Game review

Release date	2021-09-10
Publisher	Bandai Namco Entertainment
Developer	Bandai Namco Studios
Platform	PlayStation 5
Playtime	49 hours
Progress	Completed

This game is taking on the series to a new level. A bit of a new direction in terms of both art style and open gameplay. It's a fantastic game that was very enjoyable.

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I take notes as I play the game for things that I think deserve a mention. If something was not mentioned, it is considered "fine" and not noteworthy in any sense.

Pros

• Voice Acting
  The voice acting was great throughout the whole game
  
  
• Skits
  Something that Tales of games does really well and continue to do is the skits to get more involved with the conversations the charachters has between each other to expand the lore as a optional thing.
  
  
• Gamebit/Strategy
  This was a surprisingly good evolution of the strategy system to control your party instead of going on "instinct".
  
  
• NPC Checkmarks
  Like many MMOs, this game's NPCs has a icon on their head showing the status. If they have a quest, conversation, or there's nothing else to bother with. Something that saves so much time when exploring.
  
  
• Combat
  This game has THE BEST Action-JRPG combat to date for me. The combat is just so fun and never got boring and each charachter has their own "limit break" that you can swap in to use when needed. So you can take on different strategies depending if it's a huge boss or a flock of trash mobs.
  
  
• Cool looking effects
  The visual effects made this game just look so cool and awesome when playing it, it just makes it more fun. The limit breaks looked very cool.
  
  
• Colorlful environments
  I loved how as you went trough the journey, every place had it's own environment and style. And it all was very colorful and prevented the game to have the classic dull repeated environments.
  
  
• HUD Toggle
  You can toggle the HUD with L2 and this is not only great for OLED-tvs that can suffer from burn in, it's also great when you want the more cinematic and immersive experience.
  
  
• Continious conversations
  Beside the skits, this game has great small talk during combat as well when traveling troughout the fields and was enjoyable rather than annoying as in so many other games.
  
  
• Kisara
  One of my favorite charachter in the game is Kisara. She's also treated right in terms of story compared to Betrix in Final Fantasy 9 which I always wanted to replace Steiner in my party.
  
  
• Dohalim
  You can't talk about Dohalim without spoilers, but he has the best charachter arc in the game and is just awesome.
  
  
• Environmental soundtrack
  I really liked the soundtrack in terms of how it fits the environments you travel trough.
  
  
• Vholran
  Very cool outfits and charachter design and I really liked the story around him. He started out as very mysterious and it added a lot to know more and progress the journey.

Cons

• Control bindings
  You can change controls in battle but not outside battle, causing the issue of in battle I can use X (cross) to jump, but outside I need to use O (circle)
  
  
• Cliche intro
  The intro set my initial thoughts of the game and it was a bit negative because it was very cliche, but one I got over the first couple of hours, the game really stepped up.
  
  
• Party combos
  This is not much of a negative, but other tales of-games has featured better charachters as a battle party.
  
  
• Performance
  Even tho being a PS5 game, it looks very nice compared to others in the same space like Star Ocean, but can have a couple of slowdowns.

Overall

Tales of Arise has the best action-rpg combat to date that doesn't gets boring or stale, with a compelling story and twists that's expected nowadays. It has some minor gripes but nothing that makes the game bad. My game of the year.

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