Really love how this game explores the inherent difficulty in maintaining interpersonal relationships and how they can affect your own growth as a person but I’m surprised how little discussion around it focuses on how it explores the ways in which our greater environment influence us. I’m here for it, though!

Joshua’s “Welcome to capitalism, Neku” is a bit of a memefied line—it’s fun and used to make very surface level critiques of capitalism online, but when you get right down to it this game is super anti-capitalist at its core. Shibuya, the ever-changing hub of modern youth and commerce, is a space framed as, well, exhausting. Characters of the world move through rapidly evolving micro-worlds where they’re forced to adapt to changes in brands and stores that serve as familiar landscapes. You’re able to change the way these cultural trends sway yourself, but rarely without magical UG powers, and rarely in a way that changes anything but putting yourself on top. Something else that Joshua says is that each section of Shibuya is its own little world, and that’s very true—as the player navigates the spaces of Shibuya, they see all the different subcultures of people inhabiting them and making them work the way they do. And when you break it down, see that every section of Shibuya, one part of one city in one country in the world, operates by its own rules and makes you play to the game of its trends and commerce, it truly seems like a capitalist hellscape.

That’s not a particularly enlightening path for the game to go down, though. Neku and the rest of the cast have to navigate this world, and it wouldn’t be very fun for them to just sit down by the end and say “yeah capitalism sucks, we’re all stuck here and we’re gonna rot.” Not in a story about them all getting something so wonderful as a second chance at life. Certainly, the way that their environment forces them to live takes an emotional toll on them—Neku is rushed through relationships week by week as a part of the Reapers’ game, Shiki has to balance her love of fashion with a struggle to keep up with trends in her work and appearance (absolutely more evidence that she is trans than cis, by the way), and even villains like Kitanji are exhausted by the spaced of Shibuya, finding it easier to fit every person into one state of mind. These thoughts and all the characters’ struggles don’t come from thin air, they are very much influenced by the space they live in. Yet, as they develop throughout the game and go through very small changes in mindset, it becomes very possible to put a positive spin on that environment.

With the game (appropriately) beating over your head how important human connection is despite the problems that arise because of it, it makes sense to end things on a positive note. All these micro-worlds of Shibuya and the spaces beyond it are important and interesting because of the people who inhabit them, capitalism be damned. Their subcultures make the world a great place to be in, as long as you’re willing to reach out and explore it. When Neku’s learned to love Shibuya by the end of the game, and not because he’s following the mantra of a mysterious influencer anymore—he’s learned to find ways to appreciate the people in it, and even become friends with some of them. Obviously, this comes about because of his personal growth, but I think there is a subconscious understanding that he knows his environment influences him and is living and growing with that fact recognized, taking the way the strict control it has over him. In the end, the game (or at least the secret reports), spell out for you that human connection is how we live under capitalism. It’s not necessarily a call for revolution or a plan to upheave the whole system, but the way to “ride high upon the waves of the ever-changing world.” I love this game to pieces in a lot of ways, but from the moment Joshua compared the spaces of Shibuya to human minds, my geography major brain got whirring about all this. I think it’s a wonderful way to explore why our interpersonal connections are so important in the world beyond ourselves. We link together, enact change, and begin to understand more about ourselves and the world to make it better for everyone to live in. Perfect game for me.

Fun, silly, cute. It's a delight, running around Mafia Town as Hat Kid is relaxing. There's a lot of love put into this game, it shows in stuff like the Mafia guy you can play patty-cake with, the chapter intro screens, Hat Kid's minor voice work, the silly INTRUDER sections, Hat Kid's little animations for jumping on bouncy surfaces or the funny overly-exaggerated slow walk she does. It plays well, looks lovely, and it's not very difficult at all.

Other notes:
It has an aggressively uncooperative camera (in tight spaces mostly. It's annoying, but not the end of the world)
Long load times relative to size of levels & general object count/game size.


Play it if you want a reason to smile :)

Played with Proton 6.15-GE-2 on Linux, with E_SYNC disabled (seemed to stop stuttering).

It's very anti-war, it wants to make sure you know it's anti-war, but not in the same way that Ace Combat 5 hits you over the head with it like a blunt instrument. It has more interest in showing the (unfortunately mostly faceless) individual personal conclusions to being faced with fascism and war atrocity. PJ's naive belief that the government cares about the average person, alongside desperate right-wing fascism turned into manipulation of trauma-addled war veterans. It's trying to say a lot, it REALLY comes close to fucking this up, but I think you can read it in a way that isn't too misguided.

