Roundup: Here's What The Critics Are Saying About Tales Of Arise

@SplooshDmg Tales of Arise honestly looks much better than Vesperia. I'm actually playing through Vesperia right now on the Switch and after 15 hours of playing it, it's just underwhelming. The voice acting is bad, the writing is poor and sometimes disjointed, the animations are bad, the combat is stiff and slow. It's even hard for me to care about the characters because they are your typical anime characters and their background is as generic as it gets.

I know I'm very negative about this game but after playing masterpieces like Persona 5 Royal and Trails of Cold Steel IV, I guess I'm just spoiled. Vesperia genuinely feels like a mediocre game to me. I'm more interested in playing Arise in all honesty.

As usual GameSpot has the lowest score.

I am having doubts about this game i dont know why.?

Except for octopath traveler, I have to admit my slow break away from JRPGs, but I habe been playing the since phantasy star 2 lit the fire, so maybe it's just the familiar feel that turns me off.

This is awesome news! I can't wait to play the game.

@SplooshDmg Yeah, there are just so many JRPGs coming out that you have to prioritise some games over others. I mean, a decade ago there were nowhere near as many JRPGs coming out here in the West and now we have a plethora of them. Now that I think about it, maybe that's why people love Vesperia so much because it came out during a time when there weren't that many JRPGs and it probably was many people's introduction to the genre, especially if you've only been an Xbox gamer. When there aren't that many other games to compare it with, a game will be perceived with much higher regard.

But yeah, Yakuza LAD seems like a good one, definitely looking forward to playing it. I'm going to be slowly working my way through Vesperia just because I want to finish it since it's my first Tales of game. Next JRPG I'll be playing will definitely be a better one, perhaps Xenoblade Chronicles or something like that.

Just pre-ordered it.

This was the main game that i was waiting for this year, and its finally here!!!

I’ll get to this after I finally finish Vesperia. Similar to other opinions in this comment section, I’m not so impressed with Vesperia but I’m determined to see it through. I did enjoy Berseria a bit which gives me hope for this game.

I'm quite happy about the good reviews, good news for the developer, the franchise and the genre.

How is it that so many people here didn't care for Vesperia? It's one of the seminal JRPGs. It has such a wonderful and charming story. Fun combo-action gameplay. Fantastically fun characters? How could anybody not love it?

@SplooshDmg Tales in general can come across as generic. But somehow Vesperia was a mix of great characters, and simple but fun gameplay. It's a bit old school, but I just loved it. Plus the set of actors made the characters so fun. Namely Yuri is just one of the coolest video game characters, and Estelle was such a perfect foil. The whole "the magic spirits are attacking the planet" thing is tried and true, but I think it's the character scenarios that made it so fun. It wasn't "great" in terms of gameplay, but it was kind of "mindless fun" for gameplay.

Star Ocean was great in the early PS2 era, but, man, it's kinda lousy after that.

LOL on FF7R. Then again, what part of the FF7 story was ever good or made even the smallest amount of sense? I mean the original was cool up to the Golden Saucer and "that scene", and then it just felt like a fanfic of it's own themes without any actual direction at all. And then they made Advent Children after that.

@NEStalgia I have a very hard time following the story. I just don't understand what our overall goal is. Yuri needs to find the Blood Alliance, we need to restore the blastia, this random evil guy needs to be stopped. It's just so hard to follow along because something else always comes along and interrupts the moment and suddenly we're on a completely different quest than we were before. The story is just all over the place, which isn't helping me stay motivated at all.

The combat is extremely basic. Mash the B button for your standard attacks, hold Y to defend and press A along with a direction to perform a special attack. Other than the "over limit" aspect, the combat doesn't change over the course of the game at all. It's just not fun, it's very repetitive and if you're going to try and make real-time battles then you have to nail the movement. But all you're doing is walking in a 2D plane and it's very janky. There is an option to move in 3D, but you can't attack while doing so. Not to mention that there are tons of difficulty spikes early on in the game and I've grown sick of them that I'm just going to put the difficulty on easy just so I can blast through the story.

I do like the variety of characters and it's nice to hear banter between them every now and then.They're just not very likeable characters.

I got back into Tales of Vesperia a few months ago and played deep into the game, probably close to the end. But long before I simply walked away again (other games were calling for my attention), it had reminded me of why I didn't finish it the first time around: its characters are largely uninteresting, much of the dialogue comes through those intrusive "talking heads" cutscenes, and the combat was literally just me running around and repeatedly mashing buttons (and I LOATHE ANY JRPG that has gone to this mechanic over turn and menu-based; that goes for the modern FFs as well). Sure there were some cool moments where Yuri crossed some lines and obviously that intro song/video, but as a package Vesperia was frankly mediocre.

That said, it's shaped my view of the Tales franchise in general, especially the combat, which I'm not at all interested in repeating through another 50-100 hour storyline. The trailers didn't convince me there's enough difference offered here to justify that $60, non-refundable investment.

@LtSarge honestly that's what I love about the story. Normal stories are these weirdly curated linear quests. Vesp works so much like real life. That's why Yuri is so relatable. You're on this quest to do this important thing, only to strumble into some other even more important thing, that then gets interrupted by some new problem and the resolution leads only to a new problem and then back to the original goal, byt then a new problem interrupts just, only to find that you're original problem doesn't even matter anymore and now there's 10 other problems and somehow you're in the middle of it, and everything you thought you knew is all wrong. To me that's the most real story of all. Everything in the real world goes that way. So it rings familiar to be. Relatable.

