Fun story, lovable main cast of characters, great gameplay. Nails the presentation, the music, the visuals, etc. Especially when it comes to art style, Arise has one of the most inspired, beautiful styles I've seen in a game. Ufotable on point with the anime cutscenes too. Pacing is very solid, for the most part. The world is fairly linear, but I don't mind it because you're rarely wasting a bunch of time walking through empty space, and if there are branching paths, there's almost always something worth finding down those paths. Combat was always a fun time because of how smooth and satisfying it felt. I mained Alphen for the majority of the game, but other characters like Rinwell have fun kits too.

If I had any complaints, I'd say the enemy/boss quality is a bit all over the place. For the majority of the game, I'd be cruising along tearing through enemies without issue, only to run into a boss that'd wipe my party. In the latter part of the game, the enemies also tend to have more bloated HP pools, so that's not ideal. However, it never became so much of an issue that it brought down the experience as a whole. Other nitpicks would be missing the traditional 2D portraits for skits, which I thought had more personality than the 3D models, and the lack of the results screen, with all silly fanfare. Like I said, they're nitpicks, but I did miss them being in the game.

Overall, I'm very happy with Arise. Enjoyed it from beginning to end, despite my gripes, and I'm looking forward to tackling some of the post game content.