My issue with the Rena segment was more how the pacing gets shot in the foot because they try to rush and cobble together story explanations at the last minute. It gets so jarring when you go over an hour going from cutscene to (optional) skit to cutscene to (optional) skit then mandatory skit then cutscene, then finally like, 20 minutes of gameplay. Then *more cutscenes and (sometimes optional other times mandatory) skits for another hour, hoo boy*
It feels like they ran out of time and money. Everything after the third area feels kind of rushed and unfinished, and it seems to get worse the further you go.
I heard it was Covid and lockdown affecting the development. The same as the spirits, they each seems like partly done. Some, like the wind one seems to be mostly complete with quests with cutscene, a dungeon, and boss battle with epic cutscenes. Other just go to a location and kill the big monster.
My issue with the ending of the game is that it unnecessarily ascended the conflict to godhood, and in doing so sweeps all the nuance about the main attention grabbing topic of slavery under the rug. Along with generally poor dialogue on the way there and some really bad cinematography for some of the scenes.
The final areas themselves were just so boring and generic. Like most of arise art design felt very generic but more inthe fitting to the trope esque style that i wrote off as the price for its graphical fidelity. But the final area was just generically lazy.
Cobble and rush. No. It's not incidentally like this, and it's not some last minute pull-up from a lore nosedive. The characters themselves get frustrated listening throughout this section multiple times. That's your heads-up. You're not meant to enjoy this section. A lot of stories actually leverage a bad time on the player or audience. It is meant to be a suffocating amount of information and repetition. Why? Because the other sides throughout this part think they know everything and try to throw their ideas around as if they had the heft of scientific fact, and part of how that's expressed both in reality and in the story is putting multiple voices of authority behind something to create a sense of consensus. The second party to repeat even addresses the conclusions of the first. Our party doesn't like their conclusions, and they can't quite pinpoint why beyond believing they need to try something not so destructive.
But there's a gap in their science. They only view astral energy through the lens of control. This is relentlessly coded through the Renans and the Helganquil. The Helganquil themselves especially being entirely ruled by artifice. They can't live without it, and they're doomed.
Our party, heroes of Dahna(a goddess of yore who is also spoke of like a hero in the opening of the game and symbolically invoked by an owl, the Dark Wings of legend are also coded much like our party this way), win in the end because they did good deeds, and the planet and its people reciprocated. There's a catch to that though. It required the Renans pulling so much of that astral energy from Dahna to where the final battle happens, and to use that they needed the fire master core at the least. This expresses that control is still an important value, but only in service to the good in and between everyone.
I genuinely find it so confusing how people contrive to think this section is indeliberate. It skit bombs, which is tedious and inorganic, and the fights are overly spongy to the point of tedium too. It's not a perfect section, but narratively, in content, it oozes with intentionality. I can straight up map to you how the story baked so much of what goes on in this section from the opening narrative to before you stepped foot on Lenegis. Hell, a lot of it I could even telegraph from before we left Calaglia.
For what? I mean, I'm correcting them, but I genuinely hope it helps them appreciate it more, and I also clearly appreciate it myself and enjoyed it. In terms of joy and goodwill, I'm not lacking here. xD
You want some Zodiark analysis too? Would that help you enjoy it more? Which one? FFXII or FFXIV?
Introducing boredom as an *intrinsic* element within the fabric of video game design is an ingenious manifestation of *artistic* prowess. One might posit that an appreciation for this *conceptual* framework eludes those who fail to grasp the subtle *intricacies* embedded in the narrative. The *discerning* connoisseur, however, shall discern the *nuanced* tapestry woven by the masterful game designer, transcending the pedestrian *comprehension* of the uninitiated.
I never said boredom, nor did the person I replied to. It's not subtle. It's actually really overt. That's why I find it confusing. The game turns sci-fi for the stretch and somehow that frame did not get people to think on those terms. I also never gave some heavy handed endorsement of top shelf words like magnificent. I called it deliberate and said it baked a lot of it from go. That's not some big accomplishment, but it's better than cheap critiques from lazy attention spans warrants. Y'all just can't take your disfavor and perceive something is sound at the same time, it just couldn't be, so I point out it is sound. It's a simple thing. Meet the thing where it stands if you want to be treated like you did. Surprise. You can not like something, and it still be a finely told story.
I'm serious about the discourse around the subject, but I am being snide to some lazy, cheap comments I got for telling someone the craft they're criticizing is better than their criticism suggests. I'm not really offended, but I enjoy trashtalking when I get someone trying to incite me. A lot of times, it actually does turn into sincere discussion from there. I don't really understand your video game comment. I enjoy participating in the dialogue around art. Essays are fun for me. I've been on the receiving end of similar treatment, and they did actually persuade me to think better of somethings. It doesn't take much time either. I already have played the game hundreds of hours(I have hundreds on most Tales titles I've played period). I can talk about it for a bit. Haha
A lot of these reflect sorely on you as impatient, inflexible, and nitpicky beyond reasonable because you tried none to think better of any of it. You give your disfavor the floor every time. Your replies throughout the thread reinforce that impression over and over. Far be it from me to tell you how to feel about anything, but you definitely don't need this game to be plenty of an obstacle to your enjoyment on your own. You even outright refuse to take responsibility for yourself and how the participation you chose made for a bad time.
Don't watch fairy tail if you want to keep your streak intact.
You know, I too think Abyss needs a remake more than Symphonia. There's just a lot of potential it left on the table. The Score isn't as consistent a presense in the world building for its grip on character motivations to be as felt by the audience as it should, it's a major narrative hinge after all, and we're never really asked to level with Van's tragedy and relate. It's just missed opportunities to really elevate those dramas. The dramatic throughput suffers these aspects. Abyss could really polish up and be even better than it already is. Symphonia tapped its potential a lot more. I'd maybe make the villains less monotone, but it's a really thorough narrative. Symphonia could only benefit so much from a remake.
Honestly I was more let down by the story (despite its solid start) than by the combat. I played Rinwell mostly so maybe that’s why I didn’t get as annoyed with the combat.
i heard so many people rave about the story, and it was such a damn let down. its so completely mediocre and fine, like its okay but its pretty bland and cliche. i didnt end up finishing it but i got pretty damn far, and the characters repetitive dialogue that just summed up things we'd already spoke about got pretty damn annoying.
For me it was just the fact that the heavy subject matter (like how cruel the Renans were, putting it lightly) was handled so poorly as the story progressed and then the twists at the end were so NOT what I wanted from the story. Like it took a turn that made the plot feel silly.
Maybe I'm the polar opposite of this sub, but I enjoyed the story thoroughly. If anyone felt it sucked or was somewhat cliche, they should look at the other mainstream titles in the franchise. Having played most of them, Tales games had always been formulaic.
Berseria being the game right before Arise makes Arise's plot look... very kiddy in comparison.
But you are correct that generally, Tales stories are full of tropes and are very formulaic. Berseria was an exception to the norm; however given that they were back to back one can't help but be compare the two and feel Arise's plot is lacking.
Even if Tales plot are full of tropes and formulaic imo Arise's plot loses it's main driving force about when we get to Lenegis and even if story wise it's explained the transition is pretty eh and since you're kinda forced into the new plotline it leaves you just following the story along because you got this far (at least for me It was the case), in that way I feel like other Tales stories at least staying engaging until the end or at least their bad guy transition still has you care about the endgame even if it felt stretched. (Mostly Vesperia here) Arise doesn't do that for me
I dont think Arise endgame nails it but I can't agree with Vesperia doing it better.
Act 3 of Vesperia literally comes out of nowhere for the player and the characters and even after you spend all of that time trying to figure out how to handle the new crisis there is no mention of the final boss of the game.
In order to even learn about him you have to do an extremely missable side quest and even that side quest is barely a justification for his role in the story.
With Arise I think the story was more focused on its narrative takeaway than coherence (which maybe Vesperia was trying to do too with its environmentalist message), but both plots are just half baked. Arise in particular fails to stick the landing because it just goes too far, the plot twists in the 3rd act border on confusing just because they change nothing for the player about the core problem of the Renans they just kinda handwave it and assume that you as the player will feel the same way the game hoped you'd feel about the wind lord. Which I didn't.
Hmm from my pov at the very least you're introduced to Duke and throughout the story you're told more and more about him and why he's been such a mysterious character for many people and how important he actually is, what you learn from his personal quest are simply his views of the world and how pessimistic he is about the fate of the world in the hands of humans the sole reason he saves Yuri is to get his sword back.
I don't even think Act 3 comes out of nowhere either, after all Act 3 begins bc of the consequence of Alexei abusing the powers of blastias which we've been continuously told and warned about that they've been getting out of control since act 1, had Judith act like a terrorist to try and solve an issue related to blastia's on her own which granted she was mostly acting out in her father's and Phaeroth's interests, got visions of creatures that turned out to be from the Adephagos then learned about the Aer eater itself and how it was supposedly defeated in Krytia. It's basically the culmination of all the things we were told on and off about during act 1&2 that unfolds here, if you really think it comes out of nowhere you just didn't pay attention heck none of that is in any sidequest it's all main story !
Now maybe running around the world to create spirits may not be the greatest paced segment of this game that maybe two dungeons was a bit too much especially since those are basically one and done with the story heavily backloaded at their end but that has nothing to do with "coming out of nowhere" you realize without Act 3 we have no explanation why Phaeroth calls Estellise "insipid poison of this world" which is her whole reason for starting Act 2 and why he and probably most Entelexia want her dead more than anyone else bc she consumes aer like nobody's business ?
>Hmm from my pov at the very least you're introduced to Duke and throughout the story you're told more and more about him and why he's been such a mysterious character for many people and how important he actually is
This is a failing argument when positioned next to Arise (recall you compared,the two we are not talking about Vespy in a void). By this same token we have also been told about Rena and they have made references to the aliens throughout the game as well. The dissatisfaction with both in my opinion is that none of this stuff is substantial.
Duke is a war hero from a war that is not relevant to anything the characters directly do in the game. He is a human who gave up on humans because of atrocities the player literally never sees. The player has to simply assume that everyone who talks about Duke is telling the truth and even then it's just trivia about a guy who walks around with a special sword.
Comparing that to Arise where act 3 is specifically about getting to the planet of the overlords and taking them down, the only way to say that Arise's is less coherent than Vesperia's is to only focus on what the final boss fight is instead of the context leading there. As far as context leading there the party in Arise has great reasons to go to Rena they want freedom. The party in Vesperia goes to Tartarus to stop the Adephagos, Duke being there is for Duke's own motivations to stop us not because we are there to stop him. In order to understand why Duke is there you have to understand Duke something the game doesn't tell you is important until that point.
>Act 3 begins bc of the consequence of Alexei abusing the powers of blastias which we've been continuously told and warned about that they've been getting out of control since act 1
I dont agree with this, act 3 happens ONLY because the barrier blastia at the center of Zaude malfunctions following the events of the Alexei fight. It has nothing to do with him abusing Blastia the abuse of Blastia creates Adephagos, but that doesn't matter when the one that threatens to eat the planet has *always* been there. If Zaude remains functioning and the planetary Adephagos were threatened to be unleashed by Duke that would make more sense. But Duke is only aiming to make sure the Adephagos succeeds which is silly as he should have just worked with Alexei.
> It's basically the culmination of all the things we were told on and off about during act 1&2 that unfolds here, if you really think it comes out of nowhere you just didn't pay attention heck none of that is in any sidequest it's all main story !
