#I don't want to play mind games with myself

[sprintingowl]

Tales Of Crystals

Hey in the early 90s Hasbro put out a tabletop roleplaying larp for tween girls called Tales Of The Crystals, and there's a lot going on here, so I want to talk about it.

First, I want to give credit to @riseupcomus on twitter for doing a thread on it first. Riseup's thread is linked at the bottom, right after hasbro's pdf of Tales Of Crystals.

Now, what is Tales Of Crystals? Well, it's a journaling game. And it's an indie TTRPG. And it's a larp kit. And it's an audio game. And it's a cryptography kit.

It comes with its own map, rulebook, a cassette tape with multiple scenarios, a non-dice-based resolution system, four player roles, and a ruleset that's split up so that each of the four players is in charge of a different part.

If feels like a high concept, big swing indie title from 2024, but it's got thirty years worth of jump on the modern scene.

The basic premise is that the players are crystal bearers in the court of a fantasy kingdom, and there's an evil nation in the goblin swamp next door, and they have to guard the nation against treachery and ensorcellment and whatnot. It's not super duper fresh, but with how many things the game is juggling it's extremely reasonable that the plot's a little plain.

Each player's crystal comes with a power, and the powers are asymmetrical. The Leader gets the Crystal Of Shimmering Ice, which lets you oneshot enemies (nonlethally, by freezing them for a minute.) The Protector gets the Crystal Of True Sight, and can see through all lies and enchantments and mind control enemies for a minute (tbh this one is just better). There's a healing crystal and an invisibility crystal as well---and interestingly the invisibility crystal is given to the role responsible for journaling everybody's adventures. The game recognizes that at least one player of a fantasy larp for tween girls in the 90s is probably going to be a wallflower writer, and deliberately enshrines that role.

Tales Of Crystals has a solid core loop, with a deck of cards for prompts and a cassette tape for scenarios and a little circle with YES and NO marked on it that you can scatter your gems onto to get oracle answers to questions during play. It also has a LOT of gimmicks.

There's a tube of powder you can sprinkle on things to disenchant them. There's a mirror you need to read script that's been written backwards. There's three cryptographic cyphers at the back of the book. There's a box specifically for confining the evil Spider Crystal (after you've sprinkled it with powder to neutralize it.) This is a game of dozens of components, and it's a miracle the design is so tight that they all loop together so well.

Now, I don't have sales data (riseup might,) but I suspect maybe this thing didn't sell amazingly. It requires you to set up six or so distinct locations around your yard, pretty much needs a group of exactly four friends to play it, requires you to give clue elements to your parents---you'd have to be cool with it, your friends would have to be cool with it, your parents would have to be cool with it, and you'd have to have a big suburban yard in order to get a proper intended game experience. That said, its larp design is really stable, its gameplay is carefully thought out, and it includes a section at the start to encourage you to play safely and a section at the end to talk about your game together, journal your experiences, and to clean up the game components as a group when you're done.

This is good tech! And it even specifically recommends having a snack and relaxing afterward.

Tales Of Crystals doesn't use terms like bleed and session zero, but it's a good ways ahead of the curve on larp and ttrpg safety.

I didn't find the designer's name (they're listed as uncredit on BoardGameGeek, not mentioned in the PDF, and missing from the wiki page,) but they knocked this one out of the park. There's stuff in here that modern indie ttrpg designers could learn from---myself very much included.

So if you like ttrpgs, 90s magic, and stuff like Tamora Pierce and Sailor Moon, give riseup's original thread a look, and definitely check out the PDF link.

I'm thrilled this thing exists, and I hope more designers get to look at it.

[carionto]

Pressure and Release

Human: *hmm-ing at a set of dials and gauges*

Alien: What seems to be *translation unit catches up with the information they're displaying* OH MY GOD IT'S GOING TO EXPLODE!!! GET TO THE ESCAPE PODS NOW!!!!

H: Shh, it's fine, I'm just experimenting.

A: OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE HORRIBLY!

H: Hey! Rude. *turns a dial causing a loud hissing noise* It's just air compressors and hydraulics.

A: *due to not dying, is beginning to relax* Why do you need up to 200 atmospheres running through these systems. We have invented alloy-specific magnetization mechanisms. Please, why do you keep insisting on these volatile and explosive means?

H: *turns the dial up* Because... *releases the pressure again, loud sudden hissing sound again* That's a cool sound.

