It's kinda baffling to me how this game can actually exist. I don't mean this in a sort of "my cup runneth with art degrees and snob" way that dismisses anyone that likes the game as consumers of the video game equivalent of fast food. There are reasons to like this game for sure. I moreso mean that there's so much that goes on in Tales of Arise where the developers thought, "yes this will make a statement" when all they really did was take a totally centrist approach to things that don't deserve more than a cursory glance and a second of consideration.
Slavery and oppression are the first things that come to mind here. As is typical with many jrpgs, the latter portion of the game spirals into a convoluted pile of jargon and plot devices, but fundamentally preaches safe and inoffensive platitudes and whatboutisms. That last part is a lie, though. I wish I could say that Arise takes the decisively bland but resolute answer to racism and oppression that many other stories do. In fact Arise did have some slightly interesting introspection into what it means to be a slave on a more philosophical level. It all goes wrong when it begins advocating for forgiving our oppressors; when it starts preaching that they are deserving of my sympathy.
The themes of Arise from this point on goes from shallow but acceptable to infuriatingly indecisive and laughable. To repeat myself again, i'm sure the writers of Arise believed they were making a point worth consideration here. In practice it leaves me wondering where the proof-readers during the QA sessions and war-room meetings.
Beyond fumbling the ball on slavery, there's also the issue of the mishandling of other themes like vengeance and co-existence, neither of which are as egregious. I think there is a statement to be made on how Arise attempts to handle isolation and loneliness. There are some dark implications on how this affected a certain character in the party and how developing the support network they needed led to more regret as they walk towards their inevitable demise. Once again, I lied. What I just said wasn't at all something you're shown, and something you're hardly even told through the story. This does not require reading between the lines, but filling between them with orange crayon and claiming it was there from the beginning. I bring this up because it is a bit insulting just how much characterization is conveyed through the characters' over-sensitivity or insufferable demeanor. There isn't re-contextualization, just a bunch of gotcha moments that portray awkward and vapid character interactions as foreshadowing.
I spent more time on the writing than this game probably deserved, and it's kind of laughable i'd give this much of a damn about a game I didn't enjoy. Pondering about and writing about this game might have been a waste of time, "it's just another mcdonald's ass jrpg" would have been a better review truthfully. I did try to enjoy this game though. Quite a few friends adore this game and I tried giving it multiple chances because of it.
One of those chances lies with the gameplay. Yet again though, Arise totally fumbles here. On the surface, Arise's mechanical depth is quite sound. It creates an inter-connectivity between the party and really sells the idea that everyone is contributing to make the team stronger. It does this through its boost mechanic, which is in your best interest to use to extend combos. These can also be used to one shot enemies before they've even reached half their healthbar. Using this mechanic ritually determines how often you can break an enemy's stance, opening them up to more combos. Once again, this is a lie. The issue with Tales of Arise combat lies in a completely static and awful enemy lineup.
Generic enemies tend to fall under 3 molds: dodgey and agile types like wolves and brutes, charge up and floaty enemies, and rolling sonic the hedgehog losers that hit just one second after you're ready to evade their attack. This enemy lineup, without exaggeration, ruins the combat of Arise. Once again, the game feels vapid and devoid of any sort of interesting combat moments because the situations you're put in are almost entirely the same for about 40 hours. The scaling challenge in this game's action combat comes from enemies that are higher level and will almost always body your AI party members no matter how well you plan in advance.
This issue is exacerbated with bosses. Suddenly, Arise stops being this game where challenge dissipates once you master the flowchart that is every combat encounter (a flowchart that never changes across its 40 hours). Now it turns into a realtime potion spamming dodge-rolling clown fiesta, except now you have a bunch of braindead party members that don't get the memo. Bosses aren't a test of skill but a test of how many consumables you've bought on your way to the boss. Let's not even get into all the havoc that the bloated HP bars and the near impossibility of breaking stance has on potentially skill based gameplay.
