90s RPGs are just built different, I think the RPG boomers are on to something with this one
Of the very few Final Fantasy games I've played, this is undoubtedly one of my new favorites; I can definitely see why the fandom flocks to this one when trying to call FF7 overrated. It just gets so much right. It's got a very engrossing story, an interesting world, charming characters, engaging character progression and party building, super variant party diversity, deep and fun exploration, simple yet effective combat; this game has it all, and it's easy to see why this game gets the sheer love it does.
The two biggest knocks against it are, One: How dated it is; this game definitely feels like a 90s game, complete with extremely cryptic side, and even main, quests that only a walkthrough would know on their first try, and a deadly allergy to quality of life features that many modern RPGs have, beyond boosting resource gain and auto-battling to cut down on grinding, because it's a remaster, and remasters of old RPGs really need that stuff (looking at you, FF10). Two: how braindead easy it is, the entire way through. I never once struggled in this game unless I was actively handicapping myself, and frequently hit the damage cap on most attacks late in the game, despite being deliberately underleveled because of how little I was struggling. While it does cut down a lot on time spent grinding, it comes at the cost of making 90% of the boss fights super anticlimactic because they just die in 5 or so hits; the few that don't are either super frustrating (I hate the Magic Master holy shit), or are, you know, the final boss.

Xenoblade at home

This is the first Tales game I've actually finished, and boy howdy, am I glad I got to play this for "free" through PS Plus, because Arise does not set a good impression of the series, god damn. I would have been even more sour on this had I paid money for it. This game exemplifies and doubles down on everything I don't like about most action JRPGs, along with adding its own clunk and jank that makes the whole game progressively more unfun to play the further it drags on. Couple that with a story that feels like it goes out of its way to be the bluntest, by-the-books rebellion story about racism and slavery being bad (woah, really? i never would have guessed), while also being complete jargony nonsense, both at the same time, and you have a recipe for pure melatonin.

I've found that most action JRPGs tend to fall into what I like to call "The Rhythm" the further they continue. Every single encounter, no matter what enemy or boss you're facing, plays out exactly the same, with you rinsing and repeating the exact same attack pattern ad nauseam until the enemies are down, every single time. Without exception. Final Fantasy XVI, NEO: The World Ends with You, Persona 5 Strikers, Scarlet Nexus, and so on. All of those do this. The feel of the patterns can make a difference between enjoyment and not; Scarlet Nexus, for example, I feel has excellent-feeling and very satisfying combat, even in spite of how repetitive it is. Tales of Arise, on the other hand, I don't like. Like the others, Tales of Arise is no different in following "The Rhythm," except it adds on its own BS to make it even less fun that it already would have been otherwise. For one, this game is grindy as hell, regularly requiring you to farm regular encounters to keep up with the rapidly increasing level of the enemies, as they give proportionally little EXP to compensate. This extremely repetitive process of going in and out of battles with the same enemies, over and over again, made me painfully sick of performing the same motions in each and every battle. There was no sense of progression, it was just the same thing, each and every time. What made it even worse, however, is how constraining the game's economy is. Because enemy encounters, and especially boss fights, tend to drag on for eons at a time, I often found myself running low on the all-too-necessary recovery items, as the ally AI tended to waste all of the party's CP the second they could use a supportive arte. With how little money there is going around, and how expensive items tend to be, I found myself barely scraping by the further the game went on. I skipped out on a lot of the lategame encounters just to save my recovery items and CP, which, in turn, put me even further behind on EXP, making the boss encounters and required encounters that much more difficult to sit through. It's multiple negative feedback loops that coalesce into a giant ouroboros of pain. The only saving grace is that the animations of the finishers are really cool and flashy, I love them. Hearing ASTRAL ENERGY! | SAY NO MORE! over and over never got old.

The story is way too plain, and not even in a fun way, like Fire Emblem Engage or Just Cause 3 or something. It's just plain to the point of being boring and forgettable. How they managed that, I have no idea. There are hints of something more interesting under the surface, like with the major theme of loneliness and how it can affect someone's state of mind and growth as a person; a theme that isn't explored much, if at all, in JRPGs; but all of that is overshadowed by just how bland the rest of the game's story is. This game, and especially its extremely jargony dialogue, is more blunt than a wrecking ball with its themes and message, focuses way too much on the stuff that it really shouldn't have, and overstays its welcome about 10 hours longer than it should have.

