It has been a long time coming since the last entry in the Tales franchise. First of all, Tales of Arise was first shown at E3 2019, the last big blowout before the pandemic. After that details were scarce, especially in 2020 even though the game was still planned to launch in the fall season. After that delay, there is now a release date on top of tons of more details about what fans can expect from this new entry via two recent trailers.
For some further Tales context, this series started in 1995 on the Super Nintendo in Japan. The longest delay between main releases since its inception was two years. The last game before this new one was Tales of Berseria which had a 2016 launch in Japan and a 2017 one in North America. That’s a new record of a five-year gap so to reiterate, fans have been itching for more news for a while now.Â
4 The Release Date And Game Editions
Tales of Arise is set to release on September 10 of this year for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. When it was supposed to come out last year, the new consoles were not mentioned. That said there are more bonuses to just getting the game on a new platform. If players buy it on PS4 they can later upgrade it for free once they get a PS5.Â
The deal is even better on Xbox because every standard version of the game comes packed with both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X versions together. This seemingly means one could give one or the other to a friend if wanted. The price will seemingly be the same either way. Besides the standard versions, there will be three special editions of the game as well.Â
The Digital Deluxe Edition comes with a premium item pack, a premium costume pack, and a premium travel pack. This includes food for cooking, costumes, accessories, gold, and other items. The Digital Ultimate Edition has all of that plus even more costumes based on yet to be revealed other Bandai Namco franchises. Players could get to dress up like Ni no Kuni, Tekken, or maybe even Pac-Man for some examples. Finally, the physical Collector’s Edition comes with the game, figures of Alphen and Shionne, a steelbook case, a hardcover art book, and a CD.
3 The Open-World
Tales of Berseria had a big world to explore but this game is seemingly breaking new grounds. Based on the footage seen in the gameplay overview trailer, the series looks more open-world than ever before. There are even spots to gather items like potatoes from plants that will seemingly be used for cooking. This probably means forging materials can be gathered in the world as well.Â
There was a traveling salesman at the end of the demo that showed an option to create weapons and accessories but no cooking option was shown in a menu. It was mentioned in conversation though so this classic mechanic has been confirmed to be returning.Â
Also in this gameplay trailer were two environments. The first was Calaglia which was in a desert basin. The other was Cyslodia which was an ice forest. There was an interesting piece of exploring in that region as Alphen was seen swimming in order to reach a new area. Since this is open-world now, can fans get excited for more options similar to swimming like being able to climb akin to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
2 The Battle System
As far as battles go, it is a similar setup to the past games. Run into a monster on the map and everything transitions to its own battle arena. It seems quicker than the past games but it is not instant like other modern RPGs like Final Fantasy VII Remake. They did get rid of the victory screen though so that saves some time.
The action also looks similar to past iterations. Players can control one character at a time and swap between them on the fly. The three playable characters shown in the gameplay overview all have their own unique skill sets. Alphen has a sword and is thus a close-ranged fighter. Rinwell uses magic from a distance and Shionne uses a gun for longe-ranged attacks as well.Â
The game also seems to support dual attacks like in Chrono Trigger. Both Shionne and Rinwell activate combo attacks with Alphen. Will others be able to do these dual strikes? It’s up in the air for now. One last thing that should be mentioned is the skill tree. Everyone seems to have one which seemingly unlocks new abilities along with stat boosts.Â
1 Story And Known CharactersÂ
The basic premise of the story is this. The empire or Rena has enslaved the entire population of Dahna. Alphen is one of these slaves who breaks free and wants to free the rest of Dahna from slavery. He meets Shionne along the way who Renan empire but opposes their system. She runs away in the hopes of supporting some sort of change along with the hope of finding a cure from some family curse.Â
In the gameplay overview trailer, the two of them run into Rinwell at some point who is a mage. She also explains that she’s the last of her kind seemingly meaning magic, in general, might be a dead art. In the release date trailer, there was one more character shown, Law. Not much is known about him but he is shown to be a melee fighter. Traditionally parties are pretty big in these games so that is probably just half of the playable roster.Â