Taking my first dip into "Tales of" with Arise, pretty solid combat wise, though I can tell it's going to get grindy as fuck just off that first boss, even doing a bit of grinding I was barely doing damage to the guy. Though I guess that's also with just 1 teammate of the eventual 4. Still, enjoy what I've done so far, got just a bit past the opening credits.

Arise definitely opens up once you have a full party, but holy hell are the bosses a grind fuck. The first half of their life bar is okay, then the second half become irksome, the second half of that half becomes a total bitch, and then the final half of that half is just downright fucked. They go into this state of a super strong move that even teeing off with 4 characters (strongest available weapons) you don't stand a chance of breaking even once they're down to a relative sliver of life. The rest is great though, I know super spongey bosses are a JRPG staple, but holy hell. Doesn't feel so much like losing or nearly losing due to skill, but a war of attrition, hoping SOMEONE can survive the one hit kill so you can revive your healer and hopefully finish...or you gotta spend another 10-20 minutes doing that bullshit over hoping it doesn't happen again.

Don't so much care for personally controlling any of the characters but Alphen so far though, Law is sort of interesting, but it feels like you nerf the casters by playing as them, as you can only use 3 moves (without constantly going in and out of the "Artes" menu), and they can cycle through several.

Sept 13, 2021 8:59:47 GMT RagnarokMike said:

Arise definitely opens up once you have a full party, but holy hell are the bosses a grind fuck. The first half of their life bar is okay, then the second half become irksome, the second half of that half becomes a total bitch, and then the final half of that half is just downright fucked. They go into this state of a super strong move that even teeing off with 4 characters (strongest available weapons) you don't stand a chance of breaking even once they're down to a relative sliver of life. The rest is great though, I know super spongey bosses are a JRPG staple, but holy hell. Doesn't feel so much like losing or nearly losing due to skill, but a war of attrition, hoping SOMEONE can survive the one hit kill so you can revive your healer and hopefully finish...or you gotta spend another 10-20 minutes doing that bullshit over hoping it doesn't happen again.

Don't so much care for personally controlling any of the characters but Alphen so far though, Law is sort of interesting, but it feels like you nerf the casters by playing as them, as you can only use 3 moves (without constantly going in and out of the "Artes" menu), and they can cycle through several.

Did I hear trying out the tales of series? I haven't played arise yet. Thought it came out later this year. But some are grinder then others. Vesperia I know casters can do 16 arts without going into the arts menu. And the entire cast of Beseria has fun playstyles.

Tales of Arise is the first Tales game available on Steam? I know there's a ton of these Tales games, but are they all on console?

I'm about 20 hours into the game and I'm about to enter Mahag Saar which is the forth major area of the game.

I'm enjoying it, but it's clearly trying to go for a broader audience. The story so far has been very straight forward with Alphen teaming up with Shionne to take down the five elites of this master race and free the lower race. The one thing I've noticed with the story is that the side characters have very little going on outside of the main plot. In a lot of other JRPGs usually the story is embedded with these side stories that help flesh out the story but everything is focused on taking down these five lords and the plight of the lower class.

Combat has taken awhile to get used to. The introduction of a jump button has really clashed with years of experience and although FromSoftware did get me used to R1 as the regular attack button I still find it odd in a Tales game. It's also difficult going from Berseria where combos are mapped to a specific button and here where you can only map one attack. Spamming one attack over and over again also comes with a penalty so it's a learning curve.

Rags, you're not kidding about the power creep. The game is a real breeze right up until you reach the lord and suddenly you have to pay attention. They're fun fights but they don't feel balanced at all and actually require some strategy. The first time through I barely got through the first lord, so just to see if it was on me or the game I went back and realised how important dodging and counter-attacking is. You have to treat it like Dark Souls where you can't get greedy and can only go to town when a proper opening takes place.

I had difficulty with the second lord as well since he has an unavoidable mystic art which also summons four clones of himself who just spam spells. In hindsight, I found you had to equip Alexandrites to give your party better resistance and you use Rinwell's Boost Attack after the art while the clones are casting spells to help take them down.

I found myself grinding more to the point where I'd re-enter areas until my party was on par with the strongest enemy of each level. I feel that made the fights more fair and I got through the third lord a lot more comfortably.

One thing that's throwing me off is that there's no guard cancel, so if you use a long-winded art at the wrong time you're brown bread. Against bosses in particular you really have to be careful about your attacks and if anything you have to look for counter-attacks to help increase your boost attacks.

A few notes from my last playthrough...

I just unlocked the artifact mechanic which grants you more perks. The first artifact gives you twice as many arts, so now there's six ground and six aerial based attacks which makes combat more fluid.

The title system is extremely important in this game, so I spent the majority going on detours and taking care of side-quests like the Training Ground just for the enhancements.

Gigants aren't as important as they were in Berseria but they do expand your CP which is your heal/buff metre so they're well worth taking down when you're at the right level. I was ignoring these originally and didn't realise I was about 10 levels above a few of them and managed to whittle them down extremely quickly. In hindsight, I wonder if I could have taken it before the first lord?

I just unlocked the Fishing Side-quest which seems to be the best way to make money in the game thus far. I haven't got the hang of it just yet but it's a fun distraction that I could see myself losing hours on while listening to podcasts.

