Sorry to keep you all waiting. As a long time fan no part of this was easy. From beating the game, to writing the script to editing the video it all took a massive amount of time. Hopefully you all enjoy! Special thanks to Gilluria for helping me out where I was flying blind and filling in a section of the video I couldn't do entirely on my own (DLC Implementation) If you'd like to see more of him check him out on twitch or youtube (He's playing Yakuza 7 on twitch right now! Ye ye!) www.twitch.tv/Gilluria kzfaq.info

yo real talk? this review kicked ass. lots to say on the game and you threw it all out there in a digestible, entertaining way. loved hearing your thoughts the whole way through along with all of your informed, valid points. great work man!

This is such a well-made review, love all the puns, hope you get more subscribers!

While the series lost of a lot of its colorful charm, it was really nice to see that the subject matters aren't brushed aside anymore and given proper weight. It felt somewhat refreshing. It was kinda nice to go from Symphonia casually brushing labor camps aside to Arise really trying (keyword trying) to give weight to the plight of the characters and world in due fashion. Great video, my dude! And thanks again for having me!

Awesome review! Happy Holidays!

Great video as always, as soon as I saw it pop I was excited to see you do a combat deep dive, and it didn't disappoint. Cheers!

Great review! Really appreciate the lack of spoilers. Curious to see where people would rank Arise among the Tales series.

Kisara putting the butt in “combutt” 😂 Thanks for another amazing review Tarks! I think I have to sit on this one some more or maybe do a replay of Abyss, but I’m pretty confident in saying that Arise is easily in my top 3 Tales of game and challenging for the top spot.

This is the best review on KZfaq! And I truly do think I’ve seen 90% of em. You have the ability to contextualize what’s new & what’s missing amongst your knowledge of how the series has developed for quite some time! I’m amongst those who wanted all the costumes, but also wanted them to be solely cosmetic. When I’m ready, I’ll get all the cute costumes I want & start the game on hard mode. With Caligula2, SMTV, and my backlog to keep me busy, Im okay playing on PC sometime next year and seeing what treats modders have built. Thanks again!

Excellent in-depth review, as usual. As a long time Tales fan, it's nice to see it getting more mainstream recognition (and sales) with this title, hoping that will translate into remakes/remasters/collections becoming a reality, especially for the jp-only releases. The DLC implementation didn't bother me in the slightest, only cave in and bought the costume set that had Mia Karnstein and Nina Williams cameo outfits. I can definitely see Gilluria's complaint about having to manually exclude the huge Sp boosts when claiming them, I like to play as intended /wo help from DLC/cheats as well for the first (hard mode) playthrough. I was hoping for Go Shiina to compose for this new era of Tales as well, his work in Zestiria and Legendia are the best in the series, but this Ost is the best I've heard Sakuraba do for Tales. Another hope was for us finally getting online co-op like in Bamco's God Eater games. Maybe next time... Overall, my favourite single-player, single playthrough of Tales so far, enjoyed the heck out of the game and Platinumed it as well. Tales of Graces takes the cake for multiplayer gameplay ofc, Abyss in story and character development and beforementioned titles for Ost, but overall Arise is the best rounded game in my opinion. And finally it's Tales game that I don't have to preface my recommendation with a "but it's got -- issues" .

Lots of these comments are correct - This is one of the best reviews on YT. Thank you for making this one. I really like the long reviews!

Great review Tarks, I watched this on my PS4 and couldn’t leave a comment earlier :D

Really solid review thanks for the time and passion you put into making this I’m new to the channel and look forward to watching more! I got into tails of arise bc I just got platinum in star ocean the last hope( it was an absolute blast but a nightmare) so I wanted games that were similar, and this popped up! first tales game I’m excited I’m going to pick it up at GameStop now!

Having just beat Arise's main story, i gotta say, i loved it. Idk if it's my fav, but i def loved it.