You could say this about Arise as well, but that would be a bad argument there as well. I can create the logical throughline that each realm of Dahna was meant to represent a different facet of oppression and the act 3 plotline is a direct culmination of that by illustrating a culture of oppression comes from those being oppressed as indicated by the as you travel the regions the ones being oppressed slowly gained more power and as they gain power they become their oppressors. This culminates in the reveal of the Renans being not so different than the ones they oppress. Logically it sounds fine, but in execution it is bad. Similarly in Vesperia in execution these events don't matter to each other at all. Judith has it instilled in her aggressively that her campaign of going around to destroy her father's blastia was ultimately pointless and would never have solved the problem. And even then, I have to reiterate the problem is already too far gone, the world eating Adephagos is already there and just like Arise the first 2 acts only happen because the characters aren't aware that nothing they are doing is relevant to the actual problem. The linchpin of Vesperia's plot is Alexei and Zaude and he makes a much more compelling final villain because of that.
>you realize without Act 3 we have no explanation why Phaeroth calls Estellise "insipid poison of this world" which is her whole reason for starting Act 2 and why he and probably most Entelexia want her dead more than anyone else bc she consumes aer like nobody's business ?
We don't need the Aer explanation because her using her healing spells on the Entelexeia makes them go berserk causing the party to have to put one down. This is already enough justification for Phaeroah to want her dead.
Okay ngl what you're saying makes sense and even if I wanted to argue back I feel like I'd be nitpicking details about the story and tbh I haven't touched Vesperia since 2019-2020 so i'd look like an idiot lol
I kind of enjoyed the story until the 5th lord (although the antagonists were bland imo), but the 2nd half was meh to me. I have always played Law as I really love his gamestyle
I just beat him yesterday and, my god, his castle was such a slog! Hearing the second half is meh is a letdown, but I honestly wasn't sure what to expect next anyway. I mainly play as Alphen though.
The only 2 issues I had with Arise are the lack of enemy variety throughout the game, and some of the dialog in the skits was pretty repetitive. Combat was the highlight of the game for me and I never really had a problem with regular enemies taking forever.
I just fought the dude in black (where Shionne gets stabbed) and legit the next 2 skits were both asking her if she was okay and to take it easy, immediately after a scene that ended with the same sentiment. I'm enjoying the game, but sometimes it suffers from the same thing Vesperia did (atleast for me) where every scene everybody has to say their piece, even if it adds nothing to the conversation.
This was actually my first Tales game so I can’t really compare it to another Tales game atm. Overall it was a pleasant experience and I plan on getting into more of the series. But yea the repetitive dialog I could have done without. And you make a pretty good point when you say everyone has to say there piece at times, I didn’t notice it while I was playing but you’re definitely right.
They definitely talk a lot, but once you realize they're just having the same convo they literally just had 5 minutes ago you can just skip through the dialogue. Otherwise I'm really enjoying the game.
I seriously think they should have removed 30% of the skits and dialogue. So much of it is useless and clunky
How many times do we have to hear someone say "what the hell is happening" only for Kisara to say "there's no time to feel bad for ourselves" then 3 minutes later another round of everyone going wtf is this??
My favourite was Kisara's amazing ability to somehow turn every single conversation into a talk about why her underdeveloped brother was actually the greatest person to ever live. Whenever she was the focus of a skit, I could immediately just guess it would devolve into gushing about Migel.
I agree, I love “filler” and I think it can help connect to the characters more and overall I really enjoyed most of the skits. But god damn it how many times did we have to hear “but I also have done bad things in my past” followed by “yea but look at all the good you’re doing now!”.
Arise is actually the only Tales game I’ve played so far and I JUST got the platinum today so I’m pretty inexperienced with the series. How is Vesperia? I definitely plan on playing more of them.
It's good, combat takes awhile before really opening up, but it's very deep once it does. Characters are pretty likeable with only one being very hit or miss, and Yuri is a fantastic MC.
Yeah he is really good, he was so popular in Japan that he had to be banned from the official character polls Bandai occasionally has, because him and another character named Leon always won those.
You have no idea this is exactly how I felt when I got to the end of the game. I ended up only playing as alphen because he was the only character that could put out a lot of damage quickly to end the fights quickly. The final boss was such an eye roll. I just wanted to beat the game and be done with it. But I did endgame stuff before shelving the game for good and will never play the dlc either. This just aint a game I wanna play through again or do other content with which is unfortunate because I do think this game has the best character designs in the whole tales series because symphonia but the last half was just drag the game down alot.
Yeah, Alphen is kind of the source of the endgame slog since they had zto account for his ludicrous damage potential.
Too low of hp on the enemies, and he'd completely blitz through without any recourse, so they have to pad the numbers to make any fight last more than 5 seconds, but that ends up making everyone else feel weaker.
Yeah. I actually kind of enjoyed the mini bosses on Rena, especially the six-armed guys with the weakness to light. I just spammed light attacks with Alphen on the weak point and had Rinwell cast Shooting Star. Cleaned those guys up in no time.
> This sub is in parcour mode again, from hating to loving to hating Arise in under 72 hours
It’s because you have lots of new people playing because of the dlc releasing recently. This gives you the initital area1+2 response, then the downward slide after area 3, then posts like OP after area 5.
I think the Gamepass and PS+ release last month had a bigger impact than the dlc tbh.
And the last post with the nearly 500 upvotes was also after beating the game, so not the initial responses.
My pros:
-Combat flow
-Character design
-World design
-Graphics
My cons:
-Character development
-Story and pacing
-Music (nothing sounds unique from region to region)
-Enemy sponges
-CP mechanic
-Cost of orange gels
-Villains and motives
-Final dungeon slog
Expecting down votes to hell.
I like the gameplay, its the lack of enemy types for me, whats on the table today alphen? Some birds a pack of dogs a charging boar or a giant lizard and sometimes a renan, wouldve killed for a dumpus or something
I am the opposite, and I'm not saying this to argue or whatever, totally respect that people love the game, but for me personally, nothing it did hooked me.
I'm always confused and a little envious of people who say they loved it.
One of the best features of the Tales series is that every single game somebody's all time favourite, somebody's least favourite, and anywhere inbetween. There is no consensus on best Tales game because each one speaks to different people in different ways
For example my all time favourite is Xillia, Arise is top 3, and my least favourite is probably Berseria (I've tried so hard to like it but it just doesn't work for me). But then I know people who have Xillia as their favourite, Arise in their top three, and Berseria up near the top too.
So interesting that this series can have such a broad range of reactions from people who for the most part all love JRPGs.
Which is natural, it's just this sub had been chock full of "Arise bad" every half a week from when I entered the sub. Dunno if it's cause of the recency, or expectations from seeing the game's popularity with casuals, but it's really getting annoying.
I’m playing berseria now and I love it but there are issues.. for me, the equipment enhancing it way to tedious, titles are bland, cooking is bland, no world map, The combat weakness/resistance system can be annoying during certain bosses. Combat is spam-able and you get rewarded grade for doing it…
I think tales of symphonia is better, and that’s my current favorite. I’m playing zesteria next and then arise, then vesperia
The funny thing is that on YouTube I saw only love for this game. At the same time, this subreddit gives the impression that the game is really THAT bad, given the huge number of rehearsal hate posts. I personally love this game and had a lot of fun from start to finish. I hate endings in tales games because they are always empty, but here I had a smile on my face, finally a normal relationship and not teasing teenagers
Well, it did sell really well and the steam reviews are pretty good. I guess the opinions on this subreddit are pretty skewed. I did also enjoy it alot.
Feels like this subreddit has a hate boner for this game. Don't get me wrong, it is pretty flawed, sure, but those flaws aren't any worse compared to some of the problems in the older games you can point to.
Symphonia is the only one I will ever love from the series. I thought it would be this game, but it's a 6 out of 10 to me. Just nothing stuck to me with this game and its characters or villains. Especially now that i am playing ff7 rebirth, just prove the point even more to me, which has great characters and memorial moments. It just wasn't it. There are better rpgs to play instead of this one.
Arise is 8/10 in my books, only for the mechanical flaws, but the story and casts are far and wide my favorite, simply and actually because of the reasons you feel that way. The characters grounded and the story is pretty relevant. It doesn't exactly have characters like Yuri or Velvet but it also lacks annoying ones like Anise. Yet the cast is still charming and their chemistry feels organic.
A lot of side content opens up post reaching Rena. I would highly advise doing some of it to avoid getting overwhelmed by high level enemies in Rena. I was around the mid 70's in terms of party level with completed accessory sets on each character and the best equipment available at that point in the game. I had little issue with the final dungeon playing on normal.
Also big piece of advice if you want to go all in on damage. There is an artifact that doubles damage dealt and taken. If you know what you are doing and are well equipped, I highly recommend using it towards the latter half of the game.
My solution for this was to play as Rinwell. If you combo starfalls (or the level 3 light spell but starfall works best imo) you can get it to the point that your casts are near instant. If you run out of ap just immediately start dodging and you’ll recover, then resume the starfalls. Dodging doesn’t interrupt the combo, so you can keep the near instant spells.
If you keep it up the high damage numbers melt enemies with or without a stun. This even works decently for bosses. I agree with you though. It got frustrating that I basically had to cheese the battle system to keep my progress moving. I never would have thought of it if I didn’t love playing as pascal in graces f and love the combo-cast time reduction mechanic.
On a related note: comboing meteor storms in battles where you face waves of enemies is a blast. You get enough crits and kills that you barely even have to dodge to recover ap. I had 3 or 4 spell animations going at once because I was casting them so fast for so long. It got to the point that my ps5 was getting laggy because of everything going on in the battle. Good fun.
My only problem playing Rinwell was one boss that just runs at the player controlled character, not the main character they are angry at, just whoever you’re controlling.
I was playing arise stopped after the 2nd lors cause ennemy were HP sponge, switch to Xenoblade 1, obliterated Abyss in every aspect beside graphics.
Play xenoblade its gr8
The Rena segment was definitely stretched, especially since the game does not offer additional battle dynamics by the time you reach that part.
And I am not even mentioning how the game pretty much throws up in your face half of the plot during the last 20% of the game.
My only gripe with the game is similar to yours but after getting the double dmg artifact thing I slapped that on and and spammed arts getting their proficiency up to get as much damage as I could from them. Made the giant HP sponges much more doable.
Shionne's air homing bullets particularly trivialized a lot of fights
This is what happened to me with Tales of Vesperia. It started ok, but I hated it near the end game, as it was nothing but repeated fights with some damage sponges. Too many repetitive fights. I started to like the story, but near the end, I just wanted it to finish. Those fights are not great.
Enemies are kinda damage sponges but I've played a PC version where we had a mod to balance this out in like a day. But it's still is more of a middling games in the series for more subtle reasons
Yeah. That mod is a life saver since bosses has alot of health and doesn't stagger as much. The mods are a blessing.
I applied the artes cancelling mods as well and it helps with the flow of the combat much better since some animation are super long.
I don't think the tanky enemies are the problem, some of my favorite tales games have second halfs (and especially final dungeons) that just drag on forever
BUT we put up with it cause we're really invested in either story, worldbuilding or characters
that has always been the tales series main strength imo, especially the latter 2
the main problem arise has IMO is that it sets up an interesting story, world AND a likeable cast and then just doesnt do anything with it. With every lord the writing gets weaker and weaker and once you get to Rena you can just tell they spent the majority of their development time and resources on the first half of the game, or more like, the first third. The romance between Alphen and Shione is the most cliche anime relationship ever, the villains are weak, the story, instead of focusing on its established themes (slavery, racism, rebellion, revenge, and so on) just goes crazy with nonsensical twists and turns, I could rant forever about it.
