To many players, the Tales series is JRPG comfort food. While genre juggernauts like Final Fantasy try something new with each entry, the Tales games rarely deviate from an established formula. The identity of the series has largely become rooted in its familiarity – and that’s not a bad thing! However, sometimes the lack of innovation grows a little stale, yet the upcoming Tales of Arise can thankfully fix that.
Developer and publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment made the decision to delay Tales of Arise due to the COVID-19 pandemic to better ensure quality, with the current release date unknown. Arise is striving to elevate the series in ambitious ways and the extra development time can help achieve that. The developer wants Tale of Arise to evolve and perfect the formula in order to make it appeal to a wider audience; these are just a few examples of how that can be done.
Tales is unique for its real-time combat, dubbed the “Linear Motion Battle System.” It’s the only aspect that’s significantly tweaked between entries. Battles revolve around combos utilizing Artes, which are special moves gained by leveling up. Combat is fast and exciting, but can devolve into spamming attacks to quickly take down enemies. Tales of Arise could expand upon this by making strategy more of a critical element in taking down enemies. Incorporating perfect dodge and block mechanics in the vein of the Ys series would make having quick reflexes crucial, eliminating button spamming. Having Artes compliment each other better to create more dynamic flow between combos would help spice things up as well. Overall, whichever direction it goes, the combat could use just a few tweaks to make it the best it can be.
The biggest weakness in Tales games, especially as of late, lie in their dungeon designs. They’re bland and lifeless corridors that require a ton of backtracking, with these types of dungeons being one of the worst things to plague the RPG genre. This is the gameplay area where Tale of Arise truly needs to step up the most. It’s the first game not powered by in-house engine, instead using Unreal Engine 4, which will hopefully result in more visually interesting dungeons. Tight hallways and boring caves need to be a thing of the past, as does backtracking, while puzzles also need to be better implemented to add more variety and depth to dungeon mechanics.
Side quests in RPGs tend to fall into two categories. They’ll either require killing x amount of monsters and fetching items, or become meaningful bonus adventures, with the latter thankfully becoming more and more common. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a perfect example of an RPG with meaningful side content, which would be a good place to look for interest. JRPGs in particular usually don’t have very interesting side quests and fall into the trap of relying on checklist-style missions. Unfortunately, Tales is no exception.
Arise needs to take a cue from recent RPGs and have more interesting side quests: quality needs prioritized over quantity. Side content should flesh out the world and give players a better understanding of its inhabitants and history. These bonus stories also don’t need to be completely serious, meaning the quirky humor of the Tales series can still shine through.
Tales of Arise is currently in development for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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