A: Just because you think something is 'cool' doesn't make it-

H: *interrupts with another air build up and release sound without breaking eye contact*

A: *leaves*

H: *continues to play around*

_________________________________________

Okay, so I wanna get this off my chest. I find myself now for the fourth time starting a fun little activity, doing it for months on end, having a blast, and then almost suddenly dropping it entirely. First time I wrote some short stories or something every day for about six months and put it on deviantart. Then some longer form stuff started cropping in, sort of continuous narratives or whatever, and I stopped. Second was running a open D&D campaign with a persistent world but ever changing party, each session a sort of one-shot with a decision that would impact the whole world and what future sessions would exist. Not even 10 sessions in I felt under pressure to continue and build upon what I had already and just couldn't and stopped. Third was another kind of TTRPG, this time running my own server for Lancer. Again, open one shots, but less connected and I would hopefully get some of the players to want to run their own games within this freeform framework that I directly lifted from a D&D server I was in, even had some of the same people join as players. Few months later, I felt this massive pressure from myself to run games and come up with new scenarios that I just froze up. I cancelled game after game and just eventually abandoned the server and the resources I had made. Fourth time was here on tumblr itself. Back to writing some short form stuff on a fairly regular basis, almost daily for some time even. Had a blast, and then longer form content started creeping in. I thought I wanted to write some stories with an overarching plot and recurring characters and connected storylines, build up and pay off, that sort of thing. Again, I created this massive pressure by myself for myself of myself to do something I apparently can't. I created this sense of expectation of myself "Well, I started this, I should finish it, but where do I go, what do I do, how can I connect this?" And then this self-inflicted pressure got to me, again. And I stopped.

What I have known for a while, but couldn't put into words is that I don't want to tell a big long epic story or anything like that. I don't have one of those in me and forcing something like that only makes me shrivel up and run away. I have a world, several in fact, in my mind. Entire continents of a low fantasy character driven political intrigue and drama based world with tons of rules and restrictions, thousands of years of history, strong personalities for the main actors and so many individual scenes with them and the supporting cast, and a timeframe for when the overarching story happens and how it ends. But no story itself. Just scenes. I have a high fiction sci-fi world, again, with very distinct factions and races, most of the details I have written out back when I was a teen in a physical notebook with pen and pencil. Lots of historical points and events, how the races work, their domains if you will, near magical powers I try to explain with plausible science. Tons of specific details. Even drew each of their common symbols, how one of the languages is structured, schematics of how their cities are planned, and details on other planets in the system and how those might be important later. But, not a single individual character or story. Just dry facts. And then we have the loose sci-fi world I've created here. Bunch of different angles and perspectives, some comedic, some more serious, even put Cthulu in there. Many short and mostly self-contained stories and episodes of various humans doing things an exaggerated version of humanity would do. There is potential for a number of expanded and longer form stories here, some I attempted, and as mentioned, what ultimately made me stop. I don't have a book in me, and I don't want to write one. I just like to write little snippets and I want to get myself to accept this idea that, no, it does not need to become more than that. Because every time I start going down a path where it feels like it should be more than a one page thing, I seize up, start thinking that I need to do this, panic when I can't come up with anything, go silent, and give up. It just does not work for my brain. And that's fine.

[definitelynotshouting]

So I just started playing In Stars and Time because I got curious about the sad little blorbo you occasionally post about and afshdjdkrn

I just. Wanna hug them. So badly 😭

Siffrin isat my everything my cinnamon fucking apple WKDNWKDNEKEKSK HE IS SOOOOO SQUISHABLE...... THEY NEED A HUG SO BAD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

Incredibly pleased im helping spread the isat propaganda like the dev rlly just Made a whump fic in video game format huh....... for tumblr girlies by a tumblr girlie.... my gods we respect the grind as if i could EVER be normal abt that

I'll be so real ive already written little tidbits for a longer au oneshot i want to write in between chapters of hunger au, and the exercise in 2nd person pov is SO MUCH FUN im enjoying myself immensely :] here, a snippet for both fun and profit (and more fun):

"Siffrin...." Odile says, and it strikes a sour chord, a ripple of dissonance that screws rivets around your chest and tightens. She shouldn't have to say your name like that, with that kind of weight— as if all the Craft in the world isn't enough to carry it. Pure reflex ducks your chin into the collar of your cloak; you avert your gaze back to the rubble-littered floor of the tunnel, tracing dark crags in the stone where sputtering torchlight fails to reach. There you go again, stardust. Loop's voice is an ephemeral echo in your ears, a byproduct of months, years worth of past loops gone by. It isn't real. Gone and made yourself another person's problem. It isn't real. "— need you to start taking this more seriously." Odile bites out each word with the same deportment of a dog tearing off chunks of meat, clipped and cutting. Her brows knit together, mouth pulling down in a sharp curve; the lines around her eyes are tight, carved from the knife's edge of her own disappointment. Her disappointment in you. You almost miss the next sentence as well. "I have no way of helping you if you don't speak to me," she says. "And when you minimize these things you went through— you realize that's going back on your word, yes? Gems alive, Siffrin. We want to help." You speak before your mind has caught up with your mouth, hundreds of loops sanding down the words into something practiced, rote. "But there's nothing to help me w—" "Stop lying to me." Odile snaps, and your jaw shuts so fast you miss biting your tongue by a mere hair's-breadth. Your lungs threaten to buckle— inhale. Exhale. Come on, stardust, Loop's imaginary voice sneers, can't you do something as simple as breathe? Or are you just that blinding useless? ... Shut up. Odile's eyes slip shut. She raises a hand to meet them, kneading at the soft skin between her brows. "I'm... sorry, Siffrin," she says, halting, stilted. "I shouldn't— that wasn't productive. I apologize." Tentatively, you say: "You don't have to." "Yes, I do." Odile straightens once again, tucking a strand of sweat-slicked hair back behind her ear with a grimace. "It's not... conversations like these are... hard. Yelling is pointless for both of us. I'm sorry." "But you didn't—" "Siffrin," she says, and this time the syllables of your name twist, a rise and fall that cracks wryly in the middle. One sharp eyebrow arches up into the canopy of her hairline. "You're supposed to say you accept the apology." You stare. She stares right back. Oh. She's serious. "I..." you look down. "Um. Accept?" "Excellent," Odile says brusquely, and bends to peer at an invisible speck of dirt clinging to her forearm. She brushes at it with absent, studious flicks, the epitome of single-minded focus. "Then now we can move on with our lives."

