Tales of Arise is the newest entry into the Tales of series. With the last few titles failing to live up to the juggernauts that were Tales of Xillia 1&2, how does Tales of Arise measure up and does it breathe some much-needed life back into this former innovator in the JRPG genre.

As an early warning, to talk about the good, great, bad and awful in Tales of Arise; a certain level of spoilers will be contained. So, take this as your spoiler warning. These are mainly centred around character development and potential story spoiler in chapter 3 of the game.

Tales of Arise is in an essence, exactly what it sets out to be. It is a revitalization of the series. You start off as Iron Mask, a Dahnan who cannot feel pain and has an iron mask covering his entire head. 300 years earlier, Dahna (the planet the game mostly takes place on) was invaded by Rena, a far more technologically advanced race of people from the neighboring twin world. Rena has brutally enslaved Dahna for the next 300 years, destroying their culture, their way of life and subjugating the entire race.

The basis of the story is what keeps the momentum flowing and is what makes the character interactions so interesting. Shionne being the first other playable character you get on your team, who is a Renan. She intends to bring down all the lords, and her reasons are kept well hidden. Over the next 40 or so hours you’ll journey through the 5 realms of Dahna and experience the twists and turns along the way.

Which brings me to my first point, the story. Tales of Arise is heavily story driven, and thankfully, the story is really well thought out, and really well developed, though there are definitely some typical ‘anime’ themes here. Thankfully, unlike issues seen in Tales of Zestiria, and Scarlet Nexus from earlier this year, the ‘anime’ story in Tales of Arise is far less off-kilter and runs to a much more logical progression. You will encounter resistance fighters fighting back against oppressive invading overlords, developing friendships and romance between the characters. Perhaps more importantly, you will see a logical progression of the world alongside the story and a true reaction and development of the characters in relation to the story. The story is really, really strong. I found myself constantly getting deeply invested, laughing at the flavour skits that develop the characters in relation to the events going on, and putting more and more time into the game.

There are lulls in the story development at times, and there are some things I felt could have been emphasized better, where as other things less so. The third area, Elde Menancia is one of the strongest story areas of the game, has some extreme focus on the less interesting aspects of the area, and a sort of glancing focus on the more interesting and in-depth areas of the story. It’s nothing major and may be a choice of development rather than an oversight, but there are definitely areas I wish had gotten more real focus.

The characters, both the playable and the NPCs of the world are super well fleshed out. Almost every character that is interacted with is well formed with a clearly defined personality. Particularly the first four major characters, Iron Mask, Shionne, Rinwell and for the sake of not ruining any story, a character I’ll refer to as L. The first four members of your party are super well thought out characters with incredibly in-depth personalities. Iron Mask goes through major characters shifts as the story progresses and you can see him struggling with the world around him. His anger is visceral at times, and he harbors a passion that makes total sense. Shionne is reserved and brackish, but she has a soft side to her. She protects herself because of a life of isolation and loneliness, but now has someone who can be around her, someone she can touch that doesn’t recoil in pain at her thorns. Rinwell and L are younger and behave accordingly. They have very black and white views of the world around them and at times behave immaturely. The final two characters of your team, whilst interesting, I found to be far, far less enthralling. They lack the interest of the other four. They seem more supplementary than anything, adding far less to the overall plot, but more an alternative viewpoint and an “older” voice. I wish there had been a little more love given to them to make them more interesting, but with the amount of development on just the main four, the number of skits would likely have been closer to 600 than 300.

The Tales series have always been known for interesting combat, with unique elements and innovative techniques. Tales of Arise has an amazing combat system. It feels quick, responsive and most importantly, is enjoyable. I played the game on Hard, and just as a word of warning. Hard is really tough, especially in the early stages. Most enemies at the start of the game were able to kill me in 2 or 3 hits, and with Gald (the currency of the game) being somewhat slow to build up, the revival items are not going to be in high supply early on. If you have the ultimate edition, that gives you a whole bunch of stat boost items and strong early game weapons, hard would definitely be my recommended difficulty. If not, I’d still recommend it, but just know the early portions might be rough, and you may find yourself needing to grind more regularly throughout the game because I found the exp required to level up is really high, for how little enemies seem to reward. There is definitely a grind here on harder difficulties.

The combat itself, however, is great, regardless of difficulty. Your ai controlled teammates behave as you wish them too. There are options to set AI priority, but I found the default setting more than sufficient. Each character has a unique fighting style, and their break abilities, which charge up over time all do effectively different things to make fights easier. Shionne can take down flying enemies, Iron Mask can build the break gauge up quicker, Rinwell can cancel enemy artes. Building the break gauge allows for really flashy break attacks that execute most enemies instantly. There is a unique one, between each character combination, all of which are pretty cool. The animations on them are amazing. The game overall is impressive visually, but the combat animations with the special artes, mystic artes and the break attacks are really on another level. There is very little in the game that doesn’t look like it was crafted with a personal touch of care and love, and the visuals make the game an absolute treat on the eyes.

Talking about visuals, the last point I’ll bang on about here, is the world design. Calaglia, Cyslodia, Elde Menancia, Mahag Saar and Ganath Haros are all very uniquely designed areas with their own touch of beauty to them. Calaglia being a desolate desert, Cyslodia a world plunged into eternal night with an old English gothic feeling covered in snow. Elde Menancia a green forest filled wonderland, Mahag Saar an old village feeling area, that ends up on a giant sea fortress. Ganath Haros is a crystalline future castle like town, with unbelievable architecture and a sense of tyranny and foreboding. The world is different everywhere you go, but everything is special. Everything is hand crafted to a beauty that should be seen as the standard for JRPG games.

In conclusion, Tales of Arise is one of the best entries into the series. They’ve innovated in a way not seen previously and have kept to a slightly more adult and “darker” story model that we saw with Tales of Berseria. The world is beautifully crafted, the gameplay is fun, flashy and visually impressive. The characters are enthralling, each deep in personality and make you want to keep learning more about them, plus the story is fantastic, well-thought out and logical. There are a few small issues, with Iron Mask’s real face being one of the worst things to look at in the game, hard being excruciatingly difficult early on, with an emphasis on grinding to be strong enough for the upcoming areas. Aside from these minor gripes, and some desires for some story beats to have been emphasized more, the game is a wonderfully crafted piece of work.