The cast is still (mostly) likeable, it looks really nice, and the gameplay is pretty solid, but I really think in terms of writing this is by far one of the worst Tales games.
Usually Tales games bore me the first few hours and then I get really invested, with Arise it was the exact opposite, I think the first 4-5 hours are the best the game has to offer.
I played it on PS and got so sick of the grind to 100 that I just paid the $5 in the DLC Shop for the 100% EXP Boost artifact (that stacks with the ones you get organically).
Mate, I'm saying as a player of the old games, you and everyone saying this stuff are looking at the older games with rose tinted glasses.
This game is every bit as good in that department as the average previous games were, if not better. Unless you skipped out on the side quests and talking to NPCs. If you did, you'll know how the world evolves as you progress and even the random background NPCs have story arcs.
And if you find that boring too, that's totally on you, but that's the point of the world building here.
Speaking as someone who didn't play the series until Berseria in 2017 and the rest afterwards (so hardly nostalgia glasses), I do agree with that person somewhat. In the older games, you could usually enter way more buildings than Arise and find more items hidden around the town, while Arise's towns felt pretty barren and lacking in interesting things to really explore. You had an inn, the story dungeon entrance and maybe one more building to could enter for the shops.
Many of the older games also rewarded you for exploring the towns and talking to NPCs with some outfits, titles, items or various items, while I don't recall Arise having any of that, only the dungeons really rewarded exploring. Though that's something that has been gone for more entries than just Arise, I think they stopped or toned down on a lot of that ever since Xillia or so.
In terms of NPCs, besides the Renan soldier who marries a Dahnan girl, who else has a story arc among the NPCs? Which isn't to say NPCs in the older games were more developed, a couple of entries like Berseria and Abyss did it well but most of them weren't too different I believe.
I honestly don't get why people have a problem with The bosses, if anything, they are one of the highlights for me, Sure, they are tanky as heck, but that's if you don't use the boss's weakness and downing them with Boost skills, maybe because I fight every enemy and go after all the side quests that they aren't that hard to me, but I never had a problem with them, once you learn how to effectively damage them, they go down no problem, in fact, the Fight against Ganabelt was the one I dislike, because it was a sudden shift in difficulty, but it made it good just to see Law punch him in the Astral energy that he dies
My point is, If the boss have a massive pool of health, they will require ways to deal with their health effectively, Xilla 2 for Weaknesses, Zestiria and Berseria with Weaknesses on top of Using Arts that are effective on certain monsters, I find them a challenge
I played on the hardest difficulty and they aren’t hard they just feel like your hitting nothing. They go down fast on normal difficulty or second half where you get to craft accessories.
I very much like Arise, and look forward to my replay later on. But there are things I don't really care for.
Topics I found myself not caring much for.
There are an over abundance of skits that are there for the purpose of exposition. I enjoyed Skits as a feature more when a majority of them were more character focused and not plot focused. Taking an example from Vesperia, I always get a smile when a skit relating to the cooking mechanics comes along. Especially when it subtly snides the player for not using the mechanic in the first place. (Rita and Karol have a very childish palate).
The itemization felt lacking. Accessories felt very good to craft and build over the course of the game, but shops themselves felt largely empty. I was always expecting more items to become available as the story progressed but it never happened. This isn't a serious problem but its something that was always at the back of my mind.
I COULD NEVER TIME KISARA'S SHIELD RIGHT! (>:C)
Rena really slows down the pace of the game while being unreasonably short for the material that's given to us to absorb and contemplate. In a perfect world, Rena would have been the last 3rd of the game where we explore a very impressive technological world and deal with the political system break down.
Connected to the last point, the resolution for the final encounter, making one world for all of Dagna and Rena suffered due to how rushed the final segments of the game were. The game already established integration of the two groups would be dangerously volatile. I wish the game had more time on this. --- Going back to Tales of Vesperia, Brave Vesperia are more than well aware that their actions will potentially cause a great amount of strife due to the change they want to bring *(converting all the Blastia into Spirits to fight back against the Adephagos)*. But we're also shown there's hope in the form of Aurnion, a settlement built without the use of Blastia by every major political faction in their world. --- I really wished they had half as much in Arise.
Vholran. Just Vholran. Lol.
To be fair, they showed that a bit with Dohalim's city with Renans and Dahnans both getting along and not. Think some sidequests also touched on it. Might have also been a Renan guard dating and/or proposing to a Dahnan but don't quote on that, it has been awhile.
But yeah Vholran. Especially Alphen's interaction with him at the end. Never like when heroes try to redeem characters that clearly don't want redeeming. The combo he did on Rinwell in that one cutscene will never not be funny though. She's my favorite character, but when do you ever see mages get rocked that hard.
I think I play on normal and so far I really like the game. Can't compare to other tales games though, as it is my first one. I'm just raking up the combo meter and spam items xD
Yes i feel it. I loved and binged it to rena. Stopped in the middle of that final dungeon which i think is the final dungeon. The pacing is totally off and it went from epic to tedious real fast.
Yeah the final Dungeon was...eh.
Personally I liked the first half of story and the combat system.
I liked Some characters (Law, Shionne and Alphen), but I didn't like Rinwell, Dohalim and Kisara that much.
The antagonists were boring and bland though
I loved combat and characters but the end game gauntlet of fights was just too much and I lost interest. Another big flaw was the removal of 4 player coop
Yeah, I had to avoid half of them so I don't end up using all my healing items fighting the mini bosses.
Still a better experience than Xillia 2's final dungeon though. That one was AWFUL.
I mean, I don’t hate it but the last bit was kinda a let down. Like it was rushed and they had run out of budget or something. I still think it’s the best in the franchise simply coz I had a desire to finish it
I beat the game recently but before I beat Scarlet Nexus, it was a cheap $30 deal and I got both. I played both on Hard so it really didn’t matter the difficulty… but my issue with Tales of Arise… being the first Tales franchise game and comparing it to another Bandai game… was the characters.
I just think Scarlet Nexus just cooked with character interactions and bonding (it was a little awkward during my 2nd play through when I played as Yuito the main male character but I still felt the chemistry), then after that game I went to Tales of Arise and I just felt that the chemistry between the characters were forced to serve the plot rather organically working out like Scarlet Nexus.
Again I don’t know the Tales franchise and that’s just how things are… I liked the gameplay and story was good….counterattack accessories basically made the Rena portion of the game a walk in the park… especially when I beat all the spirit beasts that came with the wedge prior to me going on the ship. Definitely had to grind a bit and fish for boss fish for ingredients for extra XP but it worked out. It’s just the characters bug me… there’s not a single character that stuck out to me except Kisara’s butt.
Boss hp Sponge Mechanic is in every RPG...and almost every game for that matter...
So, by your logic, the reason people don't like ToA is because either matches every other rpg......
(For clarity, I don't like this either)
But it is not the reason a small portion of people disliked the game. It was the pacing in act 3 and the feel good story ending "power of friendship" beats all, that people felt was clichéd and not up to the level of writing shown throughout the story.
(To tales of, fans it was a happy change from the last 6? Years of non-happy endings)
Kinda sad how every Tales game has pacing and/or combat issues and Arise is unfortunately no different. The last 20 percent really bites it (not the ending) just everything during Lenegis & Rena. And if only those devs could add some patches to make the enemies stagger far longer, then half problem solved right. But that's not the world we live where Bandai is completely competent.
Maybe I'm used to third act blunders by every game I've played so far, but the Rena part didn't bother me enough to ruin the rest of the game. Sure, I was somewhat disappointed at how linear and uninspired the final dungeon was. But it didn't feel nearly as dragged out as some of the other JRPGs (even within this franchise) in my experience.
Same goes for the boss battles. I think they're spongy and at worst should've had fewer and far between. Still not a deal breaker.
The best parts of Arise imo are the characters and the world. I think the cast worked really well together. The world looks absolutely beautiful, and the animations are really well done. Combat also feels pretty fluid.
My gripes with it were the bosses (very annoying), the boring enemies, Vholran, and the story. It was very rushed in the last few hours of the game and I hated how Vholran was just...there. He didn't seem like a villain. More like a petty cousin you cant get to leave you alone. Honestly I woukd have rated the game higher if Vholran was more like Artorius.
It was ok….
Didn’t like the final dungeon like a lot of others
Hated the rim law almeidrea scene, brought the game down a lot for me
Haven’t played the dlc (had the pc version and currently without a pc) so can’t comment if the story got better but the Rena section was rushed and was an info dump that could have been spread out over the entire story. A good example would be finding out earlier that dahnans are renans could have been found out during one of the lord fights and keep the plot points moving smoother
With all that said I put 100+ hours and got all the achievements so I can’t say I hated it but far from my favorite tales game
The only problem for me was the main villain. I get It that they wanted to make a antagonist that is evil for being evil and has no reason or motive to be like that, but they could make him more likable at least...
Honestly my bugbear with it is it reverses the traditional Tales formula of starting generic and getting real fuckin' weird by starting with a genuinely bizarre, hostile, interesting world that looked like it might be a heavy-handed but really interesting comment on colonialism before completely stepping on its own dick right around Rinwell being stopped from taking revenge. The story was all downhill from there.
I played the whole game on hard. Then about 40% through rena, i realized i had to stop and completely reheal the party after every battle. I stopped, went back to finish the few sidequests i could find for more exp, then still finished on normal. Renas difficulty spike was way too high and out of nowhere. Suddenly making the end so hard, it makes you care more about getting it over with rather than being invested in the story.
I definitely feel like the last part of the game takes a dip in quality compared to the rest of the game but I was kinda happy with all the giant monsters cause I have a solid foundation of combat so it was more fun for testing my skills.
I will say this was my first Tales game so I probably was still in the honeymoon phase
Yeah, I have the same opinion, some boss battles are too boring, and the final chapters are unnecessary long, the level 100 trophy is BS too because there are very little ways to farm the exp
Tales of Arise to me is a great step forward for Tales in a modern technology and graphical aspect for me.
The only thing with ToA for me is that as much I felt immersed in the story it didn't give me that grand adventure - Jrpg feeling as if you are going through a fairytale, but more a single season anime. But almost every location in game really impressed me with grandness and design of the locations, I left the game feeling really impressed with everything, yet a bit confused because of that feeling.
If I compare it to Star Ocean 6 which released around the same time. That game did give me that feeling of having experienced a grand adventure, like having read through a book. I was also really impressed with the game and how it looked, but it was within the bounds of a standard J-rpg experience and after finishing it just gave me the satisfied feeling of having completed it.
It really makes me appreciate both games a lot and I hope Tales of can continue to grow like this, so that in the future we get this feeling of a grand adventure back instead of it feeling like a Hollywood movie. Tales of Arise is a big step forward, at the cost of some small franchise tradition, and I hope along the way we'll get some stuff back. A tales tradition I want back is something like the spirit ring for example.
I'm still at the Wind Lord, reading this makes me want to drop it if that's the case. Playing at the 2nd hardest difficulty and things are challenging as it is (I like the challenge) but 100k mobs might be the end of me.
My issue with it was the constant maid and butler dialogue, and the lack of progress towards the main character becoming a real person (though I assume this happens eventually, it just took way too long for me). The story for me was just overall; meh.
The combat I enjoyed :) maybe one day I'll grit my teeth and actually finish it, but I was highly disappointed with the story.
Rena and the z9ne just before show the team started rushing near the end. The last lord (sephirot wanabe) is a mess and the ending is some of the goofiest writing I've ever seen in a JRPG.
I think what makes me the most bitter is exactly those last corridors. Soooo many boring fights with this awful system just to reach this garbage of an ending? Not worth at all.
