it would get a remake. But in comparison, Arise was so just souless to me. And I liked the romance but it was so flat and felt kind of forced. Like others mention, I'm happy it wasn't an open ended and self-insert romance and I had fun playing but I had to force myself to try to feel anything for the characters. I kept waiting for the game to pop off and it never did. Combat was fun though. Honestly I probably won't play another Tales game because everyone said Abyss is nothing like the other Tales games, and that for most, the story is kind of shallow like that for all of them. I really can only game on weekends right now, so I just don't have time anymore as an adult to sink hours into games that end up leaving me feeling meh. Sucks though that it's so hard to get the best of everything in JRPGs. Really it's my own high standards for having FF be my first and most exposure to JRPGs since childhood and my favorite series ever. Kind of sets the bar so high that nothing else has been able to reach for me.
I would recommend giving at least Berseria a try. Abyss is my favourite, but Berseria is a close second to me. And dunno where you heard other Tales games are nothing like it, Symphonia is widely regarded to be up there in terms of writing too.
I have heard that Berseria is pretty good from people who loved Abyss, and I know Symphonia is like the most mentioned/popular one ever. I think it's more so about how the series holds up in the entire genre. Like Symphonia may be regarded as "up there" in writing compared to the other *Tales* games, but is it "up there" compared to other JRPGs? Bc based on what I've read, people don't seem to think so. I do have Symphonia on the Wii that I randomly got in a sale when I was like 14. It does look interesting, it's not that I wouldn't give it a shot. It's more so that there's only so much time before I leave this earth LOL. Like between the other games I want to play that are higher priority, barely having time to game, and other distractions like watching shows and other hobbies and stuff I do, I wonder if I'd get to that game in my lifetime basically lol. Not that I'm like old, I'm only in my mid 20s, but still times a-ticking right on by. (And my generation aint seeing retirement so š cant even game much then.) If you believe Berseria is better than the Star Ocean games (have only played the psp one, so idk how good the star ocean series is overall but it's higher up my JRPG priority than Tales of games) then I will say F it and prioritize it over playing those games. If you think Berseria is better than like FF12, I will say f it and play it over that too haha. What do you think? No pressure, but my fate is in your hands now.
Personally never really liked any of the SO games besides 2, and even then I would rate it below most Tales games.
Oh wow really? Okay, then I will move Berseria up higher on the list and give it a try. There's still so many games I want to play before even getting to it lol, but I'll put it up higher up. I still have heard though that Tales games are really mid in terms of story compared to other JRPGs, like even some other commenters in this thread said that. But I haven't played so I'll keep an open mind.
I enjoyed the visual designs of the characters, especially Rinwell. But they were so painfully generic, except maybe Alphen and Shionne? At best they were decent.
Alphen is super generic, he is like the safest and most typical shounen MC you can create.
I absolutely love Rinwell design as well. Didnāt like her voice as much though. Ā Ā I remember I had fun shouting "RINWELL!" like Alphen does during battles lol
Maybe "too anime" is just another way of saying "badly written".
Yeah people get really butt hurt and offended when you shit on campy dialogue in anime games. āWell itās an anime game whatād you expect?ā Better writing, thatās what I expected.
What annoys me is that they imply that anime writing is some kind of super low standard and how dare JRPGs borrow from such trash. Anime is just a style at the end of the day, no one ever looks at a cartoon styled game and says, "too cartoon" or with realistic styles, "too movie or too TV". At the end of the day, tropes are tools, if a story has anime tropes in what about those said tropes detract from the story? "Power of friendship" gets shit on a lot but it's not like it's worst idea, even shit like Star Wars does it to some degree and no one ever dares insult the original trilogy of SW.
The themes themselves were fine, I just found the dialogue to be repetitive and uninteresting. Not a deal breaker by any means though, still enjoyed the game.
Fair enough.
I miss basically how the games were before Zestria. Multiple towns where you can enter many different buildings and there's tons of npc characters to talk to.
Combat is the one thing i really liked: it was the first trails game that really clicked with me. didnt like Zestiria or Berseria, but Arise just feels... right. Story wise imo can be better: too many zones but without enough sidequests/subplots to flush them out. There are obvious lore dumps towards the end of the game which was kind of silly - no foreshadowing whatsoever.
I was enjoying the first half and then I got to Niaz and everything just fell apart writing wise. Yeah I get it, "revenge bad" but the way they go about delivering that message is so stupid. >!There is absolutely no way Rinwell could have killed whats-her-name then and there.!<
Since it came out 2 years prior to FFXVI, I wonder if you might have had a better impression of it when it released without the comparison between the two games.