With Tales game, there is always that hump early on and it can take until the late game for the combat to really open up. I feel like the game is already starting to get more spectacular so I'm keen to see how the game evolves from here.

Sept 16, 2021 12:26:51 GMT Emperor said:

Tales of Arise is the first Tales game available on Steam? I know there's a ton of these Tales games, but are they all on console?        

No, the first major Tales game on PC was Zestiria back in 2015. I believe it came with Symphonia as a pre-order bonus and Berseria came out two years later.

Arise is the first Tales game to use the Unreal engine and it feels like the first Tales game with a proper budget since Vesperia. The other games are enjoyable enough but they're clearly cutting corners here and there.

Well, hell, seems a couple of my trophies glitched, so that saves me some time, was strongly considering a platinum run with how much else I had to do.

Usually things giveth then taketh, but for once, the glitch taketh, and another glitch gaveth right back. My first autosaved glitched out, so it didn't update after a certain part of the game, just so happens it was right before I finished the two that glitched out. I just had to load it, then finish the conversations again, and BAM, got them tropies. So remember, you finish each person after the 5th time talking to them when they have a speech bubble next to them, always save before that 5th convo so if the trophy doesn't pop, you can give it another go.

That being said, at just over 75 hours...I platinumed the game. Really was great, a bit of a rough start, and a few of the bosses are overly grindy, Chronos is an absolute bitch, but as long as you're well stocked on items, nothing undoable.

One grievance I had though, if the enemies are even 10 levels ahead of you, they'll hand you your ass, 30-40, they kill you instantly...but you can be 40 levels ahead of certain enemies and they still take a ton to finally down. Big disparity between player level vs computer level both when under and over leveled. Aside from that and the unfortunate glitches, which luckily worked out, not a whole lot to complain about. Might check the other Tales games when I get the chance, though that'll be forever away, huge backlog and more coming already.

Keep reading as Tales of ARSE, fella.

So it's been over a month since my last post. I beat the game a few weeks back and just recently went back to do all the post-game stuff. I'm currently doing a New Game+ run just to familiarise myself with the campaign and experience the game if you ignore exploration and other side content.

It appears from my last update I had only just started the forth lord which is one of my favourite areas in the game. Arise for me was at it's best when they just let you explore the world, collecting treasure and fighting enemies so having this one area with all these optional ruins was great. It's also where combat really opens up and makes characters more viable.

I have to say that Arise is at odds with itself. On one hand the characters are really fun to control especially as you unlock more artes and you can start chaining ground and aerial combos together. I found I had the most fun in training ground where I was able to experiment with the characters and attempt to knock the time down as I figured out better combos. The problem is that regular combat relies heavily on boost attack which really feels like playing a game of Simon Says. Except half the time when you really need a boost attack to counter an enemy it would be slightly off from a full charge. Rinwell especially always seemed just a buck short whenever I needed her. The problem with the mechanic is that unless you play sub-optimally a lot of the combat is done just watching mini-cutscenes of these crazy attack sequences.

Combat felt really unbalanced as well. Your main character Alphen has the two best attacks in the game and at a certain point it's just about dodging around, spamming the odd projectile and waiting until you can use his Boost Attack that triggers an automatic knock down. Then you hit a Reigning Slash followed by the flame sword ability and it just melts the enemies HP no matter what. I didn't discover this until the last boss encounter but once you do it really highlights how broken the game is.

Also it's around the forth chapter that the pacing really slows down. The dungeons keep getting bigger with more bullet sponge enemies and it really feels like a slog to play through. Then they really start going crazy with the cut-scenes, particularly after Chapter 5 and so much of the story is lost in your party members cheesy dialogues about friendship.

That sequence straight after Chapter 5 where the game has you wait until the Helganquil's fire the Wedge into Dahna is so tiresome and that whole reveal is so weird. Basically you find out the Renan planet is dying and it's spirit has created this hive-minded where it's corrupted the Helganquil's mind to trick Dahnans into thinking their renans by altering them slightly all so they can harvest energy from Dahna and restore Rena. It's kind of an anti-climax that these villains that rock up in the 11th hour are the real adversaries. It feels like the type of twist that would have been far more interesting if it was revealed half-way through the game and it really flips the quest on it's head. I just think they wanted to tell a straight forward story and the final chapter is just an excuse to visit outer space which as far as I know is a brand new frontier for the series.

I enjoyed the post-game stuff well enough especially the boss rush fights but I wish they did a better job of providing recommended levels. It's not like they couldn't have implemented it either considering they do it for the colosseum section. My experience was checking out a side-quest only to find I was 20 levels below where I should have been. Meanwhile there were a few encounters out there that I could have done before the final dungeon and made it easier for myself.

I'm ragging on the game but there was still a lot I liked about it. I really liked the aesthetic and how it had that hand drawn look at times. The orchestral score gave the game that Dragon Quest-y adventure feel and I liked that every enemy would appear on the over-world before you'd transition into the fight - it really brought their scale into it. While the side-quests were really shallow, I did enjoy the change of pace of going fishing. It's a glorified QTE but the skits were really rewarding and had the character interactions I love from the series.

I thought it was worth the wait and the game has a lot of elements I enjoy. However in the grand scheme it's not one of my favourites and I'd probably have it around that Tales of Xilia range - another entry where I enjoyed my time with it but on reflection didn't connect with me as well as other games.