QOTW: My feelings are general positive regarding Star Ocean; there’s only been one entry I truly despised.
Star Ocean: Good
Star Ocean 2: Fantastic
Star Ocean Till the End of Time: Great
Star Ocean The Last Hope: Terrible
Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness: Enjoyably meh…
So we’re on our upward trend, hopefully. Personally, I’m hoping they do something about their character models, because the main protagonist in that trailer for The Divine Force looked like someone put a baby’s head on an adult’s body.
As a Tales fan, I felt like leaving another feedback as a counterpoint to Kelley’s opinions on Tales of Arise; having just beaten it myself last week.
Overall, I thought it was okay and sits in the mid to lower mid tier of Tales games. I found the storytelling to be one of the worst in the series. It has all the nuance and intrigue of a sledge hammer while trying to invoke themes of better told entries (like Symphonia with it’s two worlds vying for the other’s energy and enslaving the populace of the other). Every chapter is the same:
“This place has a form of slavery”
“It’s bad”
Alphen then proceeds to give upwards of 12 hero speeches
Beat villain, chapter ends, rinse/repeat.
Most of the characters had some good development and arcs, though.
And while I generally love the Tales series for it’s skits, Arise didn’t pace them out very well. I’d enter new areas and there’d be 3-5 back to back. Sure, I didn’t have to push the button to play them, but I’m not running around with that button prompt sitting on the bottom corner of my screen!
On the plus side, it has the most fun combat ever in a Tales game. If I were ranking Tales games based solely on combat, Arise would be number 1. Played it on Normal and it was really well balanced in the difficulty department; just the right amount of challenge (unlike Berseria, which I otherwise loved, where I had to turn the difficulty up to Hard to not feel like I was flying through the game with ridiculous ease). And also the most gorgeous entry in the series, hands down!
So it sort of balanced itself out, imo, to be an okay entry in the Tales series.
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