Wow! A really well done review Tarks! I can only get this game on ps4 but I can't wait to play this entry. I've been a fan of the series since....idk... like forever. 😊

Notes about the combat: you can swap between characters with L1 and the d pad (if you mentioned this I missed it), which lets you swap characters mid combo for combo extensions after your Arte gauge and normal attacks run out, provided you are good enough at positioning. More importantly, this means you can hotswap to a character to queue an Arte, then swap off to another character to fight/queue an Arte with them, so on and so forth. A note about Kisara; she has an Arte that moves her the distance the other character's she's move them, and you can cancel the ending attack animation of it. Still found her suck too play, only I was going defense.

I am new to the tales series. The at-the-time upcoming release of this game motivated me to go back and play an earlier title, and after checking some reviews (primarily Tarks) I settled on Berseria. While I found the combat to be...serviceable at best, the story, characters, and world of Berseria had me absolutely enraptured. I finished it right before Arise came out, and I was playing arise day one. Holy shit, I don't think I've ever seen a game series that had such a dramatic overhaul to combat that improved so drastically upon what came before in every single way. The combat in Arise had me hooked from the first fight and never once felt boring to me. It feels like a single player MMO but like, a more modern mmo, not something like wow. I'm in my late 20s, finished a degree at my local community college a little while ago and it took until the internship in my final semester to realize that while I enjoyed learning the material in a classroom actually working in the environment of the career path I had chosen did not appeal to me in the slightest. I've been trying to figure out what it is I want to do with my life, and this game made me realize that I want to write about video games. When I get a chance I'm going to write an epic essay from my not entirely but somewhat unique perspective.

I have no problem with the CP healing system. I'm actually quite fine with using a collective pool that gets refilled instead of individual TP from the past. Rather, my problem with healing comes from the EXTREME cost of orange gels. Which are practically unaffordable throughout most of the game until the 5th lord's castle. Then they are *technically* affordable if you farm dogtags from human guards, but only just. And you WILL blow through an absolutely obscene amount of orange gels just getting through both haves of that very, very, VERY long dungeon. Orange gels should have cost 1/10th the amount so as to make them refillable. This wouldn't impact in battle healing one bit, but WOULD make dungoen crawling dramatically easier and not require wary players to teleport back to a campsite to heal and crawl back through. Healing leads me to the DLC and one of the MAJOR issues you never address. Dohalim is only able to get an area heal move through purchased DLC. A move he VERY much could benefit from due to certain plot events I won't spoil. It's not impossible to play without it, but it would have helped A LOT to have him learn it naturally by leveling before then or by skill grid that he'll get automatically (rather than via filling out requirements). Not including this move is an OBVIOUS push to sell DLC. Every custom is just a pointless reskin that people can waste money on. Even the extra arts aren't terribly impressive or needed. But his Fairy Circle healing art is a MAJOR healing spell that they left out intentionally to score extra dough. It's pathetic and disgusting. Finally, battle wise, they really needed to improve Dohalim's healing AI, given one more character some healing moves (to have two healers and a backup healer so that Shionne doesn't HAVE to be in 24/7), and give Rinwell all of the fire, earth, wind, water, and lightning spells. ESPECIALLY the intro spells, right from the very beginning. I mean, she's supposed to be a freakin' uber-mage, but she felt very limited to what she could cast. Even after getting a *few* extra spells after the 4th lord. They really needed to load her up and give her even more mixing spells. "Tales of Vesperia" had a ton of spells that could easily be used as the 2nd and 3rd tier spells she could mix and match. It's such a letdown that they didn't use her to her true potential. Otherwise, the game was fun. Not the best, but a solid 7.5-8.1. Good game. Not enough to say everyone needs to play it. But well done and able to draw in fans new to the series.

I'm happy that you included all the other tales. I recently just brought tales of grace f , symphonia on my ps3. So I have 6-7 tales games if you count xilla 1&2 as separate but really same game so 6. I'll also not repeat what I said the last video since it's mentioned here.

