I'm happy that a Tales game is selling well and that Namco made a more high budget game.
But...
I honestly did not care that much for it and feel I've just outgrown the Tales series. Or rather, I was probably never into them.
I know people say Tales games are "comfort food" and I guess I mostly thought that. I'd play Tales games because they were just more jrpgs to play. During the PS3 era they also were one of the few games in town when it came to console jrpgs. They didn't fall into strange otaku bait pit. Respectable compared to whatever Idea Factory puts out.
But my problem is Tales just refuses to do something different. Tales game start to blur together for me. Generic pastel anime fantasy lands/settings that I don't care about. Nondescript game worlds that don't feel very realized. Characters that kind of all feel the same.
I was excited when Xillia 2 started off in a cool modern setting. Felt different, but of course, the game becomes asset reuse and just goes back to the bland looks of Xillia 1.
Tales of Arise I hoped would be a daring change to the series. And in terms of production values, it's a jump kind of. The game looks and animates wonderfully. The in-game cutscenes really make me question why even have anime cutscenes anymore. The panel styles skits, which I thought would become overbearing are actually pretty dynamic and more expressive. The level design in the world does not feel as copy and paste as previous HD Tales. The scale and realization of the world feel detailed and well crafted. The dungeons on the other hand in the back half really seem to resort to the copy and paste texture box rooms though. Also who the hell thought backtracking after the dungeon's boss would be a good idea?
But the story and world still feel like typical boring Tales. The world itself is unengaging. It looks great, but it also feels like yet another whatever fantasy world. With no real hook to it and none of it feels like an actual world that could exist. It's boring and in gameplay I guess Tales has just given up on solving the "what are towns for". The towns are the most pointless aspect of the game, where everything you need is in the inn. making them just pretty rooms you visit. It's as bad as any Tales. One day I hope a jrpg has some engaging towns and worlds that feel alive.
The structure of the game also doesn't help. I remember Abyss and how they had the villain team show up routinely and had a lot of presence in the story. They may have not been super deep, but I was more interested in them than the bad guys here. Beyond the fact that there doesn't seem to be that much to them past "im evil and cruel", the structure means you forget about them once their "episode" is done. Go to their town and kill them, rinse and repeat. And all their episodes beyond maybe some stylistic changes in how they are told all kind of play out the same. They are cruel evil people that's it. They don't get that much screen time, often feeling like their screen time is mostly at their final battle. They feel like they have no real attachment to the story. Pretty much forgotten after the story moves past them. In Persona, the episodic bosses usually have an attachment to one party member and there's plenty of build-up. I don't remember any of the bosses and in the end, the game fails to create a real villain to care for, settling for typical Tales' "some evil force of nature" is behind it all. Even if they tried to do with Voharn a "he is what Alphen could become" it falls on deaf ears because this all comes through mostly info dumps, not actual characterization.
As for the main characters. This really is Tales of Shipping, which is fine. Most of the stuff was cute even if still never moves past characters talking as if they want to pass around "do you like me papers". Constant talks about how a character is blushing in relation to someone else etc.
Battle system though is still where this shines or rather it should. It does feel modernized here. Feels more accessible than any other tales. Though again there are things that I don't like or maybe I missed. Enemies feel spongy and I for sure hated fighting the bigger mid-boss-like ones. But regular enemies are really the time when the battle system is the most fun. Mostly because to me that's when it makes the most sense. The whole boost gauge thing continues this trend in jrpgs where they have this thing where if you are able to do enough correct damage you can break an enemy in order to not draw out the battle more. It kind of sucks here in my experience. It does feed into the combo system which as I said is really easy to do now. Maybe its dumbed down since you aren't doing fighting game inputs, but having the abilities tied to just the button meant I paid more attention to how my arts worked with each other. The boost gauge though can fall back pretty quick, which feels annoying. Yet it also seems this mechanic really only deals with trash mobs. During boss battles or bigger enemies, it could feel like no matter what it did, the boost gauge would only activate when the game said so. Defeating the whole point. It also felt like the whole "attack the weak point" was pointless. Sometimes that would lead to a boost attack, sometimes it wouldn't. It would lead to the enemies sitting for like 5 secs which in the end was pointless and Alphen's special attack when mostly do the same. I also disliked how the boost attacks would interfere with the battle thanks to that weird pause after them during battle, where it kind of restages where everything is.
It was an ok game, but for me I feel like I'm done with Tales.