[richea]

Arise review

After buying the game at launch, I finally, finally finished my playthrough of Tales of Arise. Normally I would just write a few thoughts on Twitter and leave it at that, but I found I had a lot of things I wanted to touch upon with this game. With the prior two entries in the series, I kind of just rushed to finish them and then let them collect dust in my brain afterwards. However, back then I had other Tales games I wanted to try for the first time, so part of it was I was itching to get to ones I knew I would enjoy more. I got all caught up with the series before Arise was even announced, so there's no excuse this time!

With Arise, I took my time (well, maybe too much time), and let myself really process the game before I let myself finish it, in order to give myself a more solid basis for how I will feel about this game going forward. To that end, I wanted to really write down my feelings on the game in depth, touching upon all the various aspects of it and how everything made me feel.

Quick warning: if you don't accept criticism of Arise well, this isn't the review for you. I am approaching the game from the perspective of somebody who has played every other entry in the series and ruminated on all of them for years on end. I will be critical of the game in this piece. I'm not trying to tell people how to feel on the game, this is all purely my own thoughts and feelings, from the perspective of a long time Tales fan who deeply cares about the direction the series is going, and more importantly, its rich history.

I am also not looking for people to change my mind on the game, so please do not try to tell me my feelings are "wrong" or that I'm not appreciating certain things properly. I'm not looking for discourse.

That said, if you are someone who is interested in my perspective, then by all means enjoy the essay that is to come.

―――

In this post I want to dive into all the different aspects of the game and talk about each in depth, namely the story, characters and gameplay. I think it's more interesting to judge a game by balancing all these traits rather than just pinpointing one specific thing and basing my entire view of the game on that one thing (for instance, I tend to value interesting characters first and foremost when I indulge in media).

That said, for a quick TL;DR of my feelings on various things, when compared to other entries in the series:

Story: 2/10 Characters: 1/10 Character designs: 3/10 Other UI designs (such as monsters/menus/etc): 0/10 Battle gameplay: 4/10 Other gameplay: 4/10 Music: Undecided, which in its own right may not be a good indicator of how I feel about it Graphics: As a video game it's a 10, for Tales specifically it's a 9/10 for the graphics themselves and a 1/10 for the lack of anime portraits and the portraits we got just look awful (how does Ufotable only get worse with its Tales designs?)

Visual presentation

I want to start by acknowledging the graphics, as it's something that has zero relevance to how I feel on video games. Arise is a very pretty game! There is no denying this. I found myself stopping and just moving the camera around to admire all the pretty landscapes and views in the game. The character models are also very nice.

That said, like all modern Tales games, the battles are a bit overly stimulating on my eyes, because there's so much going on and lots of flashing lights. The actual effects were very pretty though.

The skits are absolutely horrible to watch. Even setting aside how I feel about the lack of skit portraits, the thin white text on top of the off-white backdrop was a horrible design choice. I think this is probably my least favorite aspect of the game. I get headaches very quickly from playing video games even just normally, and watching a ton of skits with intense eye strain did not help! There's also way too much movement with the skit... boxes? as well. Were they thinking about accessibility at all when coming up with them?

On the same topic, the subtitles for general cutscenes were also awful. The outline around the text needed to be much thicker. I could probably read 30% of the dialogue in the game. Thankfully I know a decent amount of Japanese, but still, I was interested in reading the actual translation of the text and I was having a really hard time. I feel bad for people who wanted to play with Japanese voices and don't know as much as me.

The menu UI was also very disappointing. It felt really barebones and had next to no personality to it. The big portraits drawn by Iwamoto were a nice touch (though if you're going to make such massive paintings, at least make the art itself more interesting to look at?), but it wasn't enough. They just felt like something to fill in the empty space which there was a lot of; the menu layout really did not utilize the space on the screen well, and it's double annoying when you consider how microscopic the font in the game is and how they could've used that space to make things more readable. Everything was hard to read, and again the lack of portraits was just utterly disappointing. Every time I opened the menu I just felt sad at how lifeless it felt.

Gameplay

My feelings on the gameplay are mixed. I'll start with the elephant in the room: the gald system in this game is not good. Only getting gald from chests and sub events is just a massively poor game design. Fishing helps but it's more time consuming than doing battles would be and there's really no other incentive to even doing it (at least battles would work towards EXP and getting battle proficiency things!).

The owl system was fun and was definitely a highlight of the game for me. It took me back to looking for attachments in Xillia, which is something I really enjoyed in that game as well and made the long traversing in the game more bearable. I just went from point A to point B in both Zestiria and Berseria, so this was the first game since Xillia 2 that I actually touched every corner of the map.