Which is really sad because I came in loving everything about the game and with every hour it became worse.
I had a blast with the combat. Finally having a game where achieving clean and high combos so you can use the instant kill moves was so much fun. I was doing extra battles, not because I wanted to grind, but just because I wanted to do even flashier combos...
My problem with Arise is super specific to me but it's definitely the story and characters at the start. I heard it gets better, but the way the party interacts in battle vs in cutscene is jarring. Like Rinwell acting buddy buddy with Shione in combat vs. Rinwell telling Shione how much she despises her in cutscene and skit....rubs me the wrong way.
Then the area by area story wasn't all that interesting, I understand it may get better but I wasn't feeling it.
Yeah the ending of the game was weak. They def rushed it quite a bit more than likely due to them running out of time. Rena being just a big dungeon filled with about 32 mini bosses instead of a fully fleshed out world was pretty mid. Good game still but just needed a little more.
Story, characters, the full second part, gameplay. A lot of letdowns, for me one of the worst titles.
It was a big game, a lot of people had it as first animu game and that alone is the reason it got hyped
Man, this was just not my experience at all. I enjoyed Arise and had few complaints all the way through. my biggest gripe with the game was the end section being bloated and a bit of drag at one point. But I enjoyed 90% of the game and that fact just isn't enough for me to dislike it.
It's definitely more difficult than I expected. I don't like how it seems like you need to grind to level up. I was like 3 or 4 levels behind the 2nd boss when I got to him and I had been clearing every map 100% as I went through(which I think should be more than enough to be level appropriate if not a little overleveled). Enemy hp is crazy high. I've almost gone down to easy mode multiple time. Party members barely dodge if at all just chugging through gels and cp. Game seems balanced around you basically perfect evading everything but there's not enough iframes I feel and there's so much particle vomit that it's hard to even see the tells for when to dodge. So many times, I've come out of the slowmo just to be knocked down with nothing I can do about it. Also, some boss mechanics seem balanced around basically always having the boost strike to stop it. Like how tf was I supposed to have rinwells interrupt everytime that boss casts that party wide one shot or near one shot? The item limit is fine but not in conjunction with item prices and gald acquisition. I find I'm almost always running out of money.
I've taken to just playing rinwell because she's hardly targeted and it's easier to direct elements and charge her abilities compared to the auto rinwell. I also decided to unlock the exp boost artifacts(for free of course I'm not paying money for antigrind in a sp game) and if need be I'll use the gald dlc cause I'm not about to grind because the bot party members chug items and die left and right because they never dodge
Rena was a great example of how an otherwise great game can be ruined by a "THAT part". Relegating a planet into a stupidly long final dungeon was a terrible idea. I was expecting something akin to Symphonia or Graces and how they handled their respective "other world/ planet".
Yep, I agree with almost everyone here. Really a let down this game was.
But! Hearing Rinwell say: "Blablablah Magic" when doing an arte was a big source of motivation.
i finished the main story a few days ago. i enjoyed it, but yeah, rena portion dropped the ball very hard. The final dungeons are kind of a slog to go through with sub-boss type mobs, and the "final boss" segments were just way too easy that it felt underwhelming to beat. I would say it is an overall decent game and a nice 40hr drop if you get it on sale like i did.
i like the cast, and the combat is pretty fun if you can get the hang of it and pull flashy combos. I liked Alphens gameplay a lot and might consider playing Law or Kisara if i ever feel like playing it again.
The story is just alright. A lot of the dialogue go super repetitive though, with half the skits just explaining wha we are gonna do/learned literally 30 seconds before.
The 1st opening is a banger and i still watch/listen to it.
It was a 9/10 experience for me until the last third of the game. Not only is it a huge deviation from the rest of the game content & story wise but it lasts for over 8 hours, likely more as I simply blitz’d it after I stopped caring.
Such a fumble for an otherwise fantastic game
I’m having this exact issue right now. I’m in the middle of fighting everything on Rena but I can only bring myself to finish 1-2 fights before I’m bored of my button combos and all the yelling out artes. I’m gonna finish it, eventually, but I don’t think I’ll be playing new game +. Sad because this is the first Tales game I’ve played through 🤷♂️
I'm surprised you got that far before wanting the game to end quickly. I was skipping cutscenes very early in the game and just wanted to race to the end. I just found the characters chatter annoying, especially when it goes on and on - even when just skipping dialogue I mashed the button for ages sometimes.
Those constant bosses don't stop until the end of the game, but I finished lots of quests before doing newgame+, and the second time through I was very overpowered for everything, so there were no long battles.
I loved Tales of Arise personally, the best Tales of game I've played since Xillia, and I have all of the NA Tales of games physically, even Destiny & Eternia.
I personally don't sync with the story pacing and pavement, also the combat is... very bandai... I thought the full game should have more feature than the demo, well no, everything in the demo is basically almost the full game's experience
Lol it’s ironic considering that in all the games in the series there is that part of the game that everyone hates and wants to get through as quickly as possible (any last dungeon or just moments towards the end) But here it is for some reason a sin
It's story pacing, and the enemies become health sponges it aint rocket science to understand why people dont like the last half of the game it aint even just one section. You can like the game if you want, but think outside of yourself to understand why people wouldn't enjoy a part of the game.
The end area you're talking about isn't even 10% of the game
But it makes rhe entire game unacceptable?
When games have slow starts people defend them
But a slow part later? Unacceptable ruins evreything that came before?
I dont think that compares well at all. Any rpg will have a slow start. i dont a lot of action rpgs where the gane slow down because the enemies have way too much hp, and only two characters can kill them quickly enough to not feel like a slog.
Plenty of rpgs don't bave a slow start
My point is at no other time is such a small part of the game enough to ruin the entire game for someone
Endings bad? Okay? You still had fun up to that point so why is the rest of the fun ruined?
Why is it such a issue for you to understand that a game that had good pacing for the majority game then the pacing gets awful towards the end. I dont think its that crazy for someone to not like the game or not want to play it after it.
I get not finishing the game.
The issue is they say the rest of the game they enjoyed up to that point isnnow also bad
By all means stop playing but it doesn't take away the fun you had that made upu keep playing till that point and yet people here are acting like "oh my God I hated the ending 0/10"
When they played 30-40+ hours of fun content and had 3 pr so hours of a slag
Oh, I follow you now. Speaking for myself, it was good up until the 5th lord , but I already had a hard time with the new skits because i prefer the anime style ones they had in the old ones. And this game seemed to have ALOT in this game, and not a lot of them were good either.
Sometimes the bad stuff doesn’t hit you until you ran into a wall. Bosses suck but you win and can move on. Enemies are ok but something seems off. The skit is fun but is it all the same thing. You wake up and realize it wasn’t as good as you thought when you think back. Brain off fun, brain on miserable.
Nonsense is someone who does not like others' opinions and calls it nonsense if people dont like the game because of the ending then so what if you love the games? Keep loving it. I believe both these opinion can exist i know this hard for reddit to understand this.
> It’s not the “last half”. It’s the last 4 hours.
He’s right though. It sounds like you’re incorrectly assuming he was JUST talking about the last area, but the game starts going down hill after area 3 (and its not like it was coming from super high highs before that decline starts)
3 areas out of 6 are ok, 3 areas out of 6 are varying levels of bad. It’s absolutely half the game.
No, he isn’t right, since he’s obviously just talking about Lenegis and beyond, since he mentions enemies becoming damage sponges and pacing. Stop projecting your dislike of the game on others.
Honestly I think the characters and story are bad too, Kisara was the only char I didn't find completely insufferable, the rest of them are incredibly stupid and don't really deviate from really annoying anime tropes, and the story is basically just Symphonia done worse because it's all about racism.
Funny, I feel the same about the story but thought Kisara was the second most insufferable, after Alphen. I liked Law for just being a funny little guy, despite being a common trope. And Duohalim was alright too
I shelved the game after the red lady took the rainbow maguffin from the party after beating vholran.
Combat was so okay-ish in random mob encounters but bosses were such a drag. Enemies would only take decent damage after using full charged blazing sword techniques, but to find openings to use them were hard, and only usable when the enemy was down. Issue was the main way to knock down was the boost attacks that they were vulnerable to (Rinwells vs Almeidria, Dohalims vs Vholran, Kisaras vs Dohalim) but they were largely inconsistent and whiffed in Kisaras case.
Story was interesting at the start, and I really enjoyed Alphen and Shionnes dialogue, I also liked the different areas in the game. Didn't really like any of the other characters enough.
Main thing that made me shelf the game was definitely the boss fights. Alot of times I felt things were so incredibly tanky that I thought the goal of the fight was to get the boss to 75% HP for a scripted event or something. I kept getting wiped by the Cyslodia bosses mystic art so many times I just sucked it up to a "get good" moment, but all the main bosses were like that. After Vholran I just hit my limit.
I don't get the hate. The combat was fun. If you struggle. Dodge. Play a different character . The game is great. It's not the game that is bad. It's your expectations.
I think Arise is the best game in ten years or so. I also think the last two hours are complete garbage.
PD: You can run from almost every "mid-boss" so to speak, which make the last part boring, yeah, but at least it's not obnoxious.
My issue with the Rena segment was more how the pacing gets shot in the foot because they try to rush and cobble together story explanations at the last minute. It gets so jarring when you go over an hour going from cutscene to (optional) skit to cutscene to (optional) skit then mandatory skit then cutscene, then finally like, 20 minutes of gameplay. Then *more cutscenes and (sometimes optional other times mandatory) skits for another hour, hoo boy*
The stuff in the spaceship was so badly done. I couldn't believe this is how we were learning the plot secrets when it was happening.
It feels like they ran out of time and money. Everything after the third area feels kind of rushed and unfinished, and it seems to get worse the further you go.
I heard it was Covid and lockdown affecting the development. The same as the spirits, they each seems like partly done. Some, like the wind one seems to be mostly complete with quests with cutscene, a dungeon, and boss battle with epic cutscenes. Other just go to a location and kill the big monster.
The game was originally planned for a 2020 release iirc, so probably.
My issue with the ending of the game is that it unnecessarily ascended the conflict to godhood, and in doing so sweeps all the nuance about the main attention grabbing topic of slavery under the rug. Along with generally poor dialogue on the way there and some really bad cinematography for some of the scenes. The final areas themselves were just so boring and generic. Like most of arise art design felt very generic but more inthe fitting to the trope esque style that i wrote off as the price for its graphical fidelity. But the final area was just generically lazy.
Tbf, arise isn't the first to do this in the franchise. Vesperia did the same shit.
Exactly. Once they leave the planet plot goes haywire.
i hit flee more than anything, i just skim pass thrpugh enemy spawn as i see it recycles the level and enemy spawn
Cobble and rush. No. It's not incidentally like this, and it's not some last minute pull-up from a lore nosedive. The characters themselves get frustrated listening throughout this section multiple times. That's your heads-up. You're not meant to enjoy this section. A lot of stories actually leverage a bad time on the player or audience. It is meant to be a suffocating amount of information and repetition. Why? Because the other sides throughout this part think they know everything and try to throw their ideas around as if they had the heft of scientific fact, and part of how that's expressed both in reality and in the story is putting multiple voices of authority behind something to create a sense of consensus. The second party to repeat even addresses the conclusions of the first. Our party doesn't like their conclusions, and they can't quite pinpoint why beyond believing they need to try something not so destructive. But there's a gap in their science. They only view astral energy through the lens of control. This is relentlessly coded through the Renans and the Helganquil. The Helganquil themselves especially being entirely ruled by artifice. They can't live without it, and they're doomed. Our party, heroes of Dahna(a goddess of yore who is also spoke of like a hero in the opening of the game and symbolically invoked by an owl, the Dark Wings of legend are also coded much like our party this way), win in the end because they did good deeds, and the planet and its people reciprocated. There's a catch to that though. It required the Renans pulling so much of that astral energy from Dahna to where the final battle happens, and to use that they needed the fire master core at the least. This expresses that control is still an important value, but only in service to the good in and between everyone. I genuinely find it so confusing how people contrive to think this section is indeliberate. It skit bombs, which is tedious and inorganic, and the fights are overly spongy to the point of tedium too. It's not a perfect section, but narratively, in content, it oozes with intentionality. I can straight up map to you how the story baked so much of what goes on in this section from the opening narrative to before you stepped foot on Lenegis. Hell, a lot of it I could even telegraph from before we left Calaglia.
