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Tales of Arise Review Thread

CGiRanger

Banned
I really like Berseria :(
It was better than Zestiria at least in everything but music.

Zestiria's only saving grace was the soundtrack by Go Shiina. You can now recognize his work and the influences from Zestiria in the popular Demon Slayer anime as he co-composes the OST with Yuki Kajura.
 
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  • Thoughtful
Reactions: Isa
Highest rated Tales so far:

78 - TALES OF DESTINY 2
86 - TALES OF SYMPHONIA
68 - TALES OF SYMPHONIA: DAWN OF THE NEW WORLD
78 - TALES OF THE ABYSS
79 - TALES OF VESPERIA
78 - TALES OF XILLIA
71 - TALES OF XILLIA 2
79 - TALES OF BERSERIA

only Tales since SYMPHONIA on GC to beat the sub 80 score curse.

congrats Namco, hope this reflects on sales and brings in more Tales fans. good time for the franchise to be on almost every platform.
Didn't realize OG Vesperia on 360 reviewed worse than the remastered version. Not surprising given what happened with the 360 version.
 
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MagiusNecros

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Sometimes you got to lose (Zestiria, mediocre Berseria) to win again.
Berseria was good though. Story too. Especially with Magilou and the spellchains.

Tales of Arise will do decent I think but I don't like the look, the lack of a victory screen and I feel the super moves break the flow of combat too much.

Tales of Destiny DC and Berseria will remain in my favs and the Velvet is a rather good character.

Best combat is probably still Tales of Graces F.

Though I think true Tales games quality is whenever devs that are from Team Destiny is when the combat shines. Team Symphonia and Destiny merged but you can just tell when the Team Destiny people do the combat system.
 

KàIRóS

Member
I just realized it has the same score as Final Fantasy VII Remake and it's on the top 10 best reviewed games this year, damn and here I was thinking it would get a score between 75 - 80 at most.

Bamco is on a roll this year, and probably next year too with Elden Ring.
 

CGiRanger

Banned
By the way, is Sakuraba still composing the soundtrack for this? I was lukewarm on his Berseria OST and thought it a big downgrade from Go Shiina's Zestiria OST. It just feels like sadly Sakuraba's lost his edge in terms of composing this series.

With this track for instance, I felt he got confused and thought he was composing for Dark Souls and not Tales :p
 

Hestar69

Member
It was better than Zestiria at least in everything but music.

Zestiria's only saving grace was the soundtrack by Go Shiina. You can now recognize his work and the influences from Zestiria in the popular Demon Slayer anime as he co-composes the OST with Yuki Kajura.
I've never played Zestiria even though its sorta a prequel 1,000 years in the past (I'm prolly wrong I forget) I do own it,I'll play it one day. But I had fun with berseria and glad arise is looking good aswell.
 

JimboJones

Member
Haven't played a Tales since symphonia but the new look and positive reviews I think I'll need to give it a go sometime.
 

Arsic

Gold Member
Yeah... I can not agree with those scores, lol. Beautiful world, great gameplay. All of that is awesome, so yeah 8 or 9 of 10, sure.

But the story. The story. The characters. The tropes. Oh my god the tropes.

Remember skits? How they used to be fun? No more, they're just long, boring dialogues about nonsensical shit that has no relevance to anything. E V E R Y T H I N G needs to be discussed in its own skit. Don't believe me?

There are 320 skits in the game. THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY.

And the shortest ones are maybe a minute, many are longer. So we're talking way over five hours of moronic people praising each other and discussing... fishing.

Fuck. This. Game.

(save yourselves. Play the game, by all means, but skip the skits. I couldn't. Reviewing and all, but the moment you get bored. Skip em. All of em. There's never anything you need to hear.)

This is literally perfect. I can skip all of them instead of past ones where I'd suffer through this crap for a few deep ones with good character interactions.

Sounds like an upgrade to me.
 

Arsic

Gold Member
LOL... Definitely not what I was implying. Which is why I also said "Maybe Not". If anything, that shit is much more cringe. I only wish for more serious tones and less treating the player like they're stupid.