The battles are also a mixed bag for me. I will be completely transparent and state here that I mostly only played Shionne and Rinwell, so my feelings on the melee gameplay is very limited. My committed team was Shionne, Rinwell, Dohalim and Kisara. Between them you could hit every element weakness, on top of Kisara's high defense (and the fact that I just liked her more than Law and Alphen). From the perspective of a caster main, the battle gameplay was fine. Like other entries, you could do fun manipulation strategies to speed casting time. By the end game I was just spam casting Rinwell's highest tier spells instantly which was fun.

The healing is definitely... not great. There were a few times where I would run out of Orange Gels and then have to do a story progressing map action and it would eat the rest of my already gone CG bar. It was really infuriating. I only used First Aid the entire game, never anything else, because why would I use a better healing arte when it would just drain my gauge faster? It was a mess.

The monsters I did not enjoy. It felt really hard to stun them so it never felt satisfying fighting anything. Their movements felt WAY too grand. If every single boss is huge and epic and has moves that hit the whole map, the whole game starts to lose its impact. I also feel like they did way too much damage in a single hit, which made the healing issue even worse, and it felt more like I was trying to perfectly dodge every attack than it did managing my health in a natural way.

The skill system was just fine, no real commentary to make there. I wish there were more titles in the game however, and that they would display on the status screen (even Graces did this despite them both having the titles and skill systems merged).

Some quick other things

The campsite system was fine

I liked that the sub event indicators were really obvious, as someone who's really bad about doing sub events especially on my first playthrough (the actual sub events themselves are a different issue)

Like with fishing, I never really understood the point of the ranch

Did this game even have minigames?

I actually really liked the weapon skins system, that was super fun

Story

This is where I will start to nitpick things because I play Tales games for the story and characters first and foremost. And, having played every other game in full, my feelings on the story and writing in this game are... not very high.

To start, I do at the very least think Arise had some interesting starting concepts going on. Namely, a protagonist trying to figure out his amnesia and a girl who zaps everything she touches are pretty cool concepts! However, even from the first promotion trailer I was concerned about Shionne's story hinging too much on Alphen. The "he can't feel anything, she hurts everything she touches" plotpoints felt really, really convenient to me from the first trailer, and was a setup for having all the impact on the game being reliant on Alphen being a decent character (as well as, well, almost forcing him to be Shionne's hero, rather than him gaining that honor through actual hard work and emotion), but I was more than willing to give the game the chance to prove me wrong on that aspect.

I have too many feelings on the character writing so I will be giving them their own section below.

Anyway, sadly, I think those are the only two interesting and unique things in Arise's narrative. Everything else the game has done has been done in a prior Tales game but better. Let me go down the list (non-comprehensive as I can't remember every single theme from every single game, but I will name games that at least have these as the major theme that I can recall):

Two worlds vying for power (I could name games that don't have two worlds faster than I could name ones that do), and one world is trying to suck power out of the other one (Symphonia, Hearts)

The plotpoint about "when humans lose all their power they turn to dust" is literally exactly what happens in Hearts, while the "making people feel strong bad emotion to provoke them into our gains" is what Zestiria and Berseria's entire lore was about as well as Rebirth

Racism, oppression, slavery and colonialism (Phantasia, Destiny, Symphonia, Rebirth, Legendia, Tempest, Hearts (R removed this but there's literally an NPC who flaunts about enslaving the "lesser beings"), Berseria)

First half of the game is fighting a series of specific enemies, second half is focused on lore, especially figuring out stuff with the second planet (Destiny, Eternia, Symphonia, Vesperia, Hearts)

Do I think Tales rehashing tropes is a bad thing? No, not at all. It's something they have been doing for a long, long time. But what made it work in other games is that each game had at least something completely unique to it to balance that feeling of repetitiveness out. For instance, Hearts shows up a lot on this bullet list, but it is the only Tales game to have lore based around entering people's hearts, and the whole story is based around a fairy tale. Even the fact that it has a robot as a playable character was a first for Tales. Legendia rehashed a lot of plotpoints from Rebirth, but it had its own unique spin on things and the worldbuilding in it is completely unique with the focus on marine themes and the story structure being unique from any other game. Symphonia even keeps the same worldbuilding from Phantasia but the feels of the games are completely unique from one another due to how different the themes the stories tackle are. The issue with Arise is that I cannot think of anything unique in the game, aside from Shionne's thorns, that wasn't done in another game. And even then, all of the writing regarding her thorns is a big rehash of heroine tropes and situations in the series' past. I will go over that when I discuss her though.

Another glaring issue with the game is the skits. Normally, Tales skits have roughly 4 purposes. In order of prevalence: fun skits to show off the character's personality that the story can't showcase, the characters discussing story events to showcase the full depth of their feelings on the events as they happen, skits going over worldbuilding to explain in better detail if you didn't catch it from the story scenes (or just giving more information!), and navigational skits. Skits were always meant to be lively and engaging, even if things felt dull in the story, skits existed as a pick-me-up, and as a way to show how the characters were having fun. Skits are one of the most famous parts of Tales storytelling, specifically for this reason.

