Tales of Arise [XO, XBSX|S, PS4, PS5, PC, XGP]

[Dr. Nick]

Ok wanted to start off by saying it has been a really great game IMO. I'm about 9 hours in so far and I'm having a good time with it but I was already expecting to with a Tales of game. After not having a new Tales of game on the Xbox platform for over 10 years it has been really great being able to play a brand new entry in the series. One that uses an engine that everyone can agree is truly of this generation.
It's looking like this game will be a real hit. 54K active players on Steam right now. There is now a demo on Steam.

Alas I'm still having trouble with Quick Resume and this game. Hopefully its just my Xbox. I had to report it to Microsoft using the Report a Problem App. Hopefully it gets fixed. Though I will say that the game has been pretty much save anywhere even when a in dungeon so it has not been bad. You just can't save while in battle though I have not come a across any really log battles just yet. I would still like QR to be working properly though.

 

[pcchen]

Just played the steam demo. There were some control problems when I use fullscreen mode (borderless mode is laggy), but it went away after I switched off steam overlay (which is not very useful for a single player game anyway).

It runs pretty well in 4K on my 3080 Ti. Combat is also quite interesting at least in the short demo. Too bad it does not have co-op, but I’m definitely considering getting this.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Sword Art Online Collaboration Pack launches October 7th

 

[orangpelupa]

This games seems to be made to be similar to FFXV where the characters talks and interacts with each other as we explore the world, but only 1 character ever shown in the world. Really jarring coming from FFXV. The amounts of invisible walls also felt very dated.

Is this game was being made since quite long time ago?

It runs pretty well in 4K on my 3080 Ti.

Yes this game is very light. Even with

• modded NPC and enemy distance (so they didn't have very late pop in)
• modded higher field of view

it runs at 720p 40++ fps on my potato of Ryzen 4500U laptop hahaha (and rock solid 30fps on 1080p)

 

[Dr. Nick]

For a Tales this this game had been in development for a long time. 5 years but might have been released in 2020 if it were not for the pandemic. If it had been released in 2020 it would have been straight PS4 Xbox One game, so I am glad that they took some extra time with it.

 

[mr magoo]

isnt all jrpgs very dated in their design? Before tales i played ni no kuni2 which was relased in 2018 and still playes pretty much the same as old snes jrpgs. With that being said i have to admit that new tales is the best jrpg i have played since ff7 on psx imo.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Tales of Arise was the 4th best selling game in the US behind Madden 2022(not surprised), Fifa22, and 2k22. Before the game launched I had forgotten about all of the other sports games releasing around this time of the year. They are just as big of a time suck as JRPGs are so at first I was thinking to myself that it was a mistake to try to take those sports games on. It still seems to have worked out though.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1450083625664270337

 

[orangpelupa]

isnt all jrpgs very dated in their design? Before tales i played ni no kuni2 which was relased in 2018 and still playes pretty much the same as old snes jrpgs. With that being said i have to admit that new tales is the best jrpg i have played since ff7 on psx imo.

I really like with how the characters took a jab on it, without breaking the 4th wall

• Mind numbing side quest : characters comments how ridiculous it is to try to help everyone
• Invisible walls : characters ALMOST NON STOP saying that it'll be scary / bad if fall over, saying to be careful to not fall. But when the player do fall over, the character cleverly comments AND COMPLAINS why the heck character x deliberately jumps over!
• There are many more but it directly intertwined with the story so it'll be heavy spoiler

Btw they did this via low budget skits and voice-only utterances. So some people may missed them if they didn't pay attention or didn't activate the skits.

Unlike FFXV with in-gameplay characters that roams besides you.

 

[orangpelupa]

tales of arise 2nd half is very lazily made

- tons of "tell" instead of "show"
- lots of transitory scenes missing
- lots and LOTS of reused level design/map/arena/room
- more and more corridors!
- high frequency of reused enemies (just different name / color)
- lots and LOTS of padding (forced to talk to 5 person MANUALLY, forced to WALK BACK instead of allowing the use of fast travel)

feels like 2nd half was made without enough development time. Maybe they were polishing the 1st half way too much? Most of 1st half was done before covid while most of 2nd half was done while covid?

btw the weird thing is that some pre-rendered scenes in 2nd half actually have PROPER lip-sync for english dub.

 

[orangpelupa]

just finished it.

ooookay... now im absolutely sure this game was rushed / got development issue due to covid or something.

still a good game overall, especially if you stop playing on the end of the 1st half (then it will be blatantly incomplete but you got good experience)

 

[mr magoo]

just finished it.

ooookay... now im absolutely sure this game was rushed / got development issue due to covid or something.

still a good game overall, especially if you stop playing on the end of the 1st half (then it will be blatantly incomplete but you got good experience)

bad news, i think im pretty far at leat 50% atm and so far i really like the game.

 

[orangpelupa]

bad news, i think im pretty far at leat 50% atm and so far i really like the game.

i really liked the game too. hopefully the 2nd half's "rush/cuts/economic designs" wont be too obvious for you.

i just read steam forums and it seems most people didn't notice the "rush/cuts/economic designs" in the 2nd half. Even with the game being so blatantly being cut (mostly transitional scenes), and filled with padding + reuse, including around the last boss battle.

my speculation of the ending, spoiler:

Spoiler

my suspicion is that the game originally has a different ending and has a 3rd part or epilogue.
the blatant filler boss around the end boss fights was used to make the removal of the 3rd part or the epilogue make sense.