I stopped when that thing came down on the ocean, i was just so tired, might one day go back to it

Great great review dude

I've played Symphonia for probably 1000 hours and Vesperia a few times through and I love the way the series has advanced since playing the demo. I'll pick it up this weekend

I have an interest in mental health and from that perspective, this game did an AMAZING job showcasing true mental health. The wisdom was very accurate almost all of the time and the problems that the characters had and actually grew from was super indicative of real life. The things they learned and the conversations they had in so many skits especially held so many real life lessons in them. Anime tends to do this type of thing a lot, but Tales of Arise did it with such accuracy and clear explanations and reasoning. I've never seen a game or anime do that to this level. There was even a side quest where an npc mentioned the importance of mental health. The writers clearly had a huge interest in mental and emotional health, and they used the knowledge they have to write their story, and potentially help people in the process. This really surprised me and put this game over the top for me.

My honest take on Tales of Arise. Considering it's the first one since Berseria almost 5 years ago, it is a refreshing new entry to the series. While I have my occasional gripes about it, especially with the spongey enemies and heavy use of palette swaps it's not bad. The gameplay definitely felt different than any of the Tales games I've played in the past, and the story did pretty well at showing the severity of the Renan rulers in Dhana. If you railroaded the game, you could easily beat it in about 40-50 hours, but with good casual exploration and sidequest completion, 60 hours is a good point. Post game has nothing super special in my eyes, but has some great references to either earlier Tales staples with elemental spirit names, or the standard you find in Tales of games with cameos. Especially taking the time and talking with Gill helped put some thoughts forward and organized what I was unsure about at points. In terms of favorites, Abyss and Vesperia still hold my number 1 spot, with Symphonia, Hearts R, Xillia 1/2, Berseria, and Arise holding a solid point in the top of the list too. Graces f is still on the to do list along with some of the earlier entries in the series like Legendia or Eternia.

The only thing I really missed was a world map, not the one you walk in, but anything would be good, like Berseria's kind of map, just to illustrate. I often found myself wanting to find a place, but wasn't remembering the name....

And here i thought i was the only one that reminds me of Back to the Future of that little OST lol. I played hard mode from start to finish without DLC and that forces me to grind more to sell stuff, gather ore, Materials for Weapons and gain SP to fight early bosses cause i do have a hard time during the 2nd lord than most. I enjoyed to use Rinwell the most out of the six cause i build her to be a fast caster that spams Magic to hit multiple enemies with lots of hits that makes it easier to build Boost Strikes to attack enemies and also to stun them so that my allies can easily attack without getting hit to much. I really wanna hear your thoughts about the 2nd half of the game where it suddenly became a skit by skit to revelation after revelation with less combat and exploration that forces many to skip some skit cause of it. Overall this was an enjoyable entry i must say but out of the 2 recent "Tales Of" game then i put Berseria above Arise in Story and Chracters while Arise winning massively with it's Gameplay mechanic and overall world graphics.

Amazing review as always. I just got the platinum myself last week. While not my favorite Tales of game. I do think that the game is greater then the sum of its parts and falls in the upper echelon in the series, at least for me. The game was an absolute joy to play and I think we can expect great things in the next couple entries.

I haven't finished Arise yet, but I have definitely been enjoying it, though I definitely do have a few gripes, most of which you outlined in the video (growls loudly at having to squish the Touchpad for the menu with *nothing* mapped to triangle) and I'm not a huge fan of Sakuraba's overly blown-out orchestral field music, though this is hardly new. Also, playing this on a PS4 Slim, the console sounds like it's going to take off into the stratosphere xD All that aside, I'm definitely excited to see where the series is going next, though I hope that new direction brings a touch more whimsy and charm, and some more classic Tales features. We miss you, Sorcerer's Ring! P.S. The pay-off for the Back to the Future joke had me laughing my arse off

there is a wedding sub-quest in ganath haros where it seemed they tried to voice it but a lot was a fraction of what was written in the textbox. and it kinda confused me. because some sentences were correct and they clearly recorded it only for that occasion.

Anyone know in what program are made skits?

Nice. It took me 76 hours as well to platinum. The end game content made it easy to level up to 100. My biggest concern was that. Rinwell was my favorite. Tales of Berseria was my favorite still this was a wonderful game however.

Great video brother. My 2021 GOTY

so many tales games. which should i start ?