What's wrong with Arise's skits? In a franchise where the fun:dull skit ratio was 6:4 give or take, Arise changed those numbers to 2:8. Most skits were dedicated to rehashing events. Even in those rehashes, the characters were near constantly bringing up plotpoints that happened 30+ hours ago in the story. Over and over! Alphen was still talking about the first 5 hours of the game when you're on Lenegis!

Watching the skits, it genuinely felt like I was having constant deja-vu. I think I actually was worried I was going crazy at some point, because of the sheer extent of times they would have the same conversations over and over and over again. It got to a point where I would joke about Alphen and Law being on the screen together and I would say "countdown to them bringing up Zephyr" and every single time I would say that, the convo would turn to him. This was 55 hours into the game!

It's not bad for characters to reflect on the past events, but when that makes up the vast majority of their conversations, and one singular event makes up the entire personality of the character, the game feels dull very, very quickly. Skits transformed into a thing that I would usually open to find fun shenanigans between the characters and silly banter into me sighting about having to hear about Zephyr's death for the 200th time in the past 5 hours. It was very exhausting. Can we talk about something else now? My rant about this could be endless, but I genuinely want somebody to do a study on just how many times Alphen and Law bring up Zephyr throughout the game, and how many lines in the skits were dedicated to things that weren't just recapping events.

(Even then, there were cooking skits! However, I can only hear so many conversations about preparing food before I start getting bored. I know that eating and food is a BIG cultural point in Japan, but did every single "fun" skit need to be about eating? No.)

Speaking of, let me go over my feelings on the actual story and its events.

While the game did have a slow start, it wasn't that bad. The game eases you into what's going on, with the slavery and meeting Shionne. Nothing really of note to mention here. Rinwell and Law's character introductions were nothing special, but that was fine, it was still early in the game. My first major issue with the game is Zephyr's death. As it may be obvious from my above rant, the game places way too much importance on him as a character. A game mourning a character is nothing new. For instance, fractured Milla's death was a big turning point in Xillia 2. However, the entire game, as well as two entire characters, did not revolve around her death. Arise's issue is that Zephyr is barely a character, and yet the game constantly reminds you of how great and wonderful he was. We barely saw the guy, and no number of skits dedicated to Alphen and Law talking about him changes the fact that he is no more memorable than any other random NPC in the game. His death is unceremonious and was one of the most predictable deaths in the series to date.

(As an unrelated note, I am someone who loves a lot of NPCs in Tales. I love a lot of characters who have very little screentime. Two of my favorite Tales characters are Stella and Marian, who actually have a lot of similarities with Zephyr in narrative importance! The difference, however, is that you are not constantly having it drilled in that they are the epitome of nuance and the stories are not dictated by either character's morals, of which we never got to even see. Arise has Alphen claim Zephyr has the best moral views in the world and his entire life is dictated by those morals he was taught, and he pushes them on everyone else. Including the player.)

Zephyr's death aside, the other non-party characters are barely characters. I don't even remember any of their names. Especially the lords. To sum up my feelings on this instead of subjecting you to a long tangent on the lords, let me just drop these posts I made while playing:

One of Arise's lowest points however is how it handles its themes of racism and colonialism. I have a distinct memory of Alphen telling Rinwell to shut up when she brings up Renan oppression to him, Law tells Rinwell she's not allowed to want revenge due to her oppression, and there's this not-so-great scene on Lenegis where the party reflects on how... one of the lords was "only human" for wanting to enslave the Dahnans and how they can "see" his point of view? NOT GOOD! One of the comments I made while playing the game was "Alphen would stop Cless on his quest of revenge and he would also tell Velvet she's over-exaggerating is kind of my feelings on him at this point" and I still stand by it.

In general, the story is just very predictable. At no point in the game was I surprised by what was going on. Well, no matter, there's other predictable things in Tales games! ...But the difference is that other games, I at least was compelled by the characters and their reactions to those predictable events. Or, their personalities alone would carry me through plotpoints I otherwise found boring. Arise never endeared me to its cast, yet it expected me to find shock value and importance in its very predictable storytelling. I remember when the party takes on the lord who kills Rinwell's family, they said "we'll spare her life" (which is its own long rant but I digress) and I went "oh well someone DEFINITELY won't kill her one second later" and then Vholran showed up as I was saying it! Then, Alphen JUST so happens to get his feeling back in his body after Shionne walks right into Vholran's arms! This was truly the point in the game where I completely gave up on enjoying it and I started to only push myself to beat it just so I could get it over with.

The story sadly saw no improvements after that point either to remedy my soured feelings. The only two things I enjoyed after that point were the little bit with Dohalim's past and him making the speech on Lenegis, and Rinwell touching Shionne's hand in the final scene in the game.

I could go on forever about the story, but I will leave it at that.

As for the sub events, you couldn't really call them "events" when they were just one or two lines about defeating monsters. I did every sub event in the game up until before the final dungeon. I was very unimpressed by them.

