Recent reviews by KiraTheUnholy

Flipped, thanks for listening sdf.

I will change this review to a positive when the PSN requirement goes away.

I have friends that I played with that can no longer play the game because PSN is not available in their country.

Game is good, but don't get in bed with terrible publishers like Sony. Let this be a lesson.

EDIT: I made this positive but Sony went ahead and removed the game from other countries again. Back to negative.

What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ride.

I legitimately can't say much about this game without spoiling the ♥♥♥♥ out of it. If you're going to play it, go in blind.

I recommend this game, 10/10

Felt like a waste of money.

Tales of Arise combat feels pretty good at the start of the game. Everything seems like it's going to be fine. Story is good, personality is there and the battles have high tempo.

However, the complexity of the fighting mechanics seemed super toned down from it's predecessor Berseria. On top of that the monster variety in the first few area consists of the same 5 monsters copypasted pretty much everywhere with some variations. Character voicelines were getting repeated so often I thought the game was bugging, the exact same voiceline every time I entered strike mode was playing and it was bloody well awful and immersion breaking.

I was holding out hope that once I got to the snowy area I'd see some new monsters but I was severely disappointed that the first monster I saw was a reskin of the wolves from the previous area. I confirmed on the steam forums that they used the same monsters copy-and-pasted throughout the game and that I should 'get used to' seeing reskins.

Now, I'm completely aware that it is common for the 'Tales of' series to re-use assets from previous games for monsters, often touched up or with some modifications and a new coat of paint. However... doing that, is not the same as using the SAME monsters in the same game being copy-pasted all over the place. This doesn't feel right. It feels like a ripoff, and it feels cheap and I thought that Bandai Namco would be above this.

Onto the difficulty. The game's difficulty felt like a cakewalk on the hardest selectable mode for the first few hours of the game. At this point I was subjected to what can only be described as the steepest most sudden difficulty incline I have ever seen. Balseph was ball-breakingly difficult and I couldn't figure out why. I DID refuse to use items, but this is something I have done in almost every 'Tales of' game as I like to challenge myself. What I found was that the main character I was playing as did an absolutely insignificant amount of damage to Balseph compared to the companion character he was travelling with. I also realized by this point that I was drastically underleveled. I wonder if the fact it was so grindy to get levels had anything to do with the fact that you can literally buy level and gald packages in the dlc-shop now... these predatory microtransactions were just icing on the cake of my miserable experience with this game.

It was an absolute disappointment, and to my dismay getting to the snowy area took way longer than 2 hours so I can't even get a refund for this mess. I understand that so many people are still loving this game for many reasons and that's great on them... but for me, I don't feel like a compelling story makes up for all the flaws in this video game. It's just not fun to play, I stopped having fun the moment I started being subjected to what felt like a loop.

Game is good, but I can really only recommend it if you already have a group of friends who are willing to play it with you.

Daily players for this game average from 200 - 500 players. This isn't a completely unreasonable amount of players, but in my personal experience I was playing against the same person in matchmaking repeatedly who kept leaving due to not wanting rematches. When I wasn't getting the same person I got people who would take a couple rounds, then leave and leave me in queue for awhile.

Aside from that problem there's also the massive skill gap. The only way you're going to be getting 'gud' at this game is if you have a friend who is already experienced that is willing to teach you how to get there, because the absolutely gigantic skill gap between you and the people that have already been playing this game will be so insane that you will find yourself being frequently 3-stocked and styled on. Aside from that you can also bash your head against the wall of top tier players this game has to offer and hope that some of their skill will rub off on you.

Definitely recommend it more for casual gameplay as the environment that's in the game right now is certainly not enough to promote anyone climbing a skill-ladder, especially when the curve to getting there for most games of this style ends up being a ladder-based progression that lasts months to years.

I don't say this lightly but without a doubt I CAN say that this game is even better than Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door.

The formula is still there plain as day, turn-based battles with action commands that inject skill into battles, but there are notable improvements in the formula.
- Guard and Superguard have the same button now, so if your timing is a little off for the superguard you can still block attacks. This is contrast to TTYD where you'd have to choose whether you want to superguard or regular guard.
- Character stats are more streamlined; your stats will go up throughout the game as with TTYD but they don't go up as drastically or as quickly. This means that most enemies in the game never really become too much of a pushover, you always have to pay SOME attention to them.
- The game's difficulty is increased AND includes an optional 'hard mode' the game heavily rewards you for playing hard mode bosses with extra medals as well.
- Lots of optional content and bosses, and I mean a LOT.

Overall it's a great next logical step in the Paper Mario formula and inevitably really holds up as a spiritual successor to TTYD.

Excellent game if you're looking for a classic metroidvania ala Symphony of the Night and Dawn of Sorrow style.

Not nearly as good as it's predecessor...

If you're coming here as somebody who played Dark Souls and is looking to play the sequel then look no forther. When comparing it to Dark Souls we have this list of pros and cons.

Pros:
-Major improvement on graphics
-60 FPS
-PvP is much smoother and less trial-and-error with summon signs
-Combat mechanics expanded greatly
-Game feels a lot less linear (Dks wasn't that linear, but still)

Cons:
-Combat mechanics feel unbalanced in PvP
-Combat mechanics are also more buggy at times
-Lag is a bigger factor in pvp now
-60 FPS causes lots of bugs that can be lived with, but are annoying
-Storyline feels plain compared to Dks
-PvP is somewhat forced on you, at one point or another you'll have to go through it unless you play on offline mode

If you read what everybody else says about this game and have a phobia of difficult games you may end up getting the wrong idea and leave before you play the best game you'll ever play.

Everybody is always talking about how hard Dark Souls is, but that's just because this generation of gamers is used to have our vidya games handed to us on a silver platter.

Dark souls is nothing like that, no. Dark souls will slap you in the face every time you whine beg and cry pleading for it to let you have the game. Eventually though your face will become so bruised from the constant slapping that you will be forced to change and adapt to your new game.

Eating off of a silver platter is long gone with this game, the difficulty is there, sure. As long as you're a competent gamer though and have lots of patience you will be able to get through this game (mostly) unharmed.

My recommendation: Stop wasting time reading this review and buy it already.

Yes.