The inventory system and crafting system are insipidly pedantic and not worth an iota of genuine thought. The game tries to make these interesting by having every piece of equipment aspected to an element. In practice you're just mindlessly scaling up your equipment to go with what gives the biggest numbers. I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet, but number-crunching and stat-stacking ruins any kind of fun character action gameplay Arise is going for.
Sidequests are total filler but i'm not really sure if I should have expected anything less. What I can say though is that what goes on in sidequests are things you already do in the story on occasion. The story itself is peppered with grocery list tasks and obvious attempts to pad the runtime of the game. If Arise was condensed to only include interesting gameplay or story scenarios you'd be left with a pamphlet. This sort of padding applies to the character interactions themselves as so much of them are filled to the brim with useless conversations that don't add an ounce of insight to their personality or history. Though some of this lot can be fun, it never really shakes off the feeling that they are caricatures.
Once again, I could go on and list every single thing about this game. What I want you to picture however: think of every aspect that goes to making a narrative and a game's experience work. Plotting, theming, resonance, mechanics, bosses, combat scenarios, progression, exploration, the works. Now imagine if every single one of those aspects had the consideration that goes into marking off a box in a mindless day-job that pays pocket change. It's filled with grease but nothing of substance. These are the feelings i've had with Tales of Arise. Calling it a fastfood game is giving it too much credit. At least fast-food's convenience is handy when i'm on a crunch. With Arise, all I felt was that my time was neither respected nor given something useful to consider.
I dropped this game at least three times over the last year, but picked it back up hoping that I could be surprised. As I said, I've had many friends whose opinion I hold in high regard recommend and back this game's corner. Likewise I always had no idea what exactly my problem was with this game until I started writing for it.
What I think I had to realize was that Tales of Arise is emblematic of all my problems with many jrpgs. Between the flowcharty combat, the pointless inventory and character progression, the unrealistic and comedically unsatisfying characterization, nonsense plots that overuse jargon as a substitute for interesting narrative devices, and taking the centrist approach to blatantly awful aspects of humanity.
To go back to the slavery topic, Babylon 5, a story I quite enjoy, has a quote that was all Arise needed to say on the topic. If this quote was the only examination the entire narrative had on oppression, I would still find it preferable to what I got. "I can never forgive your people, for what they did to me. My people can never forgive your people for what they did to us. But I can forgive you." Now, was that so difficult?
Slavery and oppression are the first things that come to mind here. As is typical with many jrpgs, the latter portion of the game spirals into a convoluted pile of jargon and plot devices, but fundamentally preaches safe and inoffensive platitudes and whatboutisms. That last part is a lie, though. I wish I could say that Arise takes the decisively bland but resolute answer to racism and oppression that many other stories do. In fact Arise did have some slightly interesting introspection into what it means to be a slave on a more philosophical level. It all goes wrong when it begins advocating for forgiving our oppressors; when it starts preaching that they are deserving of my sympathy.
The themes of Arise from this point on goes from shallow but acceptable to infuriatingly indecisive and laughable. To repeat myself again, i'm sure the writers of Arise believed they were making a point worth consideration here. In practice it leaves me wondering where the proof-readers during the QA sessions and war-room meetings.
Beyond fumbling the ball on slavery, there's also the issue of the mishandling of other themes like vengeance and co-existence, neither of which are as egregious. I think there is a statement to be made on how Arise attempts to handle isolation and loneliness. There are some dark implications on how this affected a certain character in the party and how developing the support network they needed led to more regret as they walk towards their inevitable demise. Once again, I lied. What I just said wasn't at all something you're shown, and something you're hardly even told through the story. This does not require reading between the lines, but filling between them with orange crayon and claiming it was there from the beginning. I bring this up because it is a bit insulting just how much characterization is conveyed through the characters' over-sensitivity or insufferable demeanor. There isn't re-contextualization, just a bunch of gotcha moments that portray awkward and vapid character interactions as foreshadowing.
I spent more time on the writing than this game probably deserved, and it's kind of laughable i'd give this much of a damn about a game I didn't enjoy. Pondering about and writing about this game might have been a waste of time, "it's just another mcdonald's ass jrpg" would have been a better review truthfully. I did try to enjoy this game though. Quite a few friends adore this game and I tried giving it multiple chances because of it.