Characters

This is absolutely my least favorite part about the game. As I stressed at the beginning, what I go through media for is for the characters. Good characters can salvage just about anything for me. When I watch story scenes, I'm always thinking about how it makes the characters feel. I went into Arise thinking "even if the story doesn't cater to me, at least I can fall back on enjoying the characters and their banter".

As you can already tell, I was utterly disappointed with the cast in Arise.

Alphen

He is easily the contender for my least favorite Tales protagonist, hands down. The issue with Alphen is he never has any original ideas at any point in the game. He always attributes any of his morals to Zephyr. He would go on tangents, explaining how other characters should feel about things, but when asked he got all of his ideas from Zephyr. It seriously felt as if he never thought for himself.

Making this worse is the fact that he would explain how everyone should feel. He would tell Rinwell to stop being mad about her oppression, he would tell Law to listen to his feelings on Zephyr and change his view on him based on his view of who Zephyr was, he would tell Kisara how to feel regarding her place as a woman.

Worst of all, however, was how he would talk to Shionne. Any time she would have an issue, he would make it about himself. In her most important scene in the game, where she's talking about how her thorns make her want to die, he made it about himself. She said what she wanted for herself and he said "whether you like it or not, I'm taking matters into my own hands". Yes, Tales has done this before, with the heroine wishing to die and the hero telling her he won't allow that, but it's infuriating in this case when he never lets her think or act or move or do anything without his input. There's countless scenes in the game where she would be upset and want time alone and he would force her to talk to him about her feelings. Shionne was not permitted to ever exist without Alphen forcing her to talk to him about and expecting her to go along with what he wanted, and his feelings about her situation. Again, past Tales game have had this, but when it's so constant and so prevalent, and is the only thing the character has to them, it becomes exhausting and annoying.

Also, his only "unique, fun" trait was that he likes armor, but this dialogue only ever showed up... when you made armor?

I was really disappointed with Alphen. Which is really not good when he is the protagonist, and Shionne's entire character also hinges on him. Especially given the grand finale to the game was their wedding, when I saw no romantic tension between them, because all he ever did was explain how she should feel. He was such a mess. I have more I could rant about with him but I need to leave it at that.

Shionne

Shionne is a big bundle of wasted potential to me. That said, she is probably one of the only characters in this game who felt like a character.

Like I said above, her thorns are an interesting concept. However, the handling of it really was standard Tales heroine tied to a cursed fate. The damsel scene, the way she wants to die but the protag talks her out of it, etc. That said, I did think her trauma with never being touched in her life was interesting, and it did make me emotional at points, even if the execution was poor.

I just really, really wish she could've been a character separate from Alphen. Her writing truly was doomed from the start with him being the only person who could touch her. Again, it felt like she bonded with Alphen because he's the only person who can touch her, rather than them actually making a proper bond as people.

Rinwell

Rinwell is... fine? I honestly don't have a lot to say here. I think it was nice that she got importance as the spiritual person in the party, and her banter with Dohalim was nice. I really disliked her relationship with Law however, and again, I hated that Law and Alphen tried to talk her out of her revenge. She was in the position as a "spiteful" person who "needed to grow out of it" but... her family was massacred? Why is Law allowed to be furious about his dad dying, but she's not allowed to be mad about her family being killed? The hypocrisy in regards to Rinwell seriously infuriated me and I felt really bad for her.

Law

Hoo boy. I really do not like Law either, for many of the reasons I don't like Alphen. He does with Rinwell what Alphen does to Shionne. What is with Arise men and mansplaining everything to the girls and refusing to let them have any agency or thoughts without their input?

He was also supposed to be the "mood maker," except his only mood making scenes were Hootle pecking him in the face or him saying something dumb and Rinwell calling him an idiot. It really wasn't that funny and felt like borderline bullying.

Law falls under a Tales archtype I normally really really like (Tytree, Spada, Hisui, etc), so I was expecting to like him quite a bit, but sadly I just... do not. See my Zephyr rants above as well.

Kisara

Kisara is probably the most unfortunate character in the cast. In theory, I really like Kisara. I'm a big fan of knight ladies, and I always enjoy the older woman character in the party (even if only in her 20s). In practice however she just... completely misses the mark. All of her scenes are dedicated to one of three things: working (or not working) under Dohalim, her brother, or how she can be a proper woman. Yikes! It's not good when a female character's entire character revolves around what she can do for men! There's many skits where she asks "what can I even do if everyone cooks for themselves" and her conclusion is... to follow her brother's dream? Kisara, can't you find your OWN dream? And no, bringing up how she can help Dohalim also doesn't count here.

I don't hate Kisara for being who she is, but I really just want to have a stern talking to with whoever wrote her. A female character should not revolve around men and being in the kitchen. Seriously. This game came out in 2021, you should've known better.

Dohalim

While I didn't like his introduction scenes much, he grew on me a lot throughout the game, and he definitely felt the most like a Tales character to me. There was a lot of humanity and nuance to him, and he had the honor of actually having his backstory shown on screen. He had a lot of facets to him: the part of him that was a Renan leader, the part of him that supports the party, his own goals, his own motivations, interesting relationships with other characters, as well as (and maybe most importantly) fun things about his personality via his breaks from seriousness as well as his fondness for music and artifacts.

