Tales of Arise - Beyond the Dawn Edition

Tales of Arise is Bandai Namco's most ambitious entry in the long-running Tales series, and the Beyond the Dawn Edition bundles the base game with the Forbidden Lands expansion, giving you somewhere north of 80 hours of content if you want to see everything. The setup is classic but executed with unusual sincerity: Alphen, a human slave who cannot feel pain and wields a sword literally on fire, teams up with Shionne, a Renan noble who causes pain to anyone who touches her. The central metaphor writes itself, and the writing earns it. This is not a game that wastes its premise. Combat is where the game earns its mechanical credibility. It runs in real-time with a party of up to four, and each character plays distinctly. Alphen is your aggressive melee bruiser, Shionne handles ranged damage and healing, Law is a brawler with stance-based combos, and Rinwell is a mage who can steal and hold enemy spells for amplified releases. Artes (the series' skill system) are mapped to face buttons combined with a hold input, so the execution ceiling is low enough for newcomers but deep enough that optimizing combo strings into Boost Attacks and Mystic Artes stays satisfying through the endgame. Boss encounters in particular have a nice rhythm of reading patterns, burning stamina on guard counters, and dumping damage windows cleanly. The worldbuilding is where your mileage will vary. Dahna and Rena are visually gorgeous planets rendered in a painterly style that still holds up, and the six elemental lord regions each have distinct aesthetics and political textures. What the game struggles with is pacing in the back half. Once the mid-game twist reframes everything (and it is a genuinely good twist), the narrative momentum slows for a stretch of fetch-adjacent questing that feels like the writers ran out of road before the destination. The Beyond the Dawn expansion, set after the base game, addresses some of the unresolved character threads and adds new party dynamics, though it introduces a new protagonist whose arc takes time to click. For RPG players specifically: build variety is real but not overwhelming. Skill trees are unlocked through Skill Points tied to combat performance, not grinding for grinding's sake, which keeps progression from feeling punitive. Cooking buffs and camping dialogue scenes between party members are the series' signature Skit system in full effect, and the skits here are genuinely charming rather than obligatory flavor text. If you care about whether companions have interior lives, Tales of Arise delivers. Alphen and Shionne's relationship develops across the full runtime in ways that feel earned rather than scripted, and the supporting cast fills in without becoming wallpaper. This edition is the sensible way to own the game if you haven't played it. The expansion is not a short DLC but a full story continuation. The Metacritic score of 84 reflects a game that does a lot right and has one structural soft spot in the late-game pacing. If you tolerate action combat, enjoy character-driven stories, and want a JRPG that respects your time more than most, this holds up well past the honeymoon hours. Monika, Scout Team