Back in November poll I vowed that I never want to review any JRPGs again and I won’t, while I’m writing my third one this year. It’s hard with Japanese games. They exist in their own space-time and are not afraid to rely on many outdated mechanisms that Western production has long since overcome. Above all, however, they waste an incredible amount of time on the player, forcing him to faint to repeat the same fights over and over again, holding him back with generic, optional side tasks, and letting their heroes gossip endlessly about long-standing banalities.
Don’t be fooled by “children’s” graphics, Tales of Arise are thoughtful epic fantasies.
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But at the same time, they have a certain spell that is difficult to describe, which in an increasingly unified mainstream production continues to fascinate and constantly surprise me. Tales of Arise are the best proof of that.
This is the seventeenth part of the series, whose roots go back to 1995. If you don’t like jumping on a bandwagon, you don’t have to worry in this case. As in the case of the more famous Final Fantasy together individual pieces they share only a basic philosophy, and apart from a few distant allusions for the most loyal fans, they have virtually nothing to do with the previous ones.
The story of the game is set on the planet Dahn, whose inhabitants suffer under the rule of a more technically advanced Ren nation. The main character is the warrior Alphen, whose face is hidden from the world by a non-removable mask and who suffers from absolute memory loss.
Yes, amnesia is one of the worst screenwriting clichés imaginable, but given how much the authors have managed to tangle this banal premise, you can easily forgive them.
However, as is customary with Japanese games, you have to bite for the good for quite some time. The first ten to fifteen hours are basically just peer-reviewed, when you get to know the rules of the world around you and slowly form the foundations of a future party. The first person you meet on a long expedition to free Dahn from her tyrants is the beautiful Shionne. Although it is a dangerous sniper rifle, she walks around the game world on high heels and faces hordes of enemies in a sexy white skirt.
During your approximately fifty-hour journey, you will visit several completely different worlds.
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While last year’s remake of Final Fantasy VII tried to get as close as possible to the Western audience and perhaps except for the form of the protagonist, he left the typically Japanese stylization (see our review), The Tales of Arise makes no concessions from the long-established direction. It is a classic representative of the anime genre, which brings overexualized female characters, simple faces with huge eyes and small noses, oversized weapons and all the other visual attributes that can evoke the ignorant that it is just fun for young children. However, if you have a weakness for similar comic book processing, you will find yourself in the seventh heaven, because the graphics can be downright beautiful. Unlike most other games, the authors keep the best for later. While the introductory passage in the sand mines is still relatively unimaginative, in the third chapter at the latest, the Tales of Arise wrap you around your finger. The already impressive scenery is further enhanced by the smooth transitions between day and night.
The world of the game is not open, but fragmented into a series of many interconnected corridors. Some are strictly linear, others offer more freedom, but they are always compact and it is a pleasure to crawl through and through. Most of the time you will look at the back of an active hero as in a normal action adventure, the rest of the party appears only during story scenes or fights.
The fights are fast, but few are challenging.
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Unfortunately, there are too many of them for my taste and they stay away from more fun activities. What’s worse, every time you leave the map, all defeated enemies are regenerated. Thanks to the fact that their clusters are clearly visible even from a great distance and it is easy to teleport between all visited locations, it is not a problem to avoid them. Unfortunately, you can’t afford it often, because every point of experience will be useful.
In Tales of Arise, grinding does not reach the same level as in Xenoblade Chronicles (our review), nevertheless remains my main complaint against the game. The fact that it belongs to the genre from its beginnings is not an argument, the authors should try to change it in another way than forcing players to buy a 650 CZK more expensive ultimate edition, which brings a twenty percent increase in the speed of gathering experience. What’s worse, it occurs to me that the game is balanced on this “cheat” from the beginning, because even though I did the vast majority of side tasks (completely unimaginative), I came to each boss encounter a few levels weaker than him. I then had to make up for a significant deficit by repeatedly discharging long-defeated enemies. An alternative to grinding can be to activate the simplest difficulty, which will remove all the challenge from the fighting, but that would be a shame.
When special abilities are invoked, the game flashes and lights up like a night disco.
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The local combat system is quite good. At its core is purely action-packed, with your character waving a sword and dodging enemy attacks, but the tactical factor comes on the scene along with an ever-increasing supply of special attacks. You can map up to three at a time and allow you, for example, to throw an enemy into the air or hit everyone in a circle around you. Using them, you then charge a special indicator, opening the ultimate group attacks. You can take part in fights with up to three comrades-in-arms and switch between them smoothly, while the others are taken care of by quite decent artificial intelligence.
Most fights are a matter of only a few tens of seconds, and when returning to the initial locations, the visual effect of creating an improvised combat arena sometimes takes longer than the fight itself. However, your skills will not be sufficiently tested until you meet the bosses, when you will have to carefully show everything you have learned so far. I sweated a few times on the third difficulty out of four, but I didn’t notice the unloaded jam.
When you go to the next level, the characters automatically increase their statistics, and you can also manually invest in special bonuses. However, knowing their huge number is relatively difficult and their effect is rarely noticeable.
In addition to the main and secondary tasks, the game also contains a number of collectible minigames, which can really stretch an already decently long story campaign. You can look for lost owls, for which you get special equipment, grow cattle on the ranch, from which you can then cook various dishes temporarily improving statistics, collecting minerals then allows you to improve the weapons found or produce brand new ones. And what kind of Japanese game would it be if you couldn’t fish in it, right? While camping by the fire, you can also talk to your comrades-in-arms, but in this respect, the game does not reach the level of games from Bioware and is basically linear.
However, this does not hurt, on the contrary. Tales of Arise focuses mainly on storytelling and is excellent in that. If she catches you, you can hardly disengage from her. Thanks to the beautiful graphics, you can close your eyes even to an unnecessarily high number of fights, of which only a handful are worth remembering. Unless you’re the owner of playstations who are the only ones available for a remake of Final Fantasy VII, this epic RPG is the perfect gateway to the world of Japanese games.
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