I'm still going to give the game a try since I haven't played a good JRPG in a while. But we'll see, the game's story might surprise me, but I HIGHLY doubt it.

I don't watch much anime, not a big fan... No offense to those that do, but the dialogue/writing has always made me roll my eyes. Even the "high rated" and beloved ones, just too much overly emotional angry teens, unnecessary screaming, melodrama, and tropes like everyone mentioned... But the one series on Netflix that I watched recently due to several recommendations... it blew my mind on how good it was and gave me hope that maybe these long running JRPGs can learn something from... Castlevania on Netflix... Great writing, dialogue, story, and characters with a mature tone. They fucking nailed it nd it was very entertaining.

While the anime for berserk is a huge miss IMO, try the manga. If you liked castlevania this is that turned up to 100.
 

saintjules

Member
wonder what platform would be best.

I'm wondering myself. I played the demo on Series X. The VRR might come into play but not sure if the game suffers from screen tearing. Then there's the haptics on the DualSense. Good problems to have.

Would like to see if Digital Foundry says something tomorrow about a comparison or maybe something from NXGamer NXGamer ?
 
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IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


Tales of Arise (PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S/One) is the latest game in the long running Tales franchise and it brings along a fresh new spin on things. How is it? Let’s talk.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Wow looks like the best Metacritic in the series to date. I was already planning to buy, but consider me hyped now.
 

KàIRóS

Member
By the way, is Sakuraba still composing the soundtrack for this? I was lukewarm on his Berseria OST and thought it a big downgrade from Go Shiina's Zestiria OST. It just feels like sadly Sakuraba's lost his edge in terms of composing this series.

With this track for instance, I felt he got confused and thought he was composing for Dark Souls and not Tales :p


Yeah it's Sakuraba again but the soundtrack sounds like a return to form honestly, I saw an interview and he said he had a full orchestra to record the soundtrack this time.

At least he's using violins again, my favorite battle themes from him are those that make heavy use of violins,



 

Y0ssarian

Banned
Pleasantly surprised with how well it's doing. If the combat is like Berseria I'm gonna pass. I need to play the demo ASAP
 
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Mozzarella

Member
I have a question and i dont know if its right or wrong to ask it but im going to give it a shot.
You see this game is getting 52 reviews so far(probably will increase too), for a niche RPG that seems to be really cool, but i cannot help but compare it with Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous reviews, and that game also released 1 week ago, and it has only 12 reviews! Some of the websites here are called "RPGfan"
My question is why this big difference in number of reviews? shouldn't journalists be professional in their work and review all products? Maybe they have accessibility issues with certain games?
Now i never played both of these games so i dont know for sure but i assume Pathfinder requires certain work and knowledge before you get to play it? if that's the case i can understand the difference between the numbers. Otherwise this just seems straight up favoritism?
Can someone shed a light on this matter for me? im confused.

As for the topic i have to see the scores seem pretty high, as for anime JRPG games the best ones seem to get 85-90 score at max so this one is definitely getting good scores, still that doesnt mean its good in my view, i dont always agree with scores but a lot of the times high scores mean the game has quality material.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
As for the topic i have to see the scores seem pretty high, as for anime JRPG games the best ones seem to get 85-90 score at max so this one is definitely getting good scores, still that doesnt mean its good in my view, i dont always agree with scores but a lot of the times high scores mean the game has quality material.
I would say stop focusing on scores, there is a demo you can try or read/watch what the reviewer have to say instead of focusing on scores. Even game get 10/10, if you don’t enjoy very “anime” JRPGs then scores won’t do you much good.
 

Kimahri

Banned
I have a question and i dont know if its right or wrong to ask it but im going to give it a shot.
You see this game is getting 52 reviews so far(probably will increase too), for a niche RPG that seems to be really cool, but i cannot help but compare it with Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous reviews, and that game also released 1 week ago, and it has only 12 reviews! Some of the websites here are called "RPGfan"
My question is why this big difference in number of reviews? shouldn't journalists be professional in their work and review all products? Maybe they have accessibility issues with certain games?
Now i never played both of these games so i dont know for sure but i assume Pathfinder requires certain work and knowledge before you get to play it? if that's the case i can understand the difference between the numbers. Otherwise this just seems straight up favoritism?
Can someone shed a light on this matter for me? im confused.