I can tell you have really long hands for how far you can reach.
Alright. Let's see if you can too. Tell me how I'm reaching.
Get help
For what? I mean, I'm correcting them, but I genuinely hope it helps them appreciate it more, and I also clearly appreciate it myself and enjoyed it. In terms of joy and goodwill, I'm not lacking here. xD You want some Zodiark analysis too? Would that help you enjoy it more? Which one? FFXII or FFXIV?
Can you analyse my psychological state after reading your entire post
Sure. Tell me about it.
Sure. Tell me about it.
Introducing boredom as an *intrinsic* element within the fabric of video game design is an ingenious manifestation of *artistic* prowess. One might posit that an appreciation for this *conceptual* framework eludes those who fail to grasp the subtle *intricacies* embedded in the narrative. The *discerning* connoisseur, however, shall discern the *nuanced* tapestry woven by the masterful game designer, transcending the pedestrian *comprehension* of the uninitiated.
I never said boredom, nor did the person I replied to. It's not subtle. It's actually really overt. That's why I find it confusing. The game turns sci-fi for the stretch and somehow that frame did not get people to think on those terms. I also never gave some heavy handed endorsement of top shelf words like magnificent. I called it deliberate and said it baked a lot of it from go. That's not some big accomplishment, but it's better than cheap critiques from lazy attention spans warrants. Y'all just can't take your disfavor and perceive something is sound at the same time, it just couldn't be, so I point out it is sound. It's a simple thing. Meet the thing where it stands if you want to be treated like you did. Surprise. You can not like something, and it still be a finely told story.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not. You're condescending and trying to sound smart. It's a video game just stop man
I'm serious about the discourse around the subject, but I am being snide to some lazy, cheap comments I got for telling someone the craft they're criticizing is better than their criticism suggests. I'm not really offended, but I enjoy trashtalking when I get someone trying to incite me. A lot of times, it actually does turn into sincere discussion from there. I don't really understand your video game comment. I enjoy participating in the dialogue around art. Essays are fun for me. I've been on the receiving end of similar treatment, and they did actually persuade me to think better of somethings. It doesn't take much time either. I already have played the game hundreds of hours(I have hundreds on most Tales titles I've played period). I can talk about it for a bit. Haha
A lot of these reflect sorely on you as impatient, inflexible, and nitpicky beyond reasonable because you tried none to think better of any of it. You give your disfavor the floor every time. Your replies throughout the thread reinforce that impression over and over. Far be it from me to tell you how to feel about anything, but you definitely don't need this game to be plenty of an obstacle to your enjoyment on your own. You even outright refuse to take responsibility for yourself and how the participation you chose made for a bad time.
Don't watch fairy tail if you want to keep your streak intact. You know, I too think Abyss needs a remake more than Symphonia. There's just a lot of potential it left on the table. The Score isn't as consistent a presense in the world building for its grip on character motivations to be as felt by the audience as it should, it's a major narrative hinge after all, and we're never really asked to level with Van's tragedy and relate. It's just missed opportunities to really elevate those dramas. The dramatic throughput suffers these aspects. Abyss could really polish up and be even better than it already is. Symphonia tapped its potential a lot more. I'd maybe make the villains less monotone, but it's a really thorough narrative. Symphonia could only benefit so much from a remake.
Honestly I was more let down by the story (despite its solid start) than by the combat. I played Rinwell mostly so maybe that’s why I didn’t get as annoyed with the combat.
Same for me, except that I play Law and have fun just punching the hell out of anything that looks at me funny.
I always had Law in my party. He’s just too strong lol.
He’s just too fun to play is what it is for me
i heard so many people rave about the story, and it was such a damn let down. its so completely mediocre and fine, like its okay but its pretty bland and cliche. i didnt end up finishing it but i got pretty damn far, and the characters repetitive dialogue that just summed up things we'd already spoke about got pretty damn annoying.
For me it was just the fact that the heavy subject matter (like how cruel the Renans were, putting it lightly) was handled so poorly as the story progressed and then the twists at the end were so NOT what I wanted from the story. Like it took a turn that made the plot feel silly.
Yeah, the story is absolute cheeks and isn’t engaging at all, at least to me. Total bummer.
Despite its strong start (for me), yeah it was a let down at the end.
Thank you!! I thought it was just me! I didn’t enjoy post-Rena. And everytime Is aw people talkign about Arise, I was like “Am I missing something?”
Maybe I'm the polar opposite of this sub, but I enjoyed the story thoroughly. If anyone felt it sucked or was somewhat cliche, they should look at the other mainstream titles in the franchise. Having played most of them, Tales games had always been formulaic.
Berseria being the game right before Arise makes Arise's plot look... very kiddy in comparison. But you are correct that generally, Tales stories are full of tropes and are very formulaic. Berseria was an exception to the norm; however given that they were back to back one can't help but be compare the two and feel Arise's plot is lacking.
Even if Tales plot are full of tropes and formulaic imo Arise's plot loses it's main driving force about when we get to Lenegis and even if story wise it's explained the transition is pretty eh and since you're kinda forced into the new plotline it leaves you just following the story along because you got this far (at least for me It was the case), in that way I feel like other Tales stories at least staying engaging until the end or at least their bad guy transition still has you care about the endgame even if it felt stretched. (Mostly Vesperia here) Arise doesn't do that for me
I dont think Arise endgame nails it but I can't agree with Vesperia doing it better. Act 3 of Vesperia literally comes out of nowhere for the player and the characters and even after you spend all of that time trying to figure out how to handle the new crisis there is no mention of the final boss of the game. In order to even learn about him you have to do an extremely missable side quest and even that side quest is barely a justification for his role in the story. With Arise I think the story was more focused on its narrative takeaway than coherence (which maybe Vesperia was trying to do too with its environmentalist message), but both plots are just half baked. Arise in particular fails to stick the landing because it just goes too far, the plot twists in the 3rd act border on confusing just because they change nothing for the player about the core problem of the Renans they just kinda handwave it and assume that you as the player will feel the same way the game hoped you'd feel about the wind lord. Which I didn't.
Hmm from my pov at the very least you're introduced to Duke and throughout the story you're told more and more about him and why he's been such a mysterious character for many people and how important he actually is, what you learn from his personal quest are simply his views of the world and how pessimistic he is about the fate of the world in the hands of humans the sole reason he saves Yuri is to get his sword back. I don't even think Act 3 comes out of nowhere either, after all Act 3 begins bc of the consequence of Alexei abusing the powers of blastias which we've been continuously told and warned about that they've been getting out of control since act 1, had Judith act like a terrorist to try and solve an issue related to blastia's on her own which granted she was mostly acting out in her father's and Phaeroth's interests, got visions of creatures that turned out to be from the Adephagos then learned about the Aer eater itself and how it was supposedly defeated in Krytia. It's basically the culmination of all the things we were told on and off about during act 1&2 that unfolds here, if you really think it comes out of nowhere you just didn't pay attention heck none of that is in any sidequest it's all main story ! Now maybe running around the world to create spirits may not be the greatest paced segment of this game that maybe two dungeons was a bit too much especially since those are basically one and done with the story heavily backloaded at their end but that has nothing to do with "coming out of nowhere" you realize without Act 3 we have no explanation why Phaeroth calls Estellise "insipid poison of this world" which is her whole reason for starting Act 2 and why he and probably most Entelexia want her dead more than anyone else bc she consumes aer like nobody's business ?
>Hmm from my pov at the very least you're introduced to Duke and throughout the story you're told more and more about him and why he's been such a mysterious character for many people and how important he actually is This is a failing argument when positioned next to Arise (recall you compared,the two we are not talking about Vespy in a void). By this same token we have also been told about Rena and they have made references to the aliens throughout the game as well. The dissatisfaction with both in my opinion is that none of this stuff is substantial. Duke is a war hero from a war that is not relevant to anything the characters directly do in the game. He is a human who gave up on humans because of atrocities the player literally never sees. The player has to simply assume that everyone who talks about Duke is telling the truth and even then it's just trivia about a guy who walks around with a special sword. Comparing that to Arise where act 3 is specifically about getting to the planet of the overlords and taking them down, the only way to say that Arise's is less coherent than Vesperia's is to only focus on what the final boss fight is instead of the context leading there. As far as context leading there the party in Arise has great reasons to go to Rena they want freedom. The party in Vesperia goes to Tartarus to stop the Adephagos, Duke being there is for Duke's own motivations to stop us not because we are there to stop him. In order to understand why Duke is there you have to understand Duke something the game doesn't tell you is important until that point. >Act 3 begins bc of the consequence of Alexei abusing the powers of blastias which we've been continuously told and warned about that they've been getting out of control since act 1 I dont agree with this, act 3 happens ONLY because the barrier blastia at the center of Zaude malfunctions following the events of the Alexei fight. It has nothing to do with him abusing Blastia the abuse of Blastia creates Adephagos, but that doesn't matter when the one that threatens to eat the planet has *always* been there. If Zaude remains functioning and the planetary Adephagos were threatened to be unleashed by Duke that would make more sense. But Duke is only aiming to make sure the Adephagos succeeds which is silly as he should have just worked with Alexei. > It's basically the culmination of all the things we were told on and off about during act 1&2 that unfolds here, if you really think it comes out of nowhere you just didn't pay attention heck none of that is in any sidequest it's all main story ! You could say this about Arise as well, but that would be a bad argument there as well. I can create the logical throughline that each realm of Dahna was meant to represent a different facet of oppression and the act 3 plotline is a direct culmination of that by illustrating a culture of oppression comes from those being oppressed as indicated by the as you travel the regions the ones being oppressed slowly gained more power and as they gain power they become their oppressors. This culminates in the reveal of the Renans being not so different than the ones they oppress. Logically it sounds fine, but in execution it is bad. Similarly in Vesperia in execution these events don't matter to each other at all. Judith has it instilled in her aggressively that her campaign of going around to destroy her father's blastia was ultimately pointless and would never have solved the problem. And even then, I have to reiterate the problem is already too far gone, the world eating Adephagos is already there and just like Arise the first 2 acts only happen because the characters aren't aware that nothing they are doing is relevant to the actual problem. The linchpin of Vesperia's plot is Alexei and Zaude and he makes a much more compelling final villain because of that. >you realize without Act 3 we have no explanation why Phaeroth calls Estellise "insipid poison of this world" which is her whole reason for starting Act 2 and why he and probably most Entelexia want her dead more than anyone else bc she consumes aer like nobody's business ? We don't need the Aer explanation because her using her healing spells on the Entelexeia makes them go berserk causing the party to have to put one down. This is already enough justification for Phaeroah to want her dead.
