Tales of Arise | PlayStation 4 | PS4

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About the Game

For the past 300 years, Dahna has been under a military occupation following an interplanetary invasion from the more technologically-advanced planet Rena. The status quo of the Renan occupation is disrupted when one day, an amnesiac Dahnan slave who can’t feel pain known only as “Iron Mask” - named after his unremovable black mask - meets a socially outcasted Renan woman named Shionne by chance. Iron Mask’s lack of pain enables him to pull out and wield a flaming sword from Shionne’s chest. The powerful weapon emboldens him to join a regional slave revolt that later expands into a worldwide liberation campaign, discovering his own identity and the forces behind this conflict along the way.

Story & Setting

Your CP pool expands by leveling up party members, getting certain quest rewards and defeating boss enemies, including optional bosses.

Gameplay & Core Systems

This entry in the Tales series once again iterates on the series' action combat system. The free camera system from Berseria is carried over in this game with a small change: the combat camera can now be configured to auto track your current target and behave like Ocarina of Time 's Z-targeting when not overridden by manual camera input. An area of significant change that Arise brought to the Tales combat formula is the emphasis on aerial combat. To further facilitate aerial combat, Tales of Arise reintroduces a dedicated jump button that has been absent from original Tales games since Hearts R , but now keybound to one of the face buttons previously used in Berseria for artes. While the jump button can be used to initiate a combo from the air, combos can also transition between ground and air unbroken through the use transitional artes.

Standout Features

• Artes in Arise consume a resource called Arte Gauge that works similarly in some regards to a stamina system (pauses regeneration when in use and resumes regeneration after a pause from last consumption) but differs in the sense that no other action consumes this resource including normal attacks - another mechanic that made a return since its absence in Berseria.
• While not limited by the Arte Gauge, a normal attack chain can only be executed once per combo (separately for ground and air) unless refreshed by another significant mechanic: Boost Attacks.
• Once it fills up to full, that character’s portrait light up and they can perform a Boost Attack that once executed, will restore 3 AG, reset the normal attack chain in the active combo and most importantly, hard-counter a specific enemy archetype.
• Enemies in Arise are mainly categorized by a few traits that are each hard-countered by a party member’s Boost Attack (flying enemies are grounded by Wing Clip, spellcasting enemies are disrupted by Magic Cancel, evasive enemies are rooted by Prehendere, etc…).
• Boost Attacks can be activated on all party members, not just the character you currently control.
• When it’s full, you have a window of several seconds during which you can press one of the buttons corresponding to Boost Attacks.
• Doing so in this window will activate a “Boost Strike” which is an instant-kill attack on normal enemies and a transition to new phases on boss enemies.
• Normal attacks in Arise are fixed 5-attack chains and cannot be modified by directional buttons like previous Tales games.