Overall he felt very fleshed out, and I really wish he had been put in another game. I came out of Arise quite content with the character that was Dohalim, which I cannot say for anyone else.

Closing thoughts

Overall, this is probably the most disappointed I have been with a Tales title. Of course, I don't think every game is perfect, and there are games that I will admit just don't click with me personally that others adore, and likewise there are games that I think fall flat in some regards but resonate with me for the characters.

For instance, I think Tempest is a perfectly fine and even charming game, despite it being more on the barebones side of things. I do not hold Tales games to unrealistic expectations when it's not necessary, and I always think of a lot of things when I base how I feel about the game: crunch time, what the creators had in mind when making it, what heart was put into the story, what fun I am able to find even in the game's flaws. Things to that effect.

Where Arise differs for me is that many of the decisions I dislike about the game were intentional. The lackluster, yet overbearing monsters were intentional, the lack of skit and status portraits were intentional, the story not being that compelling, but taking itself way too seriously and acting as if it's the pinnacle of Tales writing, is also what the producer of the game flaunts when he discusses it. All of these things negative attribute to the quality of the game. Arise scratches away the charm that Tales games have, yet it is flaunted as being something groundbreaking when the story never attempts a single new trope.

It's not one deviation from series staples, it's a whole cluster of them. Why was there any reason to remove post battle dialogue, when that is something everyone absolutely LOVED about the series? Why are skits, which are part of what brought Tales to fame, boiled down to recaps of story scenes and not fun moments, which is what everyone is excited for when they go to open a skit? Why are the cute and iconic monsters completely gone, when every single game used the same designs? Why does the producer for the series actively hate the things that the fans love about Tales?

Arise is essentially a long laundry list of bizarre decisions made by the producer with awful execution, and then sadly the writing does the game absolutely zero favors. I came out of playing it feeling hollow. I've been revisiting some older games after playing it, and I've been getting legitimately emotional at how the characters in these other games actually talk to each other like people, and don't just bounce recaps of events back and forth to each other. Other games know how to have fun, and they have compelling characters, which is really what has always been the thing bringing people back to this franchise.

Would I like Arise more if it wasn't labeled a Tales game? Honestly, no, given I only ever played it because it's under the Tales branding. And I shouldn't have to even ask myself that, given I play Tales to enjoy Tales, and its tropes, and all the fun little things these games provide that no other series can give me.

If and when the next Tales game comes out, I will still probably play it. But so long as it is under our current producer, I will go in incredibly cautious, given he seems adamant about hating all of the things I love most about Tales. At the very least, I hope the next game is more innovative with its writing and characters, and brings back some of the charm that even Zestiria and Berseria had.

[thefoolishone666]

Kickin also once said

What is this? I have more? That is right @hiwelcometothemonstersancturary I have had way too much fun with the first, I have decided to drop kick the chicken through much more. Is this a good idea, no. Let's begin!

* Stand back, I know how to do the Wenis!

* Bubba, in reference to doing drunk Mario Party: The main thing is, I LOATHE alcohol, so I would hate every second.

Kickin: Just drink hot sauce. That is the next best thing for it.

* When did I become predictable!?

* (Building a boat on stream) Oh no, Mom is here. I am doing normal adult things, I swear. (Trying to hide the boat behind back)

* I am just saying, it was written in the stars that I would lose my leg. I would have liked to be told that Picky needed some emergency rations on that instead of it just happening, but at that point I am looking a gift horse in the mouth.

* (Watching Dogday play a rhythm game)...Catnap, I think Dogday is broken, he has not blinked once in the past minute.

* (Playing Blades in the Dark) Picky: Did you kill this person!?

Kickin:...Evidence wise no...but as a friend I can tell you that he insulted my hat.

* (Grabing Picky and lightly shaking) ARE YOU STRAWBERRY!?

* Anything that is pure white, is just as equally evil!

(30 seconds later)

...I just remembered Crafty exists...

* We did it! We killed an innocent man!

* (Camera is upside down and he has yet to notice) The fact that Bubba is just grinning while standing in the door has me nervous.

* Hoppy, I know you are mad at me, but letting yourself be juggle combo'ed is a great way to relieve stress.

* Não tenho boca e ainda assim devo gritar, or in English, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

* Picky: Should we do a cooking show intro or...

Kickin, instantly looking at camera: Boys, girls, and everyone in between, welcome to our new cooking show, "WAIT, WE CAN EAT EVERYDAY NOW!?" I am your pirate co host, Kickin, and this is Picky, currently still going through some character development.

* The best way to hide a body is to eat it...but this person is not a chicken, pig, or lamb, and we don't have a lamb in the gang, at least yet.

* The best way to not die is to eat, at least in my opinion...I am not looking at chat cause I know they are already asking if I ate anything yet.

* Poppy: Bubba sent you something from college!

Kickin: Yay! I love that elephant...Oh, Poppy, since you are here, you mind helping me?

Poppy: Sure. What is it?

Kickin: I need you to be a murderer.

* God...if you can hear me...you still owe me 5 bucks.

* Sometimes, life gives you a free drop kick in the groin.