This game really gets into the hypocrisy and morality of war, the idea that there is a such thing as a "gentleman's war", the validity of buying into war for "noble reasons", the inherent bloodthirst and dehumanization caused by borders - your side is all evil, even the civilians, so get fucked, etc. It doesn't matter anyway, to participate willingly in a war is buying into it, regardless of whether you're a supposed "knight" or an indiscriminate slaughterer.

Mission 11: The Inferno -> Mission 12: The Stage of Apocalypse is eternal.

Emulated via PCSX2 on Linux.

Simply the best visual novel I've ever played, hands down. Unique due to the live action CGs alone, but due to the characters, settings and "jump" mechanic.

The many characters you jump between during the course of the game all have their own arcs and nuances, providing interesting insight to the events that intertwine them all. One character might do something that affects another, so your choices actually do matter. It's the domino effect, but implemented really well.

The CGs are the best part of this game. Very rarely do you see a visual novel or game shot completely in live action, and 428 does it well.

I can't exaclty formulate my thoughts into words yet I still love this game so much. Fanastic plot, characters, music, settings, twists, and much much more.

Well, we've found it. It's taken scientists and game developers decades and thousands of games of toil, but here it is. The exact middle of the road.

Arise is the perfect game for namco to release in the landscape of 2021. Extremely conventional, easy to digest storytelling which is just trope after trope, put together with a level of polish that other games haven't been able to achieve(COUGH deathloop COUGH), and has enough good elements and good enough marketing to catfish the local RPG fan into thinking they're getting next final fantasy or at least the next xenobalde.

Ok maybe that's a little rude. It's a competent game. Most notably, the combat is pretty good. It's well animated, has a great flow, and making long combos with various arts and boost break moves is good fun, though its very easy to fall into the same combo patterns (Especially since launchers are so ridiculously good on the MC), and any enemies that arent bosses are particularly unchallenging. But particularly with the different party members on offer it's pretty good. It's about on the same level as the modern Ys games albeit with less in the way of challenge and variety.

It's also a very pretty game. Character models in particular are fantastic and so are effects, and adapt an anime style into very high fidelity quite well. There's particularly nice details on little things, notably character eyes and clothing that just looks really nice.

And right there, i've ran out of remarkable things to say about Tales of Arise. The story and setting are so... bland and have nothing to them, particularly in the early hours that I just glaze over. Your amnesiac protagonist works with your pink-haired tsundere waifu who has a fancy fire sword to kill some lads, each of which resides in these tiny lands with no character or theme beyond "fire world, ice world".

The only real curveball Arise throws towards being the most boring thing ever is its slavery and racism (?) angle, which could have been and maybe does turn into a complete trainwreck down the line but by the time i was tuning out mostly boiled down to mistrust and some very tame stuff so its mostly just uninteresting and conventional. Count the times someone doesn't trust someone because they're renan of dahnan or whatever and then never proceed to poke the concept any further than that.

This is excepting the one thing, which is that the slaves in the first chapter, who are ostensibly mining for materials, are actually getting legitimately harvested for their will/life essence/magic by being beaten down... or something. It's some pretty damn charged imagery I feel they go with and I'm not sure if the devs recognise this. You eventually go and kill the bad dude and the sucked up will turns into a dragon or something and tattacks both of you and then you stop the dragon made from the power of the will of the oppressed by sucking up the energy into your waifu's fire sword.

Now that could be really fucking wild (though not neccessarily good or nuanced), but the emphasis in the game is never on it and it doesnt even seem to make those connections. So when i say "you suck up the manifestation of the life energy of an opressed people into your waifu sword,", whilst that's legitimately just connecting plot points, the game seems thorougly disinterested in it and you're immedietly onto the next bad dude woo!

And that's Arise in a nutshell. Making suggestions at being something more interesting every now and then but far more interested in being palatable, tropey, and digestible. It has absolutely no rough edges, nothing actually interesting to hook onto. And hey, I get that comfy, conventional JRPG plots like this can be nice to chill out to, but this game makes Atelier Ryza look daring.

The combat is good and it is pretty and it's consistently competent. But that's kind of all it is.

my buddy killbutt (he's the biggest tales fan in the world) told me it's the best game he's ever played. normally I wouldn't believe him (he's the biggest tales fan in the world), but he's friends with kanye west, and I really liked his work in the sopranos. so I'm inclined to agree; tales of arise is the greatest game in the

In a perfect world, Tales of would have died with Symphonia and Star Ocean would have been the franchise to survive and prosper.

No, I will NOT take my medication.