Holy crap I finally know why that music sounded so familiar. Freaken back to the future.

Would you recommend it to someone who doesn't play JRPGs a lot. I got it on sale, and want to get into the genre.

Only played a little bit of Vesperia but I already know I'm gonna love going through the past and future titles. Only thing putting me off is the dlc of the later games seems a bit much.

Great review.

As someone who only dabbled in some of the previous entries, I really enjoyed this one, AND played Kisara a lot. So that has to say something about bringing in some new players into the series.

Awesome review! Loved the combat and story of Arise, but didnt quite get hooked as much storywise as I did in Graces. One thing that Bugged med was that alot of the inntresting and cool weapons and artes, came close to the very end of the game. Didnt get to play around with them to much, as I didnt feel like starting ng+

Awesome review Tark ty! Unfortunately my fiance has made me aware that she got me this for Xmas this year... So I have to wait... I'm dying atm lol 🤤🤣

I will play it eventually. As odd as it is the tales games came to my radar pretty late. It wasn't until my parents bought me Xillia for christmas one year I actually played it despite knowing about the series in the early 2000s

My solution to the SP drop would to just be never spend SP to where you're lower than the SP that you got from the DLC. Wouldn't that fix the issue? at least in terms of progression.

I've played many Tales-games during my life (and I definitely see myself as a JRPG-nerd) but Tales of Arise is the first one that I've managed to finish. I've always lost interest/started playing another game before finishing it, but Tales of Arise was so easy to just quick save/sleep and pick up again on the PS5 that I could motivate myself to play it for a short amount of time when I had the chance. I also love the combat gameplay and especially the boss fights and I'm playing through the post-game right now =) I will definitely try to pick up and play through the other games when I get the chance/time.

I've never finished a Tales game. This one interested me from the initial trailer. May need to pick it up sometime.

Just played Arise. I was drawn in by the Expansion. It was my first Tales game. The first few hours were bewildering. But suddenly i was addicted to the game and head over heels in love with the characters. Especially Alphen. He seems so generic and overly heroic, untiil you learn who he is. Then he becomes one of my favourite protags. Its refreshing to have a loving positive non-emo character. And a happy ending too! Yay.

I'm really enjoying the game, some fights can be freaking epic. But I will admit that I'm disappointed about the exclusive DLC artes not so much about the costumes. I understand costumes under pay walls but new artes and mystic artes? Those should be unlockable via a side quest like the secret masters at tales of the abyss where Luke, Guy and Natalia could learn some of their best moves and outfits

Every time I listen to a review from a superfan of a franchise, I take it with a big grain of salt.

Dude I only own a average PC, and I don't play a lot of RPGs, but the depth of these reviews is excellent! I don't get why, but this channel deserves so much more! Keep up the good work!

I think that if they made the battle system in a way that all characters were present during battle (all 6 instead of the classic 4 front and 2 back) it would justify the spongy enemies better and also be more unique to the typical Tales games. But I also understand that they probably didnt want to deviate much from common gaming formulas inside their franchise. I have seen how that tend to end, and usually, doesnt end well.

Great, great review.

The best Tales of game since Graces F for me. I really did enjoy this entry, love this new Tales of era.

Not being able to attack in the overworked feels really odd, after having played Xenoblade and SMT

"Are you watching 'Back to the Future?!'" "No, some of the music just sounds... oddly familiar..." LMFAO! I thought the same thing too!!!

Late but still an good review as always! Can we except a review for The Good Life or it's not something you're interested in?!

Omg me too!!! Tales of Symphonia started my Tales of obsession and has been my most re-played game of all time- only beaten by Donkey Kong 64 lol.

I loved this game's story!

I can't wait for teranigma or soul blazer to make a remake. Both were so good

Are there any spoilers in this video? Before I watch.

u guys were able to finish this game?

Hum Dana and Rena are the planets, Leneggis is the Satelite. The combat, i played on Moderate, and on that difficulty, it is requires of you to undertand the game mechanics. I really enjoyed it, and it became my favorite in the series. (Prior to it, my favorite was Tales of the Abyss)

Why is no one talking about NEEDING to find all the owls to use your items and levels in new game plus.

