While I’m typically focused on the indie gaming end of the spectrum, it has been a pleasure to spend some time exploring higher-end AAA offerings as well, especially those involving franchises I’d never gotten the chance to check out previously. In the case of the Tales series, I recently took some time to go through the paces of Tales of Berseria Remastered, enjoying its darker-than-average story beats and pretty active combat. While Tales of Arise may not be quite grim and revenge-focused, I love the fact that its story goes in a completely different direction, it sports far more polished visuals, and it amps up the intensity of its active battles as well.

While your main character isn’t driven by a thirst for blood in this case, that isn’t to say everyone in this story is carefree and simply in search of adventure by any means. You’ll be jumping into the shoes of a man initially only known as Iron Mask, who has an unknown past and is toiling as a slave in the mines controlled by a race called the Renans. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t take long for everything to begin to change from the moment he decides to help a powerful Renan woman on the run by the name of Shionne. Their journey together isn’t always an easy one, and it takes some time for their relationship to grow past merely having aligned goals initially, but it’s one of the pillars of the experience to be sure. You’ll have the choice to engage in periodic skits, which are now presented with quite a bit more visual flair than before, which will deepen the storytelling side of things, but if you’d prefer to just keep rolling along you won’t be stuck sitting through them, which is always a nice choice to have.

Combat is pretty interesting for a number of reasons, with one of the biggest simply being how configurable it is. If the thought of trying to keep up with pretty quick-paced dodges, counters, and art slinging doesn’t appeal to you, there’s an option to essentially let it play out on its own once you set your general strategy. If you’re looking to be on top of everything at once, you can opt to go with the manual setting as well. I found the recommended Semi-Auto worked just fine though, giving me plenty of options, encouraging me to continue to switch up my attack patterns, and generally being a good time. Granted, it isn’t at the level of focused action titles, but it does stand out nicely among its genre peers with fluid movement and hitting a sweet spot in terms of overall challenge.

Put it together and you’ve got a mix of a story that feels fresh, built on an initial main character with a hidden face and past, a party of people who are initially at odds with each other but manage to come together, and generally refreshing action-oriented combat that continues to evolve. The art style is very distinctive, so I could see people potentially being on the fence about it, and at times the voice acting can get a little overwrought when continually hitting on the same notes about being slaves, but it’s still a pretty tight package. If you’re a fan of the Tales series this seems to have stepped things up, but if you’d have preferred them to go the more traditional route you could be disappointed. For newcomers though, it feels like a solid place to start.