Despite this limitation, I sometimes spent entire encounters airborne while I juggled foes from one end of the battlefield to the next. Skills/artes are executed by pressing the corresponding face button on your controller, and you can only pull off a limited number before your skill metre needs to recharge.
When you enter a fight - no random encounters, woo! - you immediately dig into your foes with standard attacks, then mix up those strikes with skills known as "artes". This trademark combination of gameplay styles works exceptionally well in Arise, which encourages you to mix up your attacks and make the stupidest combos imaginable.
#Tales of arise wonder text series
The Tales series mixes traditional JRPG enemy encounters and stats with real-time, action-based fights that forego menu commands. You're joined by several freedom fighters, including the solemn lady knight Kisara whom I immediately crushed on.Īrise's characters might not always be perfect vessels for the game's narrative, but one thing's for sure: they're all champions on the battlefield. Besides, Alphen and Shionne aren't the only fighters out to liberate Dahna. It weaves a solid tale out of its tropes, and everything about the game - including its narrative and characters - become much more interesting when you stumble away from those awkward opening hours. Mind, I'm not dismissing Arise's characters and story. You've seen this trope before unless Arise is your first exposure to anything remotely anime. They bicker, they snipe, and they gradually grow closer together. The two are forced to flee for their lives before becoming entwined in a much larger plot to save Dahna from the tyrannical Renan lords ruling over it. A brush with fate puts him in the company of Shionne, a Renan woman with a secret power who's moody and withdrawn and doesn't really care about that stupid fool, Alphen.
But there's no denying Arise's introduction of its main characters is wearying.Īlphen starts the adventure as a slave for the Renans, a mysterious civilization that invaded the planet of Dahna 300 years ago. I know that's not entirely fair, and I did it less often as I delved deeper into Arise. I found it harder to warm up to Arise's cast, partially because I often compared the two groups while playing the latter. The cast of Tales of Vesperia gave me genuine laughs, especially the smooth hero Yuri and the borderline deranged wizard girl, Rita. Spotless new Tales fans might even hold an advantage over me. The game is as accessible as heck no doubt Bandai Namco wants to woo Tales virgins with the series' fresh new start on the current generation of consoles in addition to ever-swelling ranks over on PC. Most Tales games are self-contained adventures that share some world-building elements between them (I demand to live in a reality where all medicine is administered as fruit-flavoured gels), so I had no problem jumping into Arise's story and roster. As I said in my earlier preview of Arise, I've only played a couple of those games leading up to Arise, including Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition. (Then I tell myself that my dumb anime son can do whatever he wants.) These are among my favourite kinds of JRPGs, and Bandai Namco's Tales of Arise keeps good company with them.Īt last count, there are approximately ten bazillion games in the long-running Tales series, starting with 1995's Tales of Phantasia for Nintendo's Super Famicom. These are the JRPGs that make me wonder why the protagonist wears a heavy, half-broken mask that probably screws with his peripheral vision. These are the JRPGs that actively make me seek battles because it just feels good to leap a metre off the ground and punch an eagle in the face. I, for one, occasionally break away and indulge the urge to jump into bright, busy JRPGs that check off every anime cliche ever devised. But not everyone thrives on a strict diet of grit and grime. Many Japanese role-playing games boast unprecedented realism thanks to modern development tools that are capable of building dragons scale-by-scale. It takes a little time to warm up to Tales of Arise's main characters (ironic, when two of them wield the powers of hell itself), but once you're over that hump, you're left with a charming JRPG powered by a battle system that never slows down.
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