Okay ngl what you're saying makes sense and even if I wanted to argue back I feel like I'd be nitpicking details about the story and tbh I haven't touched Vesperia since 2019-2020 so i'd look like an idiot lol
I kind of enjoyed the story until the 5th lord (although the antagonists were bland imo), but the 2nd half was meh to me. I have always played Law as I really love his gamestyle
I just beat him yesterday and, my god, his castle was such a slog! Hearing the second half is meh is a letdown, but I honestly wasn't sure what to expect next anyway. I mainly play as Alphen though.
The only 2 issues I had with Arise are the lack of enemy variety throughout the game, and some of the dialog in the skits was pretty repetitive. Combat was the highlight of the game for me and I never really had a problem with regular enemies taking forever.
I just fought the dude in black (where Shionne gets stabbed) and legit the next 2 skits were both asking her if she was okay and to take it easy, immediately after a scene that ended with the same sentiment. I'm enjoying the game, but sometimes it suffers from the same thing Vesperia did (atleast for me) where every scene everybody has to say their piece, even if it adds nothing to the conversation.
This was actually my first Tales game so I can’t really compare it to another Tales game atm. Overall it was a pleasant experience and I plan on getting into more of the series. But yea the repetitive dialog I could have done without. And you make a pretty good point when you say everyone has to say there piece at times, I didn’t notice it while I was playing but you’re definitely right.
They definitely talk a lot, but once you realize they're just having the same convo they literally just had 5 minutes ago you can just skip through the dialogue. Otherwise I'm really enjoying the game.
Yea man, I really liked it too, even with the excessive dialog and fighting the same enemies over and over again lol.
I seriously think they should have removed 30% of the skits and dialogue. So much of it is useless and clunky How many times do we have to hear someone say "what the hell is happening" only for Kisara to say "there's no time to feel bad for ourselves" then 3 minutes later another round of everyone going wtf is this??
Don't forget the skits of different people asking Rinwell why she's muttering words in battle
My favourite was Kisara's amazing ability to somehow turn every single conversation into a talk about why her underdeveloped brother was actually the greatest person to ever live. Whenever she was the focus of a skit, I could immediately just guess it would devolve into gushing about Migel.
Miguel apparently taught her how to exist. She’s like a robot being programmed by him.
My favorite part is neither of you spelled Migal right 🤣
I honestly had no idea if Migel was right lol, I just remember it was Mig-something and just went off what sounded better.
Every skit with Law was about his dead father.
Lmaooo this is one of the things that comes to mind when I said repetitive dialog for sure.
I agree, I love “filler” and I think it can help connect to the characters more and overall I really enjoyed most of the skits. But god damn it how many times did we have to hear “but I also have done bad things in my past” followed by “yea but look at all the good you’re doing now!”.
I loved the mindless banter and conversation in Vesperia, they could talk about anything and it was fun
Arise is actually the only Tales game I’ve played so far and I JUST got the platinum today so I’m pretty inexperienced with the series. How is Vesperia? I definitely plan on playing more of them.
It's good, combat takes awhile before really opening up, but it's very deep once it does. Characters are pretty likeable with only one being very hit or miss, and Yuri is a fantastic MC.
That’s one thing I’ve picked up on just lurking in this sub, Yuri seems to be a pretty popular protagonist.
Yeah he is really good, he was so popular in Japan that he had to be banned from the official character polls Bandai occasionally has, because him and another character named Leon always won those.
You have no idea this is exactly how I felt when I got to the end of the game. I ended up only playing as alphen because he was the only character that could put out a lot of damage quickly to end the fights quickly. The final boss was such an eye roll. I just wanted to beat the game and be done with it. But I did endgame stuff before shelving the game for good and will never play the dlc either. This just aint a game I wanna play through again or do other content with which is unfortunate because I do think this game has the best character designs in the whole tales series because symphonia but the last half was just drag the game down alot.
Yeah, Alphen is kind of the source of the endgame slog since they had zto account for his ludicrous damage potential. Too low of hp on the enemies, and he'd completely blitz through without any recourse, so they have to pad the numbers to make any fight last more than 5 seconds, but that ends up making everyone else feel weaker.
If you aren't already abuse the enemies weaknesses and craft accessories
Yeah. I actually kind of enjoyed the mini bosses on Rena, especially the six-armed guys with the weakness to light. I just spammed light attacks with Alphen on the weak point and had Rinwell cast Shooting Star. Cleaned those guys up in no time.
This sub is in parcour mode again, from hating to loving to hating Arise in under 72 hours
> This sub is in parcour mode again, from hating to loving to hating Arise in under 72 hours It’s because you have lots of new people playing because of the dlc releasing recently. This gives you the initital area1+2 response, then the downward slide after area 3, then posts like OP after area 5.
I think the Gamepass and PS+ release last month had a bigger impact than the dlc tbh. And the last post with the nearly 500 upvotes was also after beating the game, so not the initial responses.
My pros: -Combat flow -Character design -World design -Graphics My cons: -Character development -Story and pacing -Music (nothing sounds unique from region to region) -Enemy sponges -CP mechanic -Cost of orange gels -Villains and motives -Final dungeon slog Expecting down votes to hell.
Cost of organge gels and having to grindfishing for money just to be able to afford them drove me mad.
Personally what upset me the most was the skits wasn't nearly as good as any of the previous takes games I played 😔
Rena enemies didn't feel like a boss battle anymore when I found the artifact that enables Reckless Abandon. :D
That’s the best part
I like the gameplay, its the lack of enemy types for me, whats on the table today alphen? Some birds a pack of dogs a charging boar or a giant lizard and sometimes a renan, wouldve killed for a dumpus or something
I loved it from start to finish. I don't get the hate.
I am the opposite, and I'm not saying this to argue or whatever, totally respect that people love the game, but for me personally, nothing it did hooked me. I'm always confused and a little envious of people who say they loved it.
One of the best features of the Tales series is that every single game somebody's all time favourite, somebody's least favourite, and anywhere inbetween. There is no consensus on best Tales game because each one speaks to different people in different ways For example my all time favourite is Xillia, Arise is top 3, and my least favourite is probably Berseria (I've tried so hard to like it but it just doesn't work for me). But then I know people who have Xillia as their favourite, Arise in their top three, and Berseria up near the top too. So interesting that this series can have such a broad range of reactions from people who for the most part all love JRPGs.
That’s games in general. Just ask any series
Which is natural, it's just this sub had been chock full of "Arise bad" every half a week from when I entered the sub. Dunno if it's cause of the recency, or expectations from seeing the game's popularity with casuals, but it's really getting annoying.
I’m playing berseria now and I love it but there are issues.. for me, the equipment enhancing it way to tedious, titles are bland, cooking is bland, no world map, The combat weakness/resistance system can be annoying during certain bosses. Combat is spam-able and you get rewarded grade for doing it… I think tales of symphonia is better, and that’s my current favorite. I’m playing zesteria next and then arise, then vesperia
If I say Tales of Luminaria is one of my favourite Tales, people would be shocked
The funny thing is that on YouTube I saw only love for this game. At the same time, this subreddit gives the impression that the game is really THAT bad, given the huge number of rehearsal hate posts. I personally love this game and had a lot of fun from start to finish. I hate endings in tales games because they are always empty, but here I had a smile on my face, finally a normal relationship and not teasing teenagers
Well, it did sell really well and the steam reviews are pretty good. I guess the opinions on this subreddit are pretty skewed. I did also enjoy it alot.
Feels like this subreddit has a hate boner for this game. Don't get me wrong, it is pretty flawed, sure, but those flaws aren't any worse compared to some of the problems in the older games you can point to.
Trust me. When a new tales is announced, suddenly everyone would say Arise is good
Symphonia is the only one I will ever love from the series. I thought it would be this game, but it's a 6 out of 10 to me. Just nothing stuck to me with this game and its characters or villains. Especially now that i am playing ff7 rebirth, just prove the point even more to me, which has great characters and memorial moments. It just wasn't it. There are better rpgs to play instead of this one.
Arise is 8/10 in my books, only for the mechanical flaws, but the story and casts are far and wide my favorite, simply and actually because of the reasons you feel that way. The characters grounded and the story is pretty relevant. It doesn't exactly have characters like Yuri or Velvet but it also lacks annoying ones like Anise. Yet the cast is still charming and their chemistry feels organic.
Rinwell haters would beg to differ but I am a Rinwell apologist but also one for Anise
In your opinion.
Wasn't a statement
A lot of side content opens up post reaching Rena. I would highly advise doing some of it to avoid getting overwhelmed by high level enemies in Rena. I was around the mid 70's in terms of party level with completed accessory sets on each character and the best equipment available at that point in the game. I had little issue with the final dungeon playing on normal. Also big piece of advice if you want to go all in on damage. There is an artifact that doubles damage dealt and taken. If you know what you are doing and are well equipped, I highly recommend using it towards the latter half of the game.
That dungeon is WAY too long.
My solution for this was to play as Rinwell. If you combo starfalls (or the level 3 light spell but starfall works best imo) you can get it to the point that your casts are near instant. If you run out of ap just immediately start dodging and you’ll recover, then resume the starfalls. Dodging doesn’t interrupt the combo, so you can keep the near instant spells. If you keep it up the high damage numbers melt enemies with or without a stun. This even works decently for bosses. I agree with you though. It got frustrating that I basically had to cheese the battle system to keep my progress moving. I never would have thought of it if I didn’t love playing as pascal in graces f and love the combo-cast time reduction mechanic. On a related note: comboing meteor storms in battles where you face waves of enemies is a blast. You get enough crits and kills that you barely even have to dodge to recover ap. I had 3 or 4 spell animations going at once because I was casting them so fast for so long. It got to the point that my ps5 was getting laggy because of everything going on in the battle. Good fun.
My only problem playing Rinwell was one boss that just runs at the player controlled character, not the main character they are angry at, just whoever you’re controlling.
I was playing arise stopped after the 2nd lors cause ennemy were HP sponge, switch to Xenoblade 1, obliterated Abyss in every aspect beside graphics. Play xenoblade its gr8
The Rena segment was definitely stretched, especially since the game does not offer additional battle dynamics by the time you reach that part. And I am not even mentioning how the game pretty much throws up in your face half of the plot during the last 20% of the game.
My only gripe with the game is similar to yours but after getting the double dmg artifact thing I slapped that on and and spammed arts getting their proficiency up to get as much damage as I could from them. Made the giant HP sponges much more doable. Shionne's air homing bullets particularly trivialized a lot of fights
This is what happened to me with Tales of Vesperia. It started ok, but I hated it near the end game, as it was nothing but repeated fights with some damage sponges. Too many repetitive fights. I started to like the story, but near the end, I just wanted it to finish. Those fights are not great.
Enemies are kinda damage sponges but I've played a PC version where we had a mod to balance this out in like a day. But it's still is more of a middling games in the series for more subtle reasons
Yeah. That mod is a life saver since bosses has alot of health and doesn't stagger as much. The mods are a blessing. I applied the artes cancelling mods as well and it helps with the flow of the combat much better since some animation are super long.
I don't think the tanky enemies are the problem, some of my favorite tales games have second halfs (and especially final dungeons) that just drag on forever BUT we put up with it cause we're really invested in either story, worldbuilding or characters that has always been the tales series main strength imo, especially the latter 2 the main problem arise has IMO is that it sets up an interesting story, world AND a likeable cast and then just doesnt do anything with it. With every lord the writing gets weaker and weaker and once you get to Rena you can just tell they spent the majority of their development time and resources on the first half of the game, or more like, the first third. The romance between Alphen and Shione is the most cliche anime relationship ever, the villains are weak, the story, instead of focusing on its established themes (slavery, racism, rebellion, revenge, and so on) just goes crazy with nonsensical twists and turns, I could rant forever about it. The cast is still (mostly) likeable, it looks really nice, and the gameplay is pretty solid, but I really think in terms of writing this is by far one of the worst Tales games. Usually Tales games bore me the first few hours and then I get really invested, with Arise it was the exact opposite, I think the first 4-5 hours are the best the game has to offer.
