TALES OF ARISE

The latest Tales RPG is ready to arise and shine

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“SHIONNE HARNESSES THE PLANET’S ASTRAL ENERGY TO CALL FORTH A MAGICAL SWORD.”

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 9 SEP / PUB BANDAI NAMCO / DEV BANDAI NAMCO STUDIOS / PLAYERS 1

For almost a decade, Tales games were released like clockwork, with nary a hair’s breadth between them. The three-year gap between Tales Of Xillia 2 and Tales Of Zestiria was the longest between entries, until Bandai Namco took time to reboot the series following 2016’s Tales Of Berseria.

Enter Tales Of Arise, a game primed to breathe fresh life into the beloved series. Arise entered development ahead of 2018’s Tales Of Vesperia remaster, time Bandai Namco Studios used to rediscover and refine Tales’ strengths. Arise is fundamentally a Tales game – it’s linear, it uses the series’ Linear Motion battle system and Mystic Artes attacks, and it brings back skits, the regular delightful interludes in which characters chat with one another. However, it also has a few new tricks up its sleeve: this is the first Tales game not to use Bandai Namco’s proprietary engine, its world being rendered in Unreal Engine 4 instead. And while it’s been delayed from its planned 2020 release, that delay has brought us a PS5 version, which will make use of the DualSense’s haptic feedback and also offer a choice of performance modes.

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