Tales of Arise: Deluxe Edition

Tales of Arise is the kind of JRPG that opens strong enough to make you rearrange your weekend plans. You are dropped into a colonizer-versus-enslaved-people conflict that, for the first thirty hours or so, handles its themes with more confidence than you might expect from a long-running anime franchise. The two leads, Alphen and Shionne, carry real tension in their dynamic, and the writing leans into that discomfort rather than deflating it with cheap comedy every five minutes. The world of Dahna is genuinely beautiful, built across distinct biomes each controlled by a Renan lord, and clearing each region feels like meaningful progress rather than box-ticking. The combat is where the game earns its keep past the opening chapters. It is a real-time action system built around Boost Strikes, Artes chains, and character-specific mechanics that reward you for mixing the six-person roster mid-fight. Rinwell holds spells and cancels enemy casts. Law is a brawler who builds aggression stacks. Kisara tanks with a shield and counter-windows that demand you actually read enemy animations. The systems layer in gradually, and by the time you are juggling elemental weaknesses, Boost Attacks, and Mystic Artes in a single encounter, the combat clicks into something genuinely fun. The Deluxe Edition bundles in costume packs and item packs that smooth out early resource friction, though none of it is strictly necessary. Here is where I have to be honest with you, though: the back half stumbles. Without spoiling specifics, the narrative takes a structural turn past the midpoint that essentially restarts the dramatic momentum the first half built so carefully. The new antagonists introduced in act two are thinner, the stakes feel inflated rather than earned, and the skit system, which handles most character development through optional voiced conversations, starts leaning on repetitive comfort-food moments instead of pushing relationships forward. If you are the kind of player who needs the writing to stay as sharp at hour 50 as it was at hour 10, you may feel the air come out of the room. The side content is a mixed bag in the way almost all modern JRPGs suffer from: there are fetch quests here that exist purely to pad your time between story beats, and the game does not do much to disguise that. The owl-finding collectible sidequest is exactly as optional as it sounds, and I would not blame anyone for skipping it entirely. The boss fights, however, are a consistent highlight. Sub-bosses called Gigants are scattered throughout the world, and hunting them down at the right level gap feels rewarding in a way the ambient side quests simply do not. For JRPG veterans who want a polished entry point to the Tales series, or action-RPG players looking for something with more narrative weight than the average brawler, Tales of Arise is a strong recommendation with one caveat attached: go in knowing the story peaks early and the back half is coasting on goodwill the front half built. The combat will carry you through. The characters mostly will too. Just do not expect the ending to hit as hard as the first Dahna lord you dethrone. Monika, Scout Team