The best JRPG i purchase in a long time, and goddamn if the difficult feel actually awesome thanks to QoL retry feature. Also, Kisara tick every box i have lol, pretty much play this game for her, though, i did stay for a lot other great reason.

I only bought the costume title DLC halfway through the game and it really didn't make much of a difference. The total 1,800 SP you get from the costume titles was only enough to unlock 1 node on the DLC title. The SP needed for them is insane. It evens out in the end.

My problem with CP is that half of Alphen’s battle style *relies* on *hurting himself* to fight effectively (essentially Final Fantasy’s Dark Knight job); meaning that you’re *constantly* going to burn through CP to keep him healthy. So what did I do? *I permanently benched him.* I wasn’t going to sit there and have him hog my resources (that I NEED to access map content btw) just to… *function.* So my team was *always* Law, Rinwell, Shionne, and Kisara. (Sorry Dohalim… Law’s my main and I need to keep my Magic DPS, Healer, and Tank.)

Congratulations.

The difficulty comes from the bad ai getting itself killed constantly which isnt good difficulty

Great game. Got all the trophies except for the fishing one. Something about catching 44 fish makes me think "no, i'd rather not..." but eventually i'll do it in a NG+ since it's the only trophy I need for the platinum. I do gotta say though, whoever designed the dungeons has a serious elevator fetish. If I wasn't finding elevators, I was finding AND fixing elevators. I appreciate the relatively straight-forward dungeon design, but man...elevators lol.

Just bought this game during a playstation sale $35 for my ps5 and I love it so far. This will be my only second Tales game i played. The previous one was Beseria and I think this game so far with only 20 hour gameplay is so much better. The one knock on the game is that you are correct, the graphics and performance is like last gen. I downloaded the ps5 version not the ps4 version and I dont think there is a difference. I hope the next tales game they will be using the newer game engine instead of Unreal Engine 4. The Unreal Engine 5 is already out for next gen

I had a total blast with the game and didnt put it down until I fully completed it. Definitly agree the story is the weaker point. Well that and the enemy reskins including bosses was excesive.

I feel like I've told this story before, but my history with Tales of was basically "Okay, I'm gonna buy the next NEW game that comes out" which ended up being the crossover title Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology on the PSP. So naturally I had no idea what was happening and quickly abandoned the series and haven't touched it since. But it's always cool to see diehard fans share their love for it, as you have today. My good chum.

great review bruh. loving ToA so far

If you're looking for an over the top character like Magilou.... Nope, that is the opposite of what I was looking for. Thank God! I have been trying to get into Tales games for some time now, and my last go was Berseria and I put the game down eventually due to the annoyance of her character and voice acting. So far I am absolutely LOVING Arise, though that could still change as I'm pretty early on having just gotten Rinwell. There's def still some cheese, but it's so nice that it's more grounded.

This review deserves more views, you have touched the most important positives and negatives of the game. Tales of Arise is my 3rd tales games (after Vesperia and Berseria). I actually liked the Arise ALOT about 20-30 hour into the game and is convinced this is the best Tales game yet for me. However the story really fells off for me right after the arguable most impactful and shocking scene, I was pumped after seeing the scene and like wow the devs are really doing it, but the next scene just shoot us back to reality by a forced hard turn to remind players that this is an anime story for children. Its really a shame, as from Vesperia we know that protagonists that is not pure good or evil can be much more appealing. The combat is my favorite after abit of letdown by Berseria and combat itself carried the 2nd half of the game.

There is one important question you didn't answer in this review. Are you in camp Shionne or camp Kisara? 🤔

Back to playing Arise! I like how the game only gives you what you need to move forward. I can't just potion through my battle's I have to play well. Story is ok. I actually want to play the game, which helps.🤪

17:16 YOOOOOOOOO LOL

I think Graces and Vesperia is more in the 3rd era. Graces F was the last game to have cutsces by production IG. The last game to hqve been made by the separate teams. And if Graces and Vesperia is I the 3rd era it would make more sense because that was the era (regarding orginal Japanese relases) when you wouldn't know what system the next game would be for. Xillia being the start of the fourth era would work because it was the first of 4 games using the PS3 as the common denominator. They currently are the only four games where the main cast different character designers.

