It is a perfect game for newcomers to the Tales series, with Xillia being my first and Arise as the second, it is also a good game for when when you plan to comeback to the series.

The gameplay is easy to learn but might be difficult to master if you plan to play on hardest difficulty, I personally mained Shionne the whole time and I have never got bored of it.

The character development is really good, it's easy to get attached to most every character (except Law).

The story starts really good, tbh the darker a Tales game is, the better, however I do wish that some questions would have been answered and got into more details about the origins of the Dahnans, which barely tells you anything or even about Alphen's past.

The switch from anime sprites to in game models during the character dialogues, it's really weird and it does not feel that satisfying to watch, I personally prefer the anime approach, which Tales is a series known for that, so by reducing that it will kill one of Tales's main concept, which I hope they will consider restoring that for the future titles.

The DLC was pretty disappointing in my opinion, once again it barely explain the backstory of Nazamill, she just appear out of nowhere, with a lot of questions unanswered, I would personally skip the DLC unless you want to 100% the game.

Overall: One of the best way to introduce yourself to this amazing series, I strongly recommend you to play it if you plan to relax with a good story focused game.

The graphics are great, but everything else falls apart about 10h in the game. The story is the worst of any tales games. The story starts out good, but completely falls apart, also the gameplay is a total step back from older titles. It starts out good, but gets repetitive very fast. A huge step back from previous titles, especially berseria.

Conclusion: Skip!

Tales of Arise is a really good and long action game with a really good plot and well-written characters. In these aspects, the game really shines and shows its fangs, because the way these aspects were made shows that the creators really put effort into producing this game. As for the combat system, it is done in real time, but you can also stop time and play more tactically, because that is also possible, it depends on the player how he or she wants to play, because in this aspect the game gives the player a choice, so I think it is good move. Generally, I have nothing to complain about because I liked everything about this title and I didn't notice any major problems here.

My rating is:
10 / 10