This game, like the RE4 remake, Red Dead 2, Hollow Knight, and Dark Souls before it, taught me a very valuable lesson that I really need to start heeding for once in my life: Sometimes, the cool mainstream thing that everyone is raving about won't be for you. Problem is, I can't know until I try. And, boy howdy, did I try with this one.

I've tried getting into this several times, and my god, I just cannot bring myself to enjoy anything about this game. You'd think someone like me, who's normally really into turn-based combat, strategy games, and character-driven stories would really like this (like, in my online friend group, I'm known as the Fire Emblem guy; I've played all of them, for crying out loud), but nope, I bounced off of this game harder than a Taunt targeting a Hatterene. No matter how often all my friends, and their friends, and seemingly everyone else ever, rave about how incredible and fun this game is, I can't see what they're all seeing.

Probably the biggest thing is just how overwhelming this game is to actually grasp. (Just be warned, this part is very rambly.) Combat especially; to understand it, it feels like you either have to be an omnipotent god the moment you boot up the game, or already be deeply familiar with how D&D and/or CRPGs work (of which, I am neither), to be able to get the hang of things in a timely manner. It's gotta have one of the highest skill floors I've ever seen in a game; Either I'm just too stupid for this game (which is probably the most likely one, I'm quite famously a dumbass) or this game is just as bad, if not worse, at explaining its mechanics, than Xenoblade 2 is. As a result, I found myself barely scraping by every combat encounter this game forces you into (of which, it felt like there were a lot in the short time I played, and boy howdy, do they drag), barely escaping with the skin of my teeth, despite having literally every handicap turned on that might help me in combat. This is an instance where I'd actually like to be handheld in a game; that's what handholdy tutorials are for, so dumbasses like me can actually know what they're supposed to be doing and how. It felt like this game just threw me right into the thick of things and expected me to pick up every intricate little detail as quickly as it threw them at me. And I don't like that. I don't want to have to look up and constantly refer back to guides on how to play your game after I've already spent 8 hours in it, because at that point, I'm just reading about how to play the game the way someone smarter than me did, instead of actually learning things for myself and applying that knowledge to my experience. At least with Xenoblade 2, you can get by in the game without knowing the intricacies of the combat system, and still have a fun time; I sure as hell did, or Xenoblade 2 wouldn't be one of my favorite games. In short, please handhold me more, I'm a fucking idiot and don't know how your game works because you didn't tell me, and there's way too much going on for me to be able to learn all of this in a timely manner. The feel of combat is another thing entirely, but that's probably more this game being very clearly designed with mouse and keyboard in mind, and me playing this on a PS5; combat on PS5 is clunk city to attempt to control, especially in tight spaces.

This game prides itself on its astounding freedom of choice, and that every single choice you make will affect something down the road. I don't like that. Not the freedom of choice itself, that's really cool. The problem I have is with just how much your choices matter. I know that's the name of the game, and is exactly what I signed up for, but it spikes my anxiety way too much, and that's something I didn't think would happen when I got the game and heard about that. I'm used to your choices not really mattering much in the grand scheme of things, only affecting some lines of dialogue, or maybe an ending if we're pushing it. Undertale and Chrono Trigger are the only games I've played where it feels like every choice can matter, but even then, it only affects those aforementioned things in the grand scheme of things. With this game, every little thing; every dialogue choice, every combat encounter, every action, every inaction; feels like it matters, and can affect the outcome of even the most minor of events. While that is a technical marvel for a video game to accomplish, it feels too much like real life for me. Yes, I'm complaining that this fantasy life-simulator video game is too immersive and realistic. Life's already stressful enough as-is as someone riddled with several anxiety disorders and struggles to communicate with people; feeling that way while trying to play a singleplayer video game is not something I want to feel. As a result, I get stunlocked and end up not doing anything because I'm too stressed about making the wrong decision.

So, uh...I don't know how to end this, so rambly rant over, I guess. I didn't like this game, and have no intention of ever finishing it, for reasons I'd like to think are valid. I'm gonna stick with more linear games from now on.