Tales of Arise

Tales of Arise is an action RPG and the flagship entry in Bandai Namco's long-running Tales series. You follow Alphen, a man who cannot feel pain, and Shionne, a woman whose touch hurts everyone around her, as they work together to liberate the planet Dahna from 300 years of Renan occupation. That premise sounds bleak on paper, and honestly, the first half of the game earns that weight. The writing tackles systemic oppression, generational trauma, and the psychological toll of living under a boot without turning it into a lecture. It is the most thematically serious the Tales series has ever been, and for the most part, it lands. Combat is the engine that keeps you moving through that story, and it is genuinely satisfying. Each of the six playable characters handles completely differently. Alphen swings between aggressive melee chains and flame-powered Blazing Sword arte finishers. Shionne functions as your ranged attacker and healer hybrid. Law is a rushdown brawler. Kisara is a tank who can counter-absorb hits with her shield. Rinwell manages a spell-queuing system that rewards reading enemy cast animations. Dohalim is a staff-wielder who pivots between close and long range. You control one character at a time, with the AI handling the rest, and swapping mid-fight to chain Boost Strikes, the cinematic tag-team attacks that punctuate every big encounter, never gets old even after 50 hours. Boost Attacks, elemental weaknesses, and stagger mechanics give fights enough tactical texture to stay engaging past the midgame. Where the game stumbles is in its second half. After a significant story pivot that I will not spoil, the pacing loses its footing. The narrative ambition that defines the opening acts gives way to something more conventional, and the final stretch of the main story leans on JRPG tropes that feel like a step down from the grounded character work that came before it. Skits, the short voiced character vignettes that have always been a Tales staple, are abundant and often charming, but a noticeable chunk of them are filler bonding scenes that pad runtime without adding much. If you are the type who skips optional dialogue, you will miss some genuine character depth buried in there, which is both the reward and the tax. The world itself is visually striking, built around a watercolor-and-light aesthetic that makes every new zone feel like a painting come to life. Six distinct regions, each with its own biome and political situation, give the world a sense of geographic weight even if open-world it is not. Exploration is linear by design, which keeps the pacing from collapsing entirely but also means there is not much reason to backtrack once you are done with an area. Crafting, cooking, and gear upgrades are present but straightforward enough that they never become a burden. The difficulty options are accessible and can be adjusted on the fly, which makes this a reasonable entry point for players new to action RPGs. For Tales veterans, this is the series operating at a higher production level than anything before it, with a story that actually has something to say. For newcomers to the series or action RPGs broadly, the combat has enough depth to grow into without requiring you to master frame-perfect inputs on day one. It is not without its rough patches in the back half, and some of the late-game boss design edges toward damage-sponge territory that can test your patience. But the first 30 hours are some of the strongest the genre has offered in a long time, and the characters, Alphen and Shionne especially, stick with you. Monika, Scout Team