As for the topic i have to see the scores seem pretty high, as for anime JRPG games the best ones seem to get 85-90 score at max so this one is definitely getting good scores, still that doesnt mean its good in my view, i dont always agree with scores but a lot of the times high scores mean the game has quality material.
Multiple reasons. It depends on the publisher really. Some games you get approached by pr asking if you want to review, others you have to ask yourselves. Then there is game length and when did you get the code.

We never heard anything from deep silver, so we had to contact them ourselves. Bandai however has a very active pr team. So we prioritize the things that actually show up.

I haven't played pathfinder, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a longer game than arise. That and late code can mean one of two things. Not doing the review since you're gonna lose momentum and thus the clicks that pay your rent, or no review at all in favor of other games.

Also, if a review is late, the importance of being on metacritic kinda tends to go down. So you don't always send in your review.

In general, blame the publisher for being late with a code, or not approaching outlets for a code. A huge game is a time investment, and if you don't get good time before release date, it's a stressful job many will be reluctant to take.
 
I have a question and i dont know if its right or wrong to ask it but im going to give it a shot.
You see this game is getting 52 reviews so far(probably will increase too), for a niche RPG that seems to be really cool, but i cannot help but compare it with Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous reviews, and that game also released 1 week ago, and it has only 12 reviews! Some of the websites here are called "RPGfan"
My question is why this big difference in number of reviews? shouldn't journalists be professional in their work and review all products? Maybe they have accessibility issues with certain games?
Now i never played both of these games so i dont know for sure but i assume Pathfinder requires certain work and knowledge before you get to play it? if that's the case i can understand the difference between the numbers. Otherwise this just seems straight up favoritism?
Can someone shed a light on this matter for me? im confused.

As for the topic i have to see the scores seem pretty high, as for anime JRPG games the best ones seem to get 85-90 score at max so this one is definitely getting good scores, still that doesnt mean its good in my view, i dont always agree with scores but a lot of the times high scores mean the game has quality material.
I'm pretty sure sure Pathfinder, as a DnD game, would be considered the more "niche" of the two, whereas Tales of Arise is the latest entry in a very popular series that started on the SNES.
But then, Namco probably has a lot more money to spend for advertising with "journalists" than Owlcat in the first place anyway...
 

Kimahri

Banned
I'm pretty sure sure Pathfinder, as a DnD game, would be considered the more "niche" of the two, whereas Tales of Arise is the latest entry in a very popular series that started on the SNES.
But then, Namco probably has a lot more money to spend for advertising with "journalists" than Owlcat in the first place anyway...
They're not "advertising with journalists" they're actively promiting their game by putting out ads and approaching outlets with preview and review opportunities.

That's what anyone with a product to sell should do. Why deep silver is sleeping on the job is not the fault of journalists.

I get that it makes you happy to think otherwise, but believe it or not, most game journalists take their work seriously and are good at what they do. If you can't see beyond kotaku and ign and the like, that really is on you.
 
Didn't realize OG Vesperia on 360 reviewed worse than the remastered version. Not surprising given what happened with the 360 version.

That was a period when everyone hated Japanese games and wanted more brown shooters.

Oh and I also want to add that inflation is a thing. Kids these days think anything below an 8 equals trash. Or maybe that's an American thing, I've been told by Lyft drivers that if I don't give them 5 stars they'll commit suicide.
 
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Kimahri

Banned
That was a period when everyone hated Japanese games and wanted more brown shooters.

Oh and I also want to add that inflation is a thing. Kids these days think anything below an 8 equals trash. Or maybe that's an American thing, I've been told by Lyft drivers that if I don't give them 5 stars they'll commit suicide.
Irony is that the original is way better. All that new stuff in the definitive edition is just really terrible and or unnecessary filler material. The pacing is just way better in the original game. I stopped playing the DE and hooked up my 360 instead to play the original. Much better.
 

PJX

Member
Just ordered the Collector's Edition from Amazon UK for XSX. First time I've bought a collector's edition in over 10 years.
 

