Tales of Arise

Technical

Tales of Arise uses Unreal 4, and it shows, bullet proof stability, a solid options menu with everything to tailor your experience to your machine, including accessibility options for colour blindness which is always nice to see. The only strange issue when tested was gamepad detection, and this was a somewhat common issue at launch going by the number of discussion threads on steam and elsewhere. Saying that, on the same day Bandai Namco release a statement with a solution to the issue that seems to have resolved most people's problems.

During my time playing there was no bugs to point out.

Visuals

The game is visually pretty and impressive, with a mix of painterly textures and high fidelity visuals that I'm not sure I've seen anywhere else. Saying that, the models are look like what you'd expect for a modern anime game. Some very interesting designs, both for the characters and the maps is present, but none of it jumps out as truly original or revolutionary, just variations of a theme (this is the fire area, this is the magical girl, etc).

Music and Audio

The sound effects are very good and fit as expected, but the music is generic enough that I remember none of it. The voice acting is capable, but none of the performances are exceptional. Sound mixing is on point.

Story

Let start by removing the pretence that the game has a political message to espouse. It does not, it's just the last in long series of games that needs a setting with conflict already in it to pit the characters against. Which is exactly what's happening here. The fact that the game places the story amidst a slave revolution is not in the service of any particular message that goes much further than slavery is bad. It's there to create conflict between characters and for an easy set up to subvert the villain turning good guy, which it does, in the first few sections of the game at least twice. Up to the point where I got in the story, nothing very elaborate is set up besides, and I doubt it will, as the story seems focused on developing the characters more than an intricate universe with complexity. On the characters, the trope of found family and overcoming challenges and acceptance are all there. And again depending on your saturation for the genre, this will all feel trite and fairly simplistic. It can have satisfying moments, and some humour in sections, but nothing here will blow your mind.

Gameplay

I tested Tales of Arise on Hard difficulty. And this is my recommendation for where you should set the difficulty for yourself if you are moderately experienced with this kind of game, otherwise you'll find no challenge.

However combat gameplay is really where Tales of Arise excels. I have no frame of reference from the series previous entries, but I can see plenty of cross pollination from other Bandai Namco games. It plays like Automata or Scarlet Nexus with some changes. It has a system of normal attacks and specials (called Artes) that can combo. Dodge or block depending on character, with a perfect block and dodge system that allows for strong counter attacks. You are meant to weave the normal attack combos with the Artes to keep combat flow, but in this if found either the game or me had some trouble keeping momentum. And opposed to something like the Arkham games, it was somewhat easy to let combos chains drop. Despite this, the gameplay is fluid enough, and quite fast.

On the equipment front there's fewer slots than expected, with armour, weapon and accessory slots, with this last slot allowing for player expression in the form of crafting. There's also weapon crafting, but these are a linear progression, there's probably some choice at end game on the element associated with the weapon, but that would be all, as weapon types are tied to the character used.

On the skills and perks we have a constellation of skill trees with a stat bonus when the individual skills trees get completed. The skill trees include skills, passives and stat increases, and while the skills themselves make for very substantial differences in player expression during combat, the passives and stat increases have less weight and feel like only mandatory if you want the more substantial stat increases when completed.

The game allows you to use all characters you have available and the ones you are not using are in the fight with you as NPCs. Much like Scarlet nexus, you can use a support skill from one of your team mates as the fight goes on. The variety comes from switching characters and creating skill combinations that you find interesting.

There's a few more systems ate play during combat, a break system, in which you use skills to increase a break meter that leaves your enemy staggered for a bit. There's also few more special systems with particular trigger conditions that will do substantial amounts of damage. The issue is that none of these will vary combat by much, and you'll start thinking about them more as ways of bursting annoying enemies than for their particulars.

That said, the enemy variety is not great, so all of these options feel wasted. With a bit of an exception with bosses, but even then you'll feel the difference more in the boss health bar than anything mechanical.

The exploration is substantially weak, especially in a game landscape post Breath of the Wild, and it's a wide linear game, so not much to explore to begin with, with large but nor very complex maps, and collection of resources that brings nothing to the gameplay and never feels rewarding.

There's a few extras, in the form of cooking, breeding animals for resources and fishing. Cooking will give timed buffs, breeding animals will give resources, and it imitates growing plants from the monster hunter series with less end results that feed directly into cooking. And fishing has an entire mini game that I was dreading since the game sign posted it on the first few areas, and it proved to be so out of place here as anywhere else. This also feeds into cooking mostly.

Conclusion

You can play Arise for a couple of reasons. You have played games in the series and enjoyed them, and want to experience the new characters and story. Or you like action games and you'll play it for the combat. The reality is, the game is not particularly strong in either of these fronts, and does not have the staying power of a Automata on the story side, or a Monster Hunter on the gameplay front. You likely can get to the end and enjoy it, but it will not be a stand out game of the year, especially when Scarlet Nexus came out recently and feels strangely similar. The main issue I see with it is that the combat lacks depth to have staying power and replayability, that said, it will give you a playthrough, but not be anything memorable unless you are really keen on the story and characters.