It’s probably important to mention outright that Tales of Arise isn’t in my usual wheelhouse of games, and neither are JRPGs in general. For one reason or other, I’ve gone from someone who read the Final Fantasy X manual front and back ever day in my younger years to someone who just doesn’t feel drawn to them at all. But based on what I’ve played of Tales of Arise, that might be about to change.
The first entry in the tales series since 2016’s Tales of Berseria, Arise will immediately hook you in with its sumptuous visuals and gorgeous vistas. Even though I was streaming a demo of the game, Tales of Arise was drop dead gorgeous. Just about the first thing I did once I loaded in was to wander forward a few steps and be blown away by the gorgeous horizon, which meshed wonderfully with the background music, itself somehow somber and uplifting at once, kind of like a busier, more orchestal version of To Zanarkand. I wanted to rip it and put it on my Spotify immediately.
But Tales of Arise isn’t just pretty scenery and sad pianos: it’s a pretty inviting JRPG as well. There’s lots to do and understand, but nothing feels overbearing, even if the rapid-fire tutorials in the preview build might have been initially offputting. That’s probably down to the fact that this build was a 30-minute traipse around Elde Menancia, the game’s third region. You can pick from six characters, though all of them can be called upon in battle. I opted for Shionne, a “Renan woman who brings the curse of thorns to whoever touches her” and uses an obscenely large rifle in combat. She’s cool.
The preview build was a pretty straightforward affair: roam around a giant open environment, find some resources, chat to whoever you find, and beat up some zeugles. And there’s a lot of those zeugles to beat up too, which you can mostly avoid if you so wish. Arise’s combat initiations work similarly to a modern Pokémon game, wherein you can approach the enemy and then transition to a battle scene. The real-time battles are intense and a bit bonkers, with random fractures of light and shapes with shrieks of fighting words echoing out every ten seconds. It’s like the scenes in Demon Slayer where Tanjiro winds up his Water Breathing forms, just over and over in utter chaos. It’s great fun.
Artes are ostensibly your special attacks in Tales of Arise, flashy moves that are mapped to the face button that do more damage that basic attacks. However, in a quite canny bit of design, you can’t just spam the same move over and over as your opponent’s Penetration will increase, meaning that you will do less damage. This means you need to constantly be trying out new things, so I learned pretty quickly that I couldn’t just sit back and lazily fire at opponents. Instead, I was leaping in the air, unleashing new Artes and dodging attacks like something closer to a character action game than a traditional JRPG.
Strikes are the main course of the grand punchy meal in Tales of Arise, hugely satisfying co-op attacks that can be unleashed after bars are filled. These do huge damage and are spectactularly cinematic, though I did keep pressing the same button on the D-pad by accident time and time again so I only saw a couple of them. You can also call on your party members to do their own special moves with the d-pad outside of Strikes, which are great for chipping away at health bars and keeping up a solid rhythm of damage.
I actually thought all of this made the preview build a bit of a walkover. I had to constantly be on the move and vary things up, sure, but none of my party looked like even slightly being in danger. But then I encountered the boss: a giant mantis that was terrorising a nearby city we were trying to visit. That mantis slapped me and my pals around something silly, us constantly having to be revived and healed with gels, chipping away at its health bit by bit until it finally fell after what felt like twenty minutes. It was attrition, but the fun kind.
Ultimately, a short slice of what promises to be an absolutely massive game probably isn’t enough to make any kind of judgement call on Tales of Arise, especially as we’re still far away from its release. However, considering that it has a non-JRPG fan interested in what’s next, Tales of Arise looks like one to look out for.
Tales of Arise releases September 10th, 2021 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X | S.
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