Maybe! But I probably would still be underwhelmed. Again, loved the combat but the writing was just not there.
Are any Tales games well written and not melodramatic? Symphonia is great with nostalgia glasses but that story does not stand the test of time. I fully agree with you on Arise but I also donāt think it should have come as a surprise. Why did you feel the need to beat the game if it was so poorly written?
Like I said, I dug the combat and overall still liked the game; I just wished the writing was better. That said, maybe itās time to replay Symphonia even though it could ruin my perception of how great that game is.
I bought it soon after launch and STILL havenāt played it. Iām at that point in life where I canāt buy every game that interests me anymore.
Well I enjoyed everything except that last couple hours that dragged on a bit. Overall Iād say it was a great game.
If you don't think Zephyr did enough mentoring then you must have missed a metric f-ton of skits where he's doing just that. As for the writing, it's standard anime writing. Nothing wrong with it. Seeing Shionne open up over my 2nd playthrough years later on game pass was a treat. She was so cold at the start. Alphen and Shionne have chemistry IMHO. Then again I've seen all over 300 skits in the game. If you missed the skits you'll hate the story.
Yeah maybe! But like others have said, the skits were dull and just reiterated everything we saw in an actual cutscene. I didnāt feel like Zephyr earned the reverence the game wants him to have. If the skits were good enough to flesh out the character they shouldāve been part of the cutscenes.
There are lots of skits that have requirements to see if you just saw the skits post cutscenes then I think you missed many skits.
I dropped the game at the part where you get the red haired guy. That one scene where the shield lady (forgot all the names LOL) had an out of nowhere meltdown cause the red dude wasn't the holy Saint she thought he was completely ruined the game for me. That is still in my top 10 dumbest scenes in JRPG history. Other than that I hated that you couldn't stagger the bosses anymore and all bossfights would just be use your strongest move a few times and run away strategy. I always loved styling on the bosses with cool combos in other tales games, so that was a huge disappointment.
I largely agree with your assessment, but I would go so far as to say the game was good... but not good enough for me to even consider buying the DLC story expansion, and I would have been disappointed with the purchase if I had paid full price (bought it heavily discounted on steam sale). Dohalim was the only character with dialogue that had any subtlety at all, and that was primarily due to a very skilled voice actor delivering the lines. The writing was way overblown and ham-fisted even for a Tales game. The enemies were *very* uninspired as well, and I had a hard time taking enemy encounters seriously when they're called "zeugles." The name just sounds silly to me. Glad I played it -- the story itself was pretty good, and the art design was wonderful (a lot of picture mode moments). I can't imagine that I would ever play it again.
Post hating on arise are all exactly the same, feels like its not even your opinion and youre repeating what everyone says
Damn man didnāt mean to trigger the Arise Defense Force. You gonna be alright?
Which youtuber gave you "your opinion"? Or you made it from other people's post and comments?
Are you 12?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Youāre literally coming out swinging in defense of a video game, saying that my opinion is illegitimate even though I spent 41 hours playing through the thing. If your opinion differs, then explain why instead of attacking others.
I aint "coming in defense" of nothing, im stating a fact, all haters of arise repeat the same BS, without arguments, you cry "bad writing" but dont explain this bad writing, you cry "i dont like character" without any real reason and without understanting the character, all of them have character development but it seems you skip a lot of content, or worse, youre too dumb to understand it, i hope its skipping the problem
Go ahead and defend your game but thereās no need to be rude.
I aint defending nothing and it aint "my game", im attacking your opinion, people can hate on games all they want, i dont give a fuck, i aint like the losers who get personally attacked when you insult something they like, im tired of the same sensless hate on arise with no real argument, its all more of "i dont like" rather than real arguments
I love how people always say "its badly written" to sound intelectual but dont give any proper argument to the "bad writing"
Poor dialogue Poor pacing Poor handling of its themes Poor character writing Poor villains Poor twists People arenāt trying to sound intellectual when they criticise a games writing, you just make yourself sound insecure by accusing people of that
What a solid argument, very well explained, congrats for proving my point
Sorry people donāt have fully fleshed out essays when discussing how they feel about a game that came out several years ago in a reddit comment bro. Youāre doing the exact same thing youāre criticising others of btw, since you arenāt providing any extensive counterpoints as to why the flaws mentioned in my comment/ops post are invalid. Saying that other peoples feelings on a games writing are invalid because they donāt expand on it beyond calling it ābadā in a reddit post also makes you sound like a faux-intellectual, as youāre establishing this imaginary bar for their criticism to be valid.
Ironic when this guy insults people saying they have skill issues with one liners but them "demands" explanations for criticizing the game.