* I will use the scientific method. (Closes eye and starts hits random buttons)

* Only three rules on this ship, remember to eat, remember to sleep, and if someone is neglecting to do 1 or 2, put them in a sleeper hold to force them to eat and/or sleep.

* What are friends but people you eat in a huge panic when food is low?

* In the name of the Father, Catnap, and my other Father. Amen.

* Hello it is I, the hatcher that is Billy.

* I AM THE CHICKEN SANDWICH KING! I am not a cow, so I can't be the burger King.

* I am made of tons of chicken, I can even name them. Nuggets. (Returns to game)

* I want to vote Theo. I have no proof he is the killer, I just want to do it for the bit. And pity revenge.

* Who says I can't be fabulous while firing myself out of a canon?!

* (Refering to how long till he called Angel parent on purpose) Who here wants to take bets on how long until I had an emotional breakdown?

* No joke, there have been days where I sign off the stream, get myself something to drink, and the entire farm will just hear, "SHOOT I NEED TO APOLOGIZE TO PICKY!" or whoever cause I don't pay attention to what leaves my face hole sometimes.

* Guys, sorry to interrupt the party, but I MAY have gotten stabbed and need some help.

* I would to dedicate the unnecessary slaughter of all the underworld's monsters to Dad, cause I am trying to regain what good is in my soul for committing to this...

* If I wear two eyepatches I become a super pirate!

* (Playing A pokemon soul link) Kickin: I got bad and shit news.

Bubba:...What is the bad news?

Kickin: I may have gotten a pokemon killed.

Bubba:...Which one?

Kickin: You know how happy you are when you got your favorite polemon in this...?

* (Singing) I gave my love a chicken...that had no face...

* Bobby is going to come in here one day without me noticing while I am playing Mortal Kombat and just clap when I get brutality, I already feel it.

* Cole, I like you, but why must you be lightening?

* What is Gender, but another thing we don't understand here.

* (Refering to the stack of golden apples he has) But I may need them later...(Eating rotten flesh)

* (Drawing on white board trying to figure out story of game) Then if this connected to this, and this to that...I just wrote a bunch of scribbles.

* You can't make me eat, shut up dad. (Realizes Angel is there) That wasn't towards you, I swear!

* My favorite weapons for stealth are a dagger, a pistol, and 55 pounds of TNT I always keep on hand.

* (Playing Something Wicked from Ultrakill) Why must Playtime help with this game!?

* But hate doesn't taste as good as my leg though!

* Today on, "Playtime ruined my life, now it ticks me off in the smallest of ways," fnaf lore.

* WHO GAVE THE DOG A KNIFE, AND WHERE CAN I MEET THEM!?

* So P3 has Dogday, P4 has Bobby, and P5 has Catnap...I am not bitter I am not in persona yet. You have no proof.

* (Refering to Phoenix Wright) WHERE WERE YOU WHEN WE WERE IN COURT!?

* A man with a knife is just a surgeon with a 100% mortality fate.

* If I get my mind trapped in the VR, make sure to tell dad.

* I already know what you are thinking and you are correct, I did make the dive bell horribly wrong and I am totally fine. (As he tosses a rock in a random direction in rage)

* Kickin: I am just sitting here scared as all hell, meanwhile these two are sitting back like, "Yes, nothing new here."

Catnap: Welcome to your new home in Silent Hills! You get used to your neighbors.

Kickin: It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day with our neighbors.

Crafty and Kickin: Won't you be my, won't you be my...

Kickin: Won't you be, my murderer?

* I think we can all agree Cathulu is out of all of our leagues.

* O que você vai fazer!? Me esfaquear!?

* I will be fine-FODA-ME, ISSO É UM TELEFONE!...(Covers face)...I got scared by a phone...

* Have a good night everyone, I am going to become dinner!

[somnimagus]

did some vesperia chibis, i always forget how happy i get drawing these guys. i love them dearly

[id in alt text]

[lunarharp]

qifrey's birthday and silly stuff

[kingofthewilderwest]

I'm always trying to remind myself that I traded mastery for breadth.

[coquelicoq]

facing the fact that i am an adult and that if someone's behavior is bothering me and i would like them to change it, i am going to have to say that to them with my words, as opposed to just hiding in another room until they cease the behavior that they don't even know is bothering me.

[tarnussy]

red and black combo forever

[millenniummmbop]

I firmly believe it would take yugi and kaiba years if not DECADES to finally figure it tf out and get together btw

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

If there is at least one thing I can credit FE for doing better than Tales in localization, it's not trying to actively go out of their way for an entire game to avoid subtext or direct text between two men that is romantic or implied romantic. Funny when it's so present that the attempt doesn't even work; infuriating that it was attempted to begin with.

So as much as I often have issues with some of FE's localizations, at least they have a leg up on loc Tales for that.

[echthr0s]

WELL

[rackartyg]

romancing astarion with sorrow, who by level 12 had 22 charisma and +14 to insight, was very funny.

him, 10 cha and +1 to insight: i am a master manipulator

her: yes dear

[mirage-of-the-virtuoso]

Reblog this is you don't mind friends randomly popping up in game and silently doing game content with you :3

[zephyrdagonheart]