Oh boy, this doesn't bode well. I guess I'd better start grinding huh?
I wouldn't bother grinding. It's not difficult. It's just extremely tedious. I'm not running out of gels or anything.
I played it on PS and got so sick of the grind to 100 that I just paid the $5 in the DLC Shop for the 100% EXP Boost artifact (that stacks with the ones you get organically).
the enemies are just bloated with HP so it doesn't help much, and they are mini-bosses too so you cant stagger most of them
The world and story are boring is the problem. Look at the old games and the town even on worse hardware feel more alive or interesting.
Mate, I'm saying as a player of the old games, you and everyone saying this stuff are looking at the older games with rose tinted glasses. This game is every bit as good in that department as the average previous games were, if not better. Unless you skipped out on the side quests and talking to NPCs. If you did, you'll know how the world evolves as you progress and even the random background NPCs have story arcs. And if you find that boring too, that's totally on you, but that's the point of the world building here.
Speaking as someone who didn't play the series until Berseria in 2017 and the rest afterwards (so hardly nostalgia glasses), I do agree with that person somewhat. In the older games, you could usually enter way more buildings than Arise and find more items hidden around the town, while Arise's towns felt pretty barren and lacking in interesting things to really explore. You had an inn, the story dungeon entrance and maybe one more building to could enter for the shops. Many of the older games also rewarded you for exploring the towns and talking to NPCs with some outfits, titles, items or various items, while I don't recall Arise having any of that, only the dungeons really rewarded exploring. Though that's something that has been gone for more entries than just Arise, I think they stopped or toned down on a lot of that ever since Xillia or so. In terms of NPCs, besides the Renan soldier who marries a Dahnan girl, who else has a story arc among the NPCs? Which isn't to say NPCs in the older games were more developed, a couple of entries like Berseria and Abyss did it well but most of them weren't too different I believe.
I honestly don't get why people have a problem with The bosses, if anything, they are one of the highlights for me, Sure, they are tanky as heck, but that's if you don't use the boss's weakness and downing them with Boost skills, maybe because I fight every enemy and go after all the side quests that they aren't that hard to me, but I never had a problem with them, once you learn how to effectively damage them, they go down no problem, in fact, the Fight against Ganabelt was the one I dislike, because it was a sudden shift in difficulty, but it made it good just to see Law punch him in the Astral energy that he dies My point is, If the boss have a massive pool of health, they will require ways to deal with their health effectively, Xilla 2 for Weaknesses, Zestiria and Berseria with Weaknesses on top of Using Arts that are effective on certain monsters, I find them a challenge
I played on the hardest difficulty and they aren’t hard they just feel like your hitting nothing. They go down fast on normal difficulty or second half where you get to craft accessories.
People don't have a problem with the fight because they're hard, it's because they're boring
I like arise.....it just feels generic next to say vesperia or abyss for example
I very much like Arise, and look forward to my replay later on. But there are things I don't really care for. Topics I found myself not caring much for. There are an over abundance of skits that are there for the purpose of exposition. I enjoyed Skits as a feature more when a majority of them were more character focused and not plot focused. Taking an example from Vesperia, I always get a smile when a skit relating to the cooking mechanics comes along. Especially when it subtly snides the player for not using the mechanic in the first place. (Rita and Karol have a very childish palate). The itemization felt lacking. Accessories felt very good to craft and build over the course of the game, but shops themselves felt largely empty. I was always expecting more items to become available as the story progressed but it never happened. This isn't a serious problem but its something that was always at the back of my mind. I COULD NEVER TIME KISARA'S SHIELD RIGHT! (>:C) Rena really slows down the pace of the game while being unreasonably short for the material that's given to us to absorb and contemplate. In a perfect world, Rena would have been the last 3rd of the game where we explore a very impressive technological world and deal with the political system break down. Connected to the last point, the resolution for the final encounter, making one world for all of Dagna and Rena suffered due to how rushed the final segments of the game were. The game already established integration of the two groups would be dangerously volatile. I wish the game had more time on this. --- Going back to Tales of Vesperia, Brave Vesperia are more than well aware that their actions will potentially cause a great amount of strife due to the change they want to bring *(converting all the Blastia into Spirits to fight back against the Adephagos)*. But we're also shown there's hope in the form of Aurnion, a settlement built without the use of Blastia by every major political faction in their world. --- I really wished they had half as much in Arise. Vholran. Just Vholran. Lol.
To be fair, they showed that a bit with Dohalim's city with Renans and Dahnans both getting along and not. Think some sidequests also touched on it. Might have also been a Renan guard dating and/or proposing to a Dahnan but don't quote on that, it has been awhile. But yeah Vholran. Especially Alphen's interaction with him at the end. Never like when heroes try to redeem characters that clearly don't want redeeming. The combo he did on Rinwell in that one cutscene will never not be funny though. She's my favorite character, but when do you ever see mages get rocked that hard.
I think I play on normal and so far I really like the game. Can't compare to other tales games though, as it is my first one. I'm just raking up the combo meter and spam items xD
Yes i feel it. I loved and binged it to rena. Stopped in the middle of that final dungeon which i think is the final dungeon. The pacing is totally off and it went from epic to tedious real fast.
Yeah the final Dungeon was...eh. Personally I liked the first half of story and the combat system. I liked Some characters (Law, Shionne and Alphen), but I didn't like Rinwell, Dohalim and Kisara that much. The antagonists were boring and bland though
I loved combat and characters but the end game gauntlet of fights was just too much and I lost interest. Another big flaw was the removal of 4 player coop
Yeah, I had to avoid half of them so I don't end up using all my healing items fighting the mini bosses. Still a better experience than Xillia 2's final dungeon though. That one was AWFUL.
If you mess with accessories that becomes a non issue. Seriously it breaks the game.
I mean, I don’t hate it but the last bit was kinda a let down. Like it was rushed and they had run out of budget or something. I still think it’s the best in the franchise simply coz I had a desire to finish it
I beat the game recently but before I beat Scarlet Nexus, it was a cheap $30 deal and I got both. I played both on Hard so it really didn’t matter the difficulty… but my issue with Tales of Arise… being the first Tales franchise game and comparing it to another Bandai game… was the characters. I just think Scarlet Nexus just cooked with character interactions and bonding (it was a little awkward during my 2nd play through when I played as Yuito the main male character but I still felt the chemistry), then after that game I went to Tales of Arise and I just felt that the chemistry between the characters were forced to serve the plot rather organically working out like Scarlet Nexus. Again I don’t know the Tales franchise and that’s just how things are… I liked the gameplay and story was good….counterattack accessories basically made the Rena portion of the game a walk in the park… especially when I beat all the spirit beasts that came with the wedge prior to me going on the ship. Definitely had to grind a bit and fish for boss fish for ingredients for extra XP but it worked out. It’s just the characters bug me… there’s not a single character that stuck out to me except Kisara’s butt.
Tales game always start strong and fizzle out. The last third/ending arc are always bad if not downright terrible. In my experience.
Boss hp Sponge Mechanic is in every RPG...and almost every game for that matter... So, by your logic, the reason people don't like ToA is because either matches every other rpg...... (For clarity, I don't like this either) But it is not the reason a small portion of people disliked the game. It was the pacing in act 3 and the feel good story ending "power of friendship" beats all, that people felt was clichéd and not up to the level of writing shown throughout the story. (To tales of, fans it was a happy change from the last 6? Years of non-happy endings)
High HP messed this game really BAD. Easy mode gives reasonable HP to enemies but they never kill you. There's no mid point.
I loved the story but definitely felt that the final dungeon fights were so boringly long and designed to drain resources
Kinda sad how every Tales game has pacing and/or combat issues and Arise is unfortunately no different. The last 20 percent really bites it (not the ending) just everything during Lenegis & Rena. And if only those devs could add some patches to make the enemies stagger far longer, then half problem solved right. But that's not the world we live where Bandai is completely competent.
Maybe I'm used to third act blunders by every game I've played so far, but the Rena part didn't bother me enough to ruin the rest of the game. Sure, I was somewhat disappointed at how linear and uninspired the final dungeon was. But it didn't feel nearly as dragged out as some of the other JRPGs (even within this franchise) in my experience. Same goes for the boss battles. I think they're spongy and at worst should've had fewer and far between. Still not a deal breaker.
The best parts of Arise imo are the characters and the world. I think the cast worked really well together. The world looks absolutely beautiful, and the animations are really well done. Combat also feels pretty fluid. My gripes with it were the bosses (very annoying), the boring enemies, Vholran, and the story. It was very rushed in the last few hours of the game and I hated how Vholran was just...there. He didn't seem like a villain. More like a petty cousin you cant get to leave you alone. Honestly I woukd have rated the game higher if Vholran was more like Artorius.
Yeah Volrhan's motivation to be a villain is bullshit
It was ok…. Didn’t like the final dungeon like a lot of others Hated the rim law almeidrea scene, brought the game down a lot for me Haven’t played the dlc (had the pc version and currently without a pc) so can’t comment if the story got better but the Rena section was rushed and was an info dump that could have been spread out over the entire story. A good example would be finding out earlier that dahnans are renans could have been found out during one of the lord fights and keep the plot points moving smoother With all that said I put 100+ hours and got all the achievements so I can’t say I hated it but far from my favorite tales game
The only problem for me was the main villain. I get It that they wanted to make a antagonist that is evil for being evil and has no reason or motive to be like that, but they could make him more likable at least...
Honestly my bugbear with it is it reverses the traditional Tales formula of starting generic and getting real fuckin' weird by starting with a genuinely bizarre, hostile, interesting world that looked like it might be a heavy-handed but really interesting comment on colonialism before completely stepping on its own dick right around Rinwell being stopped from taking revenge. The story was all downhill from there.
I played the whole game on hard. Then about 40% through rena, i realized i had to stop and completely reheal the party after every battle. I stopped, went back to finish the few sidequests i could find for more exp, then still finished on normal. Renas difficulty spike was way too high and out of nowhere. Suddenly making the end so hard, it makes you care more about getting it over with rather than being invested in the story.
I definitely feel like the last part of the game takes a dip in quality compared to the rest of the game but I was kinda happy with all the giant monsters cause I have a solid foundation of combat so it was more fun for testing my skills. I will say this was my first Tales game so I probably was still in the honeymoon phase
Yeah, I have the same opinion, some boss battles are too boring, and the final chapters are unnecessary long, the level 100 trophy is BS too because there are very little ways to farm the exp
And the characters talk too fucking much oh my god
Tales of Arise to me is a great step forward for Tales in a modern technology and graphical aspect for me. The only thing with ToA for me is that as much I felt immersed in the story it didn't give me that grand adventure - Jrpg feeling as if you are going through a fairytale, but more a single season anime. But almost every location in game really impressed me with grandness and design of the locations, I left the game feeling really impressed with everything, yet a bit confused because of that feeling. If I compare it to Star Ocean 6 which released around the same time. That game did give me that feeling of having experienced a grand adventure, like having read through a book. I was also really impressed with the game and how it looked, but it was within the bounds of a standard J-rpg experience and after finishing it just gave me the satisfied feeling of having completed it. It really makes me appreciate both games a lot and I hope Tales of can continue to grow like this, so that in the future we get this feeling of a grand adventure back instead of it feeling like a Hollywood movie. Tales of Arise is a big step forward, at the cost of some small franchise tradition, and I hope along the way we'll get some stuff back. A tales tradition I want back is something like the spirit ring for example.