I loved JRPGs so much when I was a kid/teen but now I can't bring myself to play any of them. I've tried really hard to enjoy them but I'll start a JRPG then lose interest immediately after a few hours. I sometimes wonder if it's because western RPGs like KOTOR, Baldur's Gate series, Fallout, Elder Scrolls had made me bored of JRPGs but I still binge watch anime for weeks at a time because I like the stories. Shouldn't JRPGs be similar? Just an anime with play mechanics and a really long story? Any advice for a veteran JRPG fan to get back into JRPGs? I believe the last JRPG I could not put down was Final Fantasy tactics. It's been that long.

What is your favourite modern JRPG.

I only bought the costumes because of the titles and skills, I typically don't buy purely cosmetic dlc because it doesn't add anything to the game itself

O just finish it last monday, my next will be dq xi

The most detailed review. Love it. 👍

I think that lying through omission would had worked better and more interesting for alphen than the "I have amnesia" trope.

I only have a ps4 to play this game .dose anyone know if its just as good .no I dont want a ps5 yet im waiting a few years for a price drop and a slim version

Kisara is actually ez mode once you master her imo. I switched to her around midgame and never went back to Alphen.

Liked your in depth look at the game. For me it feelt a bit mainstreamed cus I sucessed geting all of the achievements for the game with minimum hardship. Cus can't even 100% Tales of vesperia so it feelt Arise was also for the newcomers to the series. But liked what I got to play. Just Sad there is no cool big dlc for the game

Tales of the Abyss is still my favourite

You deserve a like bro. I watched the whole thing

I've been following your channel for awhile now but it's only recently I learned Tales of is your favorite franchise. I find it interesting that your introduction to the series as well as your thoughts on the franchise overall mirrors my own pretty well. However I suppose I'm a lot more cynical about the recent state of things and I've lost a lot of faith in series. I definitely find Tales of Arise to be a step up in a lot regards in terms of gameplay specifically compared to other recent titles. However the things we've lost as you said have really made me feel like my love for the series has really died down. Funnily enough following you and your channel introduced me to the Trails series which is now my new favorite JRPG series.

I noticed you said combat is inspired by dark souls but I thought it was much more like star ocean + dodge roll from dark souls

Tales of Vesperia was the game that got me into the series, that game is oozing with charm that hasn't been replicated yet

they need to make Tales of Gintama in this new era of tales series.

If your like me and you care more about combat and progression than you do about story and characters, then arise is definitely the best game of the English released games on the playstation platform, well at least since 2002, for reference I've played Symphonia, legendia, abyss, vesperia, hearts r, graces f, xillia 1, xillia 2, Zestiria, berseria and arise

Get it for the Ouya 🤣

You got a story fact wrong: Lenegis isn't a planet. The counterpart of Dahna is Rena.

I really enjoyed the game. I found the writing to be great, and in the modern age it was refreshing to get a traditional approach that wasn't woke. I wasn't a huge fan of the combat and totally agree with battles taking too long. The characters weren't as loveable as past games (Norma and Pascal are still my favorite characters ever), but everyone was decently likeable. The ending though was anti climatic. Overall a great entry to the series. I've really struggled finish the more recent Tales games, but I easily dropped 80hrs on this game and got all the trophies.

Dana Iclucia!! X]

Uhhhh not gonna clarify but there's a pretty major spoiler early on here. Maybe if you haven't played it you won't notice but, yeah if you've finished it you know what I'm talking about.

Played the demo yesterday and bought it today with ladies beach costumes, obviously. Best dlc ever, if you're gonna watch shaking ass for hundreds of hours, why not beautiful ass?

I can’t seem to get past the point where the combat feels button-mashy…or maybe I’m doing it wrong, but it doesn’t feel very satisfying to me. I tried to love a few other tales games and it was the same thing