Combat yeah it's repetitive. I played Project X Zone 1 and 2. I'm used to repetitive gameplay I guess

And the difficulty spikes... Yeah, I hear that.

How far into the story are you?

@AtlanteanMan How is there no love for Raven in there?!

@SplooshDmg Never any love for Aeris.....

See, I loved Yuri. Kind of a samurai in spirit. And it's the best of Troy Baker. Well, Kyrat is probably his best role, bit this was his most engaging.

@NEStalgia I'm at the part where the dragon lady (Judy I think she was called) and Flynn have joined us. Some kind of tower with a bad guy with red armour at the top that we need to defeat. I'm about 17 hours into the game now so I still have quite a ways to go.

The only one I've played is Tales of Symphonia and I think it's quite enjoyable, engaging and sometimes funny. The combat is fun. The story drags a bit but gameplay is fine and it shines all the time. I bought Tales of Vesperia on Xbox but I haven't played it yet.

@SplooshDmg I couldn’t even get into vesperia at all as well, but I’m playing Arise now and am really hooked so far (already released in Japan). I actually had a hard time getting into any JRPGs recently except for FF7R and DQXI. The graphics of Arise alone already make it a lot more fun to play, as the world is a lot more convincing.

It’s actually quite comparable to FFXII, just more modern.

Did you try the demo?

@NEStalgia Yep that was how it was in Tales of Symphonia, too. The whole story feels quite real and the background/important story is not confusing nor easy to forget. I say this not having the best memory in the world, specially for studying and for following stories that don't hook me. The combat is simple but fun. I like both turn-based RPGs and action RPGs except when it doesn't work, e.g., Xenoblade Chronicles 1 where combat is confusing, overdone and chaotic so you just level up to deal with it. Xenoblade Chronicles X was a huge improvement and I still believe it's the best original Wii U game. Yes, better than Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and Breath of the Wild. And yes, I loved the story. Original and somewhat logical.

@SplooshDmg then you shouldn’t worry.
The demo was also a bit too much for me so I dropped it after a few minutes, but I still liked the combat system in general and the characters and world.

You will see that the game is ramping up quite nicely. Not too much information at once and also combat wise it is taking its time and I feel being well balanced in giving you a good sense of progress while not overwhelming you.

I think there is a good reason why this game is rated higher than most Tales of games. It was a bit of a gamble for me as well but so far I really like it.

Lots of interesting takes here. I've typically enjoyed most JRPGs and I found Tales of Vesperia to be pretty good. Haven't finished it, but I enjoyed the time I spent with it. FF7R was a superior game though in terms of both story and gameplay, but it's also a lot more modern. I also enjoyed the original FF7 (which I never even played until almost a decade after it released), but after playing FF7R, it's unlikely I'll ever play FF7 og again. Recently started FFX and it couldn't hold my attention for very long. Probably because the traditional FF formula just doesn't appeal as much to me anymore. I did really enjoy Octopath Traveler. The pacing and combat was interesting, and I'll probably pick up Bravely Default 2 at some point. Still working my way through DQ 11 and also want to start the Yakuza series at some point. Also, looking at Shin Megami Tensei V as well. We really are swamped with JRPGs these days.

Currently 52 reviews on Metacritic for the PS5 version but only 7 for Series X. Why does this happen?

@flurbdurb is there any particular reason they didn’t send you guys an Xbox copy (when they were sending Push Square a PS5 copy)?

@K1LLEGAL Quite often PlayStation codes are sent out for titles, with Xbox's coming weeks in advance. I'm not entirely sure why, but I suspect it's something to do with the game's been available to download first on that system. Sometimes Xbox are sent out at the same time, but more often than not it's usually PlayStation.

As an Xbox site, we don't feel it's fair to review the game on a different platform, just on the off chance there are any console specific bugs.

Sorry I couldn't give you a more definitive answer!

@BlueOcean Yeah XC1 had terrible combat. It was like a Naughty Dog game, you just get through the action to see the story. XC2 had a great combat system they never actually told you how to use....

@SplooshDmg I always thought it was weird because it was clear that Aeris was the "designated waifu" of the game, you were supposed to choose her at the Saucer, and "that scene" had most of its impact based on that. But the internet went crazy for Tifa instead.

Me? I'll never forgive Tifa. My level 20-something white mage just went down and you're telling me your namby pamby level 4 white mage butt is all I got? Those big.....hands had better shoot cura beams or I'm donating you to Shinra!

@Flurbdurb no that is fine - I appreciate your response so thank you. I’m glad you guys review the Xbox copies. And I saw Push Square holding off their Psychonauts review until they had the PS copy. Makes perfect sense.

Just always seems to be more reviews for Playstation, across the whole industry, no matter which game I look up. Just favouritism

@SplooshDmg Sorry, Tifa, I'm sure you'll enjoy meeting Jenova in the Mako reactor. I'm bringing Kos-Mos next time. Her huge....hands....have practical battlefield value rather than abandoning me in a hostile cave with no healer but the n00b and no restoratives when the actual white mage gets Aeris-ed.

Maybe in 7R-2 they'll Aeris Tifa and leave Aeris Aerith. I would delight in that retribution and fan rage.

No....hands.....no matter the size can make up for leaving me under attack in that cave with a worthless walking corpse healer.