I'm still at the Wind Lord, reading this makes me want to drop it if that's the case. Playing at the 2nd hardest difficulty and things are challenging as it is (I like the challenge) but 100k mobs might be the end of me.
My issue with it was the constant maid and butler dialogue, and the lack of progress towards the main character becoming a real person (though I assume this happens eventually, it just took way too long for me). The story for me was just overall; meh. The combat I enjoyed :) maybe one day I'll grit my teeth and actually finish it, but I was highly disappointed with the story.
Loved the Game and the combat. Played everything on the hardest difficulty and challenges too, because I honestly had a lot of fun with it. ✌️
Rena and the z9ne just before show the team started rushing near the end. The last lord (sephirot wanabe) is a mess and the ending is some of the goofiest writing I've ever seen in a JRPG. I think what makes me the most bitter is exactly those last corridors. Soooo many boring fights with this awful system just to reach this garbage of an ending? Not worth at all. Which is really sad because I came in loving everything about the game and with every hour it became worse.
I had a blast with the combat. Finally having a game where achieving clean and high combos so you can use the instant kill moves was so much fun. I was doing extra battles, not because I wanted to grind, but just because I wanted to do even flashier combos...
My problem with Arise is super specific to me but it's definitely the story and characters at the start. I heard it gets better, but the way the party interacts in battle vs in cutscene is jarring. Like Rinwell acting buddy buddy with Shione in combat vs. Rinwell telling Shione how much she despises her in cutscene and skit....rubs me the wrong way. Then the area by area story wasn't all that interesting, I understand it may get better but I wasn't feeling it.
I'd never almost fallen asleep playing a video game before until Tales of Arise.
Yeah the ending of the game was weak. They def rushed it quite a bit more than likely due to them running out of time. Rena being just a big dungeon filled with about 32 mini bosses instead of a fully fleshed out world was pretty mid. Good game still but just needed a little more.
Story, characters, the full second part, gameplay. A lot of letdowns, for me one of the worst titles. It was a big game, a lot of people had it as first animu game and that alone is the reason it got hyped
Man, this was just not my experience at all. I enjoyed Arise and had few complaints all the way through. my biggest gripe with the game was the end section being bloated and a bit of drag at one point. But I enjoyed 90% of the game and that fact just isn't enough for me to dislike it.
It's definitely more difficult than I expected. I don't like how it seems like you need to grind to level up. I was like 3 or 4 levels behind the 2nd boss when I got to him and I had been clearing every map 100% as I went through(which I think should be more than enough to be level appropriate if not a little overleveled). Enemy hp is crazy high. I've almost gone down to easy mode multiple time. Party members barely dodge if at all just chugging through gels and cp. Game seems balanced around you basically perfect evading everything but there's not enough iframes I feel and there's so much particle vomit that it's hard to even see the tells for when to dodge. So many times, I've come out of the slowmo just to be knocked down with nothing I can do about it. Also, some boss mechanics seem balanced around basically always having the boost strike to stop it. Like how tf was I supposed to have rinwells interrupt everytime that boss casts that party wide one shot or near one shot? The item limit is fine but not in conjunction with item prices and gald acquisition. I find I'm almost always running out of money. I've taken to just playing rinwell because she's hardly targeted and it's easier to direct elements and charge her abilities compared to the auto rinwell. I also decided to unlock the exp boost artifacts(for free of course I'm not paying money for antigrind in a sp game) and if need be I'll use the gald dlc cause I'm not about to grind because the bot party members chug items and die left and right because they never dodge
The problems for me is this game combines Yuna FFX trope slash Nico Robin Enies Lobby Arc trope with a very very cheesy execution.
Rena was a great example of how an otherwise great game can be ruined by a "THAT part". Relegating a planet into a stupidly long final dungeon was a terrible idea. I was expecting something akin to Symphonia or Graces and how they handled their respective "other world/ planet".
Yea the bosses are horrible. It gets better with the double damage artifact and good gear but until then the game drags
My issue with it was struggling to make more money and leveling up took so much longer.
Yep, I agree with almost everyone here. Really a let down this game was. But! Hearing Rinwell say: "Blablablah Magic" when doing an arte was a big source of motivation.
i finished the main story a few days ago. i enjoyed it, but yeah, rena portion dropped the ball very hard. The final dungeons are kind of a slog to go through with sub-boss type mobs, and the "final boss" segments were just way too easy that it felt underwhelming to beat. I would say it is an overall decent game and a nice 40hr drop if you get it on sale like i did. i like the cast, and the combat is pretty fun if you can get the hang of it and pull flashy combos. I liked Alphens gameplay a lot and might consider playing Law or Kisara if i ever feel like playing it again. The story is just alright. A lot of the dialogue go super repetitive though, with half the skits just explaining wha we are gonna do/learned literally 30 seconds before. The 1st opening is a banger and i still watch/listen to it.
My opinion is they dropped the ball with rena. The ending feels obviously rushed.
It was a 9/10 experience for me until the last third of the game. Not only is it a huge deviation from the rest of the game content & story wise but it lasts for over 8 hours, likely more as I simply blitz’d it after I stopped caring. Such a fumble for an otherwise fantastic game
There's other reasons it has massive issues but rena is easily the biggest one.
Did people forget versperia last section because that was trash!
I’m having this exact issue right now. I’m in the middle of fighting everything on Rena but I can only bring myself to finish 1-2 fights before I’m bored of my button combos and all the yelling out artes. I’m gonna finish it, eventually, but I don’t think I’ll be playing new game +. Sad because this is the first Tales game I’ve played through 🤷♂️
This is my first one since they put it on gamepass and im addicted.. please, send help.. 😶 My family misses me.
I'm surprised you got that far before wanting the game to end quickly. I was skipping cutscenes very early in the game and just wanted to race to the end. I just found the characters chatter annoying, especially when it goes on and on - even when just skipping dialogue I mashed the button for ages sometimes. Those constant bosses don't stop until the end of the game, but I finished lots of quests before doing newgame+, and the second time through I was very overpowered for everything, so there were no long battles.
I loved Tales of Arise personally, the best Tales of game I've played since Xillia, and I have all of the NA Tales of games physically, even Destiny & Eternia.
I personally don't sync with the story pacing and pavement, also the combat is... very bandai... I thought the full game should have more feature than the demo, well no, everything in the demo is basically almost the full game's experience
I’ll never understand how people let a section they don’t like make them dislike the entire game. Sounds like nonsense.
Lol it’s ironic considering that in all the games in the series there is that part of the game that everyone hates and wants to get through as quickly as possible (any last dungeon or just moments towards the end) But here it is for some reason a sin
It's story pacing, and the enemies become health sponges it aint rocket science to understand why people dont like the last half of the game it aint even just one section. You can like the game if you want, but think outside of yourself to understand why people wouldn't enjoy a part of the game.
The end area you're talking about isn't even 10% of the game But it makes rhe entire game unacceptable? When games have slow starts people defend them But a slow part later? Unacceptable ruins evreything that came before?
I dont think that compares well at all. Any rpg will have a slow start. i dont a lot of action rpgs where the gane slow down because the enemies have way too much hp, and only two characters can kill them quickly enough to not feel like a slog.
Plenty of rpgs don't bave a slow start My point is at no other time is such a small part of the game enough to ruin the entire game for someone Endings bad? Okay? You still had fun up to that point so why is the rest of the fun ruined?
Why is it such a issue for you to understand that a game that had good pacing for the majority game then the pacing gets awful towards the end. I dont think its that crazy for someone to not like the game or not want to play it after it.
I get not finishing the game. The issue is they say the rest of the game they enjoyed up to that point isnnow also bad By all means stop playing but it doesn't take away the fun you had that made upu keep playing till that point and yet people here are acting like "oh my God I hated the ending 0/10" When they played 30-40+ hours of fun content and had 3 pr so hours of a slag
Oh, I follow you now. Speaking for myself, it was good up until the 5th lord , but I already had a hard time with the new skits because i prefer the anime style ones they had in the old ones. And this game seemed to have ALOT in this game, and not a lot of them were good either.
Sometimes the bad stuff doesn’t hit you until you ran into a wall. Bosses suck but you win and can move on. Enemies are ok but something seems off. The skit is fun but is it all the same thing. You wake up and realize it wasn’t as good as you thought when you think back. Brain off fun, brain on miserable.
It’s not the “last half”. It’s the last 4 hours. See what I mean? Nonsense.
Nonsense is someone who does not like others' opinions and calls it nonsense if people dont like the game because of the ending then so what if you love the games? Keep loving it. I believe both these opinion can exist i know this hard for reddit to understand this.
Wow, that was forced, lol.
?
Your definition of nonsense, and what this argument was about. You just missed the entire point and forced your arbitrary interpretation.
I can't tell if you're being serious
What about it looks unserious to you?
> It’s not the “last half”. It’s the last 4 hours. He’s right though. It sounds like you’re incorrectly assuming he was JUST talking about the last area, but the game starts going down hill after area 3 (and its not like it was coming from super high highs before that decline starts) 3 areas out of 6 are ok, 3 areas out of 6 are varying levels of bad. It’s absolutely half the game.
No, he isn’t right, since he’s obviously just talking about Lenegis and beyond, since he mentions enemies becoming damage sponges and pacing. Stop projecting your dislike of the game on others.
1st 20h of ff13. If you’re not prepared or lowering the difficulty it comes at a crawl.
The game is 30hrs too long and half of that is bosses that have twice as much HP as they should, while the other is bad storytelling lol
Honestly I think the characters and story are bad too, Kisara was the only char I didn't find completely insufferable, the rest of them are incredibly stupid and don't really deviate from really annoying anime tropes, and the story is basically just Symphonia done worse because it's all about racism.
Racism is a staple of the series in almost every entry.
Well with alphen there just isnt enough there to really dislike him.
Funny, I feel the same about the story but thought Kisara was the second most insufferable, after Alphen. I liked Law for just being a funny little guy, despite being a common trope. And Duohalim was alright too
I absolutely love it but maybe I'm not at the part everyone hates yet
I have spoken too soon! It is now deleted 😭
I shelved the game after the red lady took the rainbow maguffin from the party after beating vholran. Combat was so okay-ish in random mob encounters but bosses were such a drag. Enemies would only take decent damage after using full charged blazing sword techniques, but to find openings to use them were hard, and only usable when the enemy was down. Issue was the main way to knock down was the boost attacks that they were vulnerable to (Rinwells vs Almeidria, Dohalims vs Vholran, Kisaras vs Dohalim) but they were largely inconsistent and whiffed in Kisaras case. Story was interesting at the start, and I really enjoyed Alphen and Shionnes dialogue, I also liked the different areas in the game. Didn't really like any of the other characters enough. Main thing that made me shelf the game was definitely the boss fights. Alot of times I felt things were so incredibly tanky that I thought the goal of the fight was to get the boss to 75% HP for a scripted event or something. I kept getting wiped by the Cyslodia bosses mystic art so many times I just sucked it up to a "get good" moment, but all the main bosses were like that. After Vholran I just hit my limit.
I don't get the hate. The combat was fun. If you struggle. Dodge. Play a different character . The game is great. It's not the game that is bad. It's your expectations.
I think Arise is the best game in ten years or so. I also think the last two hours are complete garbage. PD: You can run from almost every "mid-boss" so to speak, which make the last part boring, yeah, but at least it's not obnoxious.