Over the weekend, I said something to a friend which sort of crystallized my thought process around Tales of Arise, the latest entry in the 26-year-old role-playing series from Namco. I said that if it were a Final Fantasy game, it’d probably have a sky-high critical reception and sell ten million copies.
The declaration was hyperbolic, but as is often the case there’s a razor-sharp kernel of truth at the center of it. Tales of Arise might not actually technically be the best in the series – it isn’t quite my favorite – but it’s certainly one of the best and most accessible Japanese RPGs in recent years – though the systems that make it newbie friendly also aren’t too heavy-handed, meaning there’s plenty here for old hands of the series to enjoy. Basically, it’s pitched just about perfectly.
In some ways, Arise feels reminiscent of games from the golden age of Japanese RPGs, by which I mean that era during the back end of the life of the Super NES and early on in the PlayStation’s life. I say this specifically because it happily deploys some of the same tropes that were common in that era but are considered a tad tired now, like an amnesic protagonist that gets swept into revolution. But it also reminds me of those games in other, more subtle ways, like how despite starring a bunch of archetypal anime pretty boys and girls, it has a surprising amount to say about serious issues. Much of the game is spent musing on topics like government oppression, slavery, and the cost of revolution. This reminds me of some of the golden age of the genre.
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