One of those chances lies with the gameplay. Yet again though, Arise totally fumbles here. On the surface, Arise's mechanical depth is quite sound. It creates an inter-connectivity between the party and really sells the idea that everyone is contributing to make the team stronger. It does this through its boost mechanic, which is in your best interest to use to extend combos. These can also be used to one shot enemies before they've even reached half their healthbar. Using this mechanic ritually determines how often you can break an enemy's stance, opening them up to more combos. Once again, this is a lie. The issue with Tales of Arise combat lies in a completely static and awful enemy lineup.
Generic enemies tend to fall under 3 molds: dodgey and agile types like wolves and brutes, charge up and floaty enemies, and rolling sonic the hedgehog losers that hit just one second after you're ready to evade their attack. This enemy lineup, without exaggeration, ruins the combat of Arise. Once again, the game feels vapid and devoid of any sort of interesting combat moments because the situations you're put in are almost entirely the same for about 40 hours. The scaling challenge in this game's action combat comes from enemies that are higher level and will almost always body your AI party members no matter how well you plan in advance.
This issue is exacerbated with bosses. Suddenly, Arise stops being this game where challenge dissipates once you master the flowchart that is every combat encounter (a flowchart that never changes across its 40 hours). Now it turns into a realtime potion spamming dodge-rolling clown fiesta, except now you have a bunch of braindead party members that don't get the memo. Bosses aren't a test of skill but a test of how many consumables you've bought on your way to the boss. Let's not even get into all the havoc that the bloated HP bars and the near impossibility of breaking stance has on potentially skill based gameplay.
The inventory system and crafting system are insipidly pedantic and not worth an iota of genuine thought. The game tries to make these interesting by having every piece of equipment aspected to an element. In practice you're just mindlessly scaling up your equipment to go with what gives the biggest numbers. I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet, but number-crunching and stat-stacking ruins any kind of fun character action gameplay Arise is going for.
Sidequests are total filler but i'm not really sure if I should have expected anything less. What I can say though is that what goes on in sidequests are things you already do in the story on occasion. The story itself is peppered with grocery list tasks and obvious attempts to pad the runtime of the game. If Arise was condensed to only include interesting gameplay or story scenarios you'd be left with a pamphlet. This sort of padding applies to the character interactions themselves as so much of them are filled to the brim with useless conversations that don't add an ounce of insight to their personality or history. Though some of this lot can be fun, it never really shakes off the feeling that they are caricatures.
Once again, I could go on and list every single thing about this game. What I want you to picture however: think of every aspect that goes to making a narrative and a game's experience work. Plotting, theming, resonance, mechanics, bosses, combat scenarios, progression, exploration, the works. Now imagine if every single one of those aspects had the consideration that goes into marking off a box in a mindless day-job that pays pocket change. It's filled with grease but nothing of substance. These are the feelings i've had with Tales of Arise. Calling it a fastfood game is giving it too much credit. At least fast-food's convenience is handy when i'm on a crunch. With Arise, all I felt was that my time was neither respected nor given something useful to consider.
I dropped this game at least three times over the last year, but picked it back up hoping that I could be surprised. As I said, I've had many friends whose opinion I hold in high regard recommend and back this game's corner. Likewise I always had no idea what exactly my problem was with this game until I started writing for it.
What I think I had to realize was that Tales of Arise is emblematic of all my problems with many jrpgs. Between the flowcharty combat, the pointless inventory and character progression, the unrealistic and comedically unsatisfying characterization, nonsense plots that overuse jargon as a substitute for interesting narrative devices, and taking the centrist approach to blatantly awful aspects of humanity.
To go back to the slavery topic, Babylon 5, a story I quite enjoy, has a quote that was all Arise needed to say on the topic. If this quote was the only examination the entire narrative had on oppression, I would still find it preferable to what I got. "I can never forgive your people, for what they did to me. My people can never forgive your people for what they did to us. But I can forgive you." Now, was that so difficult?
2 Comments
GOOOOOOOOO
karlsefni776
1 year ago