JusticeForAll

Gold Member
I'm wondering myself. I played the demo on Series X. The VRR might come into play but not sure if the game suffers from screen tearing. Then there's the haptics on the DualSense. Good problems to have.

Would like to see if Digital Foundry says something tomorrow about a comparison or maybe something from NXGamer NXGamer ?
I have both a ps5 and series X, so I'm waiting for a clear answer. I have read though that the demo ran quite a bit better on the series X than on the ps5.
 

Markio128

Member
I honestly wasn’t expecting such positive reviews, but now I am overjoyed to learn that there is another game I could add to my mountainous backlog. Yippee. Anybody who says Sony are screwed without a big game this fall are clearly taking the piss.
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
i can not for the life of me endure a second of battle when the characters say their attack out loud.
it is giving me xenoblade chronicles 2 flashbacks

 

Life

Member
Is the game actually challenging? Or do you just go into battles mashing and winning? I tried Berseria and got bored really fast due to the battle system. Dungeons were also really bland with random shiny shit scattered everywhere, just to increase your playtime.

If this one is more challenging and has actual dungeon exploration, I'm in.
 

Synless

Member
Is the game actually challenging? Or do you just go into battles mashing and winning? I tried Berseria and got bored really fast due to the battle system. Dungeons were also really bland with random shiny shit scattered everywhere, just to increase your playtime.

If this one is more challenging and has actual dungeon exploration, I'm in.
Did you try the demo?
 

sublimit

Banned
I don't care about reviews in general but Havian makes some of the most in-depth ones (no spoilers).
 
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Synless

Member
NO I just checked on Steam, it's not there.
Ah, I see. Well to answer your question its still pretty button mashy. That said, it does reward you to try and use combos. My biggest gripe is the group attacks seem to accessible to frequently making the game easier.
 

Life

Member
Ah, I see. Well to answer your question its still pretty button mashy. That said, it does reward you to try and use combos. My biggest gripe is the group attacks seem to accessible to frequently making the game easier.

That's a shame. Sounds like I'm gonna fight the same way in each battle, regardless of the enemy. I wish they made JRPGs so battle are much fewer, but each battle is long, and and tests your party in different ways.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
That's a shame. Sounds like I'm gonna fight the same way in each battle, regardless of the enemy. I wish they made JRPGs so battle are much fewer, but each battle is long, and and tests your party in different ways.
This is really an issue with almost all JRPGs, where ordinary battles tend to be mindless and repetitive regardless of the depth of the mechanics. And if they aren't they get regarded as grindy and difficult because you can always compensate for skill with experience.
 
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Metnut

Member
Sounds like the game has paid DLC where you can buy level ups and in game currency.

Hopefully this doesn’t upset the balance and the game isn’t too grindy to try and make you buy the micro transactions.
 

JayK47

Member
Looks like it was worth the pre-order. Pre-loading now on Steam.

I saw that about the DLC. That is disappointing. I warned about DLC back in the day and here we are now. Paying extra for missing content and/or booster packs.
 

Zathalus

Member
I have both a ps5 and series X, so I'm waiting for a clear answer. I have read though that the demo ran quite a bit better on the series X than on the ps5.
If you have a VRR TV, then no question the Series X, it runs quite a bit better in quality mode and VRR covers for the drops.

This is of course assuming that quality mode has unlocked FPS like the demo.

If you don't have VRR, or the FPS is capped to 30 in the quality mode then it should be almost the exact same on either system.
 

Rickyiez

Member
Tales of Vesperia is probably my favourite Tales game in Xbox360 , the series after just went downhill IMO . Hopefully this one brings it back
 

Melubas

Member
Can't deny I'm a bit curious about this one. Then again I've been curious about the Tales games before and always stopped playing due to the bad writing. Will see if I cave or not.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Tales of Vesperia is probably my favourite Tales game in Xbox360 , the series after just went downhill IMO . Hopefully this one brings it back
Vespiria definitely felt like the last of the classic era of Tales. Since then it has been searching for a new voice with varying degrees of success.

Arise doesn't sound like a return to the classic roots of the series but based on these reviews it might be the new voice it has been looking for.
 
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