WARNING: FULL-ON SPOILER:::::

maybe (full-on tinfoil hat mode, as i have not dug into the game files to look for cut contents or dummied stuff) originally the end boss fights did not get interrupted by the filler boss (voltron?) that came crashing into the party out of nowhere. Thus

1. the party did the original plan with renas alma, trapping rena's astral energy into it and making it loss its will. THE END
2. then the game goes to the 3rd part / epilogue... scenes shown in the ending credits slideshow are presented in gameplay.
3. Doing their own lives, the party (maybe rinwell with the alien-34? maybe even the will of dhana spoke to them on the point #1) investigates why the heck the world was split into two in the first place, and how to merge the worlds into 1.
4. the party joins once more to merge the worlds into 1.

thus these will be part of the 3rd part / epilogue

• the 4 orbs of astral energy that crashed into dhana (currently they are just 4 optional bosses, not being talked AT ALL in the current game after the party got confused what are those)
• the plot with the alien-34 that suddenly got totally dropped in the current game
• the plot with how the renans were actually dhanans, and how the lenegis became a housing place.

btw on the last battle with voltron, alphen cant even die. really weird. felt like the battle was tacked on, and to avoid issues, simply make alphen cant die there.

EDIT:
turns out I'm really forgetful. Managed to enable the console command on tales of arise... then.... turns out i forgot all of unreal engine console commands ROFL.

it should allows loading / playing of cut maps, debug maps, etc. As I've done it multiple times in the past with other unreal engine games. IIRC the latest one I managed to get into was "tales of wedding rings VR" on Unreal Engine 4, that turns out the missing scenes that were shown in old trailers, are partially still in the game. Probably square enix didn't get enough time so they cut the game short.

 

[Remij]

just finished it.

ooookay... now im absolutely sure this game was rushed / got development issue due to covid or something.

still a good game overall, especially if you stop playing on the end of the 1st half (then it will be blatantly incomplete but you got good experience)

I'm about 60h in, finished the game and am working on post game content, and yea the first half of the game is definitely better than the later portion. After that, you basically get bombarded with scene after scene with massive amounts of story exposition... it's wayyyy too much. Not only that, the first half of the game has you in absolutely gorgeous environments, all very lovingly detailed and beautiful... but then certain areas feel like they've been rushed and had no where near the same level of care put into them.

Still though, I really enjoyed the game. LOVE the combat despite the potential of being too repetitive at times and some enemies being a bit too tanky (and this goes double if you don't understand the games mechanics to defeat enemies efficiently), but there's a lot of good in there. It just feels fun to play.. and I've honestly fought almost every battle.

The DLC practices of the game are somewhat annoying though. I have no problem with "pay-to-win" in single player games... just so long as the games aren't designed around pushing you to do it. And with Arise, I don't feel like anything in the main game would really push a person to feel they needed these additional perks... but the way they push the DLC on you, right in the game (during camp sequences) was annoying... but I guess that's been par for the course for Tales games for a while now.

Anyway, overall I give it an 8, or even 8.5. I really liked the characters, the battle system, and the beautiful visuals. The story was mediocre, typical fair I should say. The 2nd half story dumps are a little too much though.. If the story had been a bit more interesting, and the 2nd half of the game better paced.. then it would have been 9/10.

 

[orangpelupa]

managed to load a map from console command and see the 4 direction dev placeholder

so the cities are

• asterik (cyslodia)
• Augusta
• Lenegis
• Mit
• Saternas
• Vehicle (the big-ass ship is here)
• York

The "root locations" are

• Asterik (cyslodia)
• Augusta
• ETC (other/owl sanctuary is here)
• Island
• Lena (Rena)
• Lenegis
• Mit
• Saternas
• Space
• Vehicle
• York

 

[Dr. Nick]

Adding this video here because it is on topic for those who might want to continue the discussion.

It did take DF a while to post a comparison of this game. In fact I expected there to be a great deal of console comparison videos during the launch of this game but the only ones I found were mostly across a family of consoles rather than multiplatform.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Tales of Festival starts tomorrow the 19th. I don't think any new console titles will be announced there, but maybe some downloadable content for Arise. Just giving a heads up, not saying anything is going to happen.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Tales of Arise 1.04 Update Introduces Old-Gen to New-Gen Save File Transfer, Support for New DLC, Stability Improvements and More (wccftech.com)

The 1.04 update finally adds a PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5 and Xbox One to Xbox Series X|S save file transfer feature, finally letting users upgrade to the current-generation versions without having to start the game from the beginning. The update also adds support for the new Hootle Doll Pack DLC and brings general stability and performance improvements and some unspecified minor bug fixes.

This and Scarlet Nexus received updates yesterday. Tales was around 2.2GB and Scarlett Nexus 4.56GB on the Xbox Series. Not directly related because it seemed to be fixed before the update, but Quick Resume seems to be stable now. I will have to test it more before I can say it won't crash on you. It is too bad that it was not stable closer to launch though.

 

[Dr. Nick]

New DLC. The DLC is for both Tales and Scarlet Nexus, but I won't be bumping the Scarlet Nexus Thread for this as supposedly they already released the ultimate edition that did not include this DLC.
Tales of Arise x Scarlet Nexus collaboration DLC announced - Gematsu

 

[Dr. Nick]

Both Scarlet Nexus and Tales were updated last night. Did not see the Tales update happen but the Scarlet Nexus update was about 503 mb on the Series.
Tales of Arise version 1.05 update now available, adds Scarlet Nexus collaboration items - Gematsu
Scarlet Nexus version 1.08 update now available, adds Tales of Arise collaboration items - Gematsu

 

[Dr. Nick]

4Gamer has what appears to be an extensive interview with the character designer for the game in Japanese of course. I trust we will get more details in the coming days, but the concept art is really interesting. It looks like the designs were...a bit meaner looking before they settled of the final designs.

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