Soon there will be a DLC of Tales of Arise, which is kind of surrpising because the base game got release 2 years ago. Our Lemmy community is new, so you can't go back 2 years and look, what people thing about the game, so here would be the thread for that.

Story:

As the sequel of Tales of Berseria, which is like for it's story, Tales of Aris need to have a good story or people just say, Tales of Berseria is better. I guess that happened.

The story of Tales of Aris start decent. Each of the 3 first region of the game tells the story of 2 characters of the cast of 6 characters. And conflicts about slavery and how to break out or a city that suppresses their citicents, etc. are good. Sure these small secontion of the game are just a part representing the main story of the game, so i would say the main story is to free the supress Dhana from the more advance socity of Rena. If they told the story toward that goal it could be good, but at the end the story falls apart telling a story that could be out of Nomura's (works at KH) head.

So my opninion, half of the story i fine and enjoyable, for the last part you need to turn you brain out to like it.

Gameplay:

For those that know modern Tales of game, there isn't much new to say about Tales of Arise. It's an action battle system that uses a lot skills for options to approach the enemy. But you are restricted to some kind of stamina bar. If you have use to much attacks, you need to run arround to fill that bar again. So far not much difference to most of the Tales of games. But Tales of Arise feels more fluent that previous Tales of games. The dodging system doesn't slow you don't and let you attack immediatily. Also skill seldom slow you character down and let you use the next attack without much interruption time between them. So if you used to play fighting games, Tales of Aris battle system is something you would probably like, because long combos of attacks are easily possible if you want to go a bit deeper playing your character.

Dificulty: I like hard games, so i play almost all of my games on the hardest difficulty. So be aware, you experience could be different if you play on normal mode. Tales of Aris is quite hard on the start of the game. The first big boss is probably the hardest boss in the game if you team is decently level at the end of the game. It's even like that that the game got easier and easier. I didn't level for a bit in the game, just fight against enemies on my way. I mostly played Rinwell, but she was just broken with her magic at the end of the game. So Tales of Arise is not really a challanging game if you are able to properly beat the first and maybe second boss.

Graphc and Style: In my opinion Tales of Arise has one of the best anime art directions out there. The eviroment looks like it has been drawn. A lot places looks just beautiful. That got supported by some different area's like a snowy area, a beatiful area with water/waterfall arround you. It's just nice looking. Until the end of the game because the evirioment just got more boring. But if a games graphic is important to you, you would maybe criticse that it lacks in some details or wasched out, well not my opinion.

Also the dugeons aren't just plain cave you run to get through the end. Most of them have some structure and no endless cave wall. The eviroment just chainges enough that you doesn't get bored running though that cave fighting endless enemies.

Other Things:

Each characters has his own board with skills on it to learn it. You are very free to choose different skills there. Sadly it's worth noting, that Bandai Namco thought it's a good decition to lock some skills behind a DLC. It's easily possible to beat the game without buying that DLC, but this game has only 2 healer and one of them is by far worse not having a healing skill from the dlc. Having stupid costumes behind a dlc, like this game as well, is alright in my opinion, but skill is just a stupid decision. Also there is a SAO endgame content as DLC, nothing you really need, but you are able to fight against Kirito and Asuna.

The game has some endgame content that is quite challaging. What means you just have to level a lot, because when you finish the game you are by far outleveled by that content.

Berseria vs Zestiria vs Arise:

I think Tales of Arise is a good game, but Berseria is the better game if you want a good story. If you haven't play any of these games and want an interresting Story, i would rather recommend Tales of Berseria to you. But the gameplay and battle system is in Tales of Arise better than in Tales of Berseria. It's more fluent, you are just way more dynamic in the game. And Tales of Arise is by a margin better in Story, dugoen design, battle system than Tales of Zestira.