Three of them will fight alongside you during a dust up, while two others will wait in the wings to be called upon only for special moves. You can choose which one you want to play before you head into battle, but you can't swap between them mid-fight. There's also a stoic tank and a posh fella with a lance. But then you've got five others, including Shionne, a gunslinger with an attitude, Rinwell, a happy-go-lucky mage, and Law, a very enthusiastic boy who loves martial arts. I played as Alphen, a cool swordsman with a flaming sword and an eye patch purely because he seemed like a good all-rounder. These party members fulfil the anime tropes and all roughly correspond to your usual RPG archetypes. I can only describe it as a sensory barrage. You control one character, while the rest of your party engages auto-pilot and screams whatever move they're doing every 0.01 nanosecond. And if the enemy tries to put a plug in your hyaahs! and hnnghs!, you can dodge-roll out of danger. My word, I had no idea what I was doing - but I enjoyed it, I think? I could still have fun, win fights, and look cool without really knowing what on earth was happening on screen.Ĭombat in Tales Of Arise is a real-time affair, where you hack-and-slash enemies to death with the power of anime. It did the job, considering I desperately want to take a peek inside when the full game launches.īut after this wide-eyed exploration came bursts of dizzying violence, which made up the other half of my thirty minutes with Tales Of Arise. Surely there are loads of NPCs in there, who'll task me with finding their lost cats for XP, or vendors who'll sell me gems in exchange for carrots I've harvested? But nah: I had to play outside, while the adults I imagined into existence enjoyed themselves inside its glistening stone walls. The preview build wouldn't let me wander in, so it's left me as this raging bundle of curiosity and frustration. But damn, that huge gilded city was a real tease. Tese were the relaxing jaunts I knew all too well from my time with other JRPGs like Atelier Ryza 2. I did enjoy the calm exploration of Tales Of Arise, partly because it felt familiar and partly because it was just quite pleasant. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get in. Of course, not an unforgivable offense by any means, but I got the sense that the world, despite being rather pretty, was very rigid an unmoving space to eventually be ticked off your 100% exploration list. Nope, no splinters, no startled oink, no high-pitched moo. Forgive me for this, but I also tried hitting the cute pig-bunny things, along with a couple of cows for good measure. In a spur of the moment bid to up the ante, I tried swinging my sword at a fence, but it didn't break. It didn't offend, but neither did it excite. And I hoovered up ore and tomatoes and slabs of meat with a brush of the hand. I found chests off the beaten track that contained new gear like bigger swords or shinier gauntlets without too much effort. I ran around the aforementioned zone littered with enemies which didn't attack me unless I ran into them. I'd say that for the most part, Tales Of Arise's exploration was adequate JRPG fare. I was plopped in a location pulled straight from the anime chapter of the Fantasy 101 textbook: a peaceful, grassy area flanked by mountains, home to a few nice trees, some strange pig-rabbit hybrids chilling in a pen, and off in the distance, a huge gilded city. In my half hour hands-on with Tales Of Arise, I explored a very small slice of what seemed like a vast JRPG. That feeling of not really knowing what you're doing, but rather enjoying whatever it is that you are, in fact, doing. Like I'd been out for a walk down the street, spotted a group of misfits down a quiet suburb, and starting yelling encouragement as they kicked seven shades out of a fire hydrant. I spent much of my time with JRPG Tales Of Arise veering from a state of serene calm to one of total confusion.
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