Tales of Arise review: the best action role-playing is back

The Tales of saga is one of the most prolific in the role-playing genre and has always left us with great stories and unforgettable characters. Now comes its most graphically polished installment with Tales of Arise, which brings to the table a classic story of the protagonist with amnesia and the liberation of a territory under the yoke of the most powerful. This time we will accompany Alphen on his journey for freedom and wield his flaming sword of fire. Do you dare to fight with us?

A kingdom of lords and slaves

At the beginning of the adventure we will put ourselves in the shoes of a mysterious slave in a kingdom whose landscape is pure fire. We will have our face covered by a mask and our companions will even call us iron mask. We do not remember anything about our past, not even our name. During the performance of one of the daily jobs as a slave we will see how a train is intercepted by a band of rebels, who are on the trail of a mysterious girl. This girl turns out to have inside her a core of power and a strange ability that causes damage to anyone who touches her. On the other hand, our character feels no pain and can accumulate damage without even feeling it. This strange couple manages to confront the renegades who try to avoid their capture and end up in the headquarters of the band of rebels

We will meet a group of fighters who seek to overthrow the lord of that area to rise to freedom and our character decides to join their fight. The mysterious girl we have met decides to join us when she discovers that we are able to wield a flaming sword that only she is able to activate and that can make a big difference in a battle against the lords. Her goal will be to overthrow the 5 lords of the five kingdoms and the alliance will not be easy, since she comes from the kingdom that is subjugating the population. There will come a moment in the story in which our protagonist manages to remove half of his mask and finally remember his name: Alphen.

Tales of Arise is an adventure in search of freedom that will take us through the length and breadth of five kingdoms perfectly differentiated from each other by their geography and customs. Get ready for the driving elements of the saga: constant plot twists that will make our heads explode and that will keep us glued to the screen throughout its duration

Fight, fight and fight again

The video game follows the classic scheme of action RPGs and maintains all the classic features of the saga. The gameplay will consist of fighting, fighting and fighting. The combats will not be random, but to fight we will have to come into contact with the enemies that we will see throughout the map. Within the combat we will have a button to attack, another to dodge and three others to perform arts (which are the skills of each character). We will be able to assign the arts from the menu and we will be learning them in the skills tree in which we will be able to improve our characters. The combat takes place within a delimited area from which we will not be able to leave. If we make a dodge at the right time we can perform a powerful counterattack

The combos will be a fundamental element to win the victory. Each enemy will have a combo meter that we can fill if we perform consecutive attacks. The less life an enemy has, the easier it will be to fill this gauge. Once we have achieved it we can complete a joint attack with another character that will be quite devastating. Each character also has a special powerful ability that we can activate with any of the directions of the crosshead (one for each character). But not everything will consist of attacking in this Tales of Arise, but healing will be another important element. In this game each character will not have a mana bar or magic points, but the healing points will be common for the whole group, so it will be important to manage the healing of the characters well

Special mention for the fights against the final bosses, as they are very demanding and will require all our concentration, healing items and patience. They have several phases and a very large life bar, so we will see us even 30 minutes or more fighting against the same boss. They will be the most epic battles of the title and will test our skill at the controls. It is important, as in any good role-playing game, to stop from time to time to level up to try to reach these final confrontations well prepared and not have to suffer and repeat and replay these fights ad nauseam

Tales of Arise has secondary missions that we can activate by talking to characters throughout the locations of the game, although most of them are errand boys. We will find in our journey camps where we can rest and cook to improve our attributes. Another important part of this role-playing game will be the equipment and the forging of weapons and accessories. The better our equipment, the easier the battles will be. The tender point of the game is the search for owls. One of the protagonists of the adventure has a winged friend who will be looking for these owls throughout the game. The more owls we find, the more rewards we get

Completing Tales of Arise will take us between 40 and 60 hours depending on how complete we are, as the number of side quests is high and it can take us a long time to complete them all if we want to finish the game at 100%.

The best graphics of the saga and a soundtrack to the height

Tales of Arise has the best graphics of the series. Its aesthetics is maintained with that anime that characterizes all titles in the series and the design of the characters and their scenarios seem to us the best in the series. Alphen is one of the most elaborate protagonists of all Tales of and you can tell that the new generation of consoles has already arrived, because the attention to detail is spectacular.

The soundtrack honors a series that always surprises with its melodies, which will accompany us throughout the adventure, perfectly reflecting the diversity of situations and the feelings of each of the characters

The title arrives perfectly translated into our language and with voices in English and Japanese, so we can perfectly enjoy this adventure and the translation is appreciated in a video game that is very dependent on the language and that revolves around its plot

Final Conclusions

Tales of Arise is the best RPG of the saga and an excellent gateway to the genre. For all those people who have never played a Tales, this Arise may be the perfect way to do so. On the other hand, fans of the franchise will be delighted with a title that pushes its graphic power to the limit and offers a classic story of the kind they always love. If you like real-time action role-playing video games, Tales of Arise is undoubtedly one of the best titles of this 2021.

The best

• The story and its graphics
• Its duration: it will keep us more than 40 hours glued to the screen
• The combats: the best of the game, we will not want to stop fighting

The worst

• Secondary missions "errand boy"

We have made this analysis thanks to a download code for Playstation 5 provided by Bandai Namco