Tales of Arise is fast-paced combat and a wonderful world.

Tales of the uprising is the highly anticipated seventeenth (!) chapter of one of the most famous RPG video game franchises, and as its release is almost around the corner, Bandai Namco offered us the opportunity to experience one of the game’s areas firsthand and witness your brilliant combat!

Oh game will be released on September 10 on PC – Xbox Series X Editions | S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and PS4, and we played PC build via the cloud. The material already seemed very close to the final product, with the right to subtitles in Portuguese and a lot of politeness in systems and visuals. Check out our first impressions of Tales of the uprising to follow!

New characters and dynamics

After launching the demo, there were six different playable characters to choose from: Alfena, the light swordsman; Shionne, shooter; Rinwell, wizard; Luo, martial artist; Kisara, warrior; and Dohalim, the fighter. Although each has its own strengths and striking appearance, the initial choice does not really matter, because you can change heroes at any time, including during battles.

Any character you choose will become your avatar while exploring the world Tales of the uprising but when interacting with NPCs or activating key story events, the focus immediately shifts back to Shionn and Alfen, the adventure’s protagonists, story threads, and game cover stars. It would be nice to have more dialogue in terms of other characters, but that’s the price of the main character.

Judging by the level of power of the heroes and their enemies, the fragment that we already played seemed to be later in the plot, perhaps with several tens of hours of progress. However, from time to time, some of the tutorial windows reminded us of the most basic concepts of the franchise, infamous for its thrilling combat.

Battles continue to take place in real time, requiring a combination of analytical thinking, item placement and management, and recovery to win. But this time, the encounters are smoother and more pyrotechnic than ever, which is even more evident in encounters with bosses or tougher opponents.

A very neat world

Newbies can be a little intimidating at first due to the many options present during the action, but this is something that a few hours of training does not solve. Almost every hero Tales of the uprising can attack with different ARS, three of which are associated with each button at the same time. Most of the time I played with Rinwell, who could load the ARS and leave them programmed to exit on the next attack or immediately.

When you use normal attacks, the bar fills up and you can then activate shortcuts to trigger a coordinated cooperative attack called impulse strikes. Each of your allies has a different pulse attack, so it’s worth experimenting a lot to find out when is the best time to summon them to create combos and maximize their effect.

Most of the demo Tales of the uprising it took place in the plains of Tital, teeming with a wealth of nature and very characteristic fauna and flora. The art direction is great and the environment blends very well with the anime adventurer aesthetic, ensuring that finding items and materials on the map is always rewarding.

Deep fight

As with collectibles, enemies are always obvious too, so you can dodge collisions with them if you don’t want to fight or need to seek help from the camp to get your life back. You can also find merchants on the map to sell more consumables or even use their materials and make stronger accessories that can generate passive upgrades.

Regardless of your gear, the key to being successful in battles is a good sense of space and how your allies are doing. This was especially evident in the main mission of the demo, which was to defeat a giant Zeugl named Praying Mantis at the request of the locals.

Taking it down is a collaborative effort, requiring great care to properly position your pieces around the beast and then coordinate attacks on its weak points as it breaks through. It took me two tries to succeed, and I admit that I only managed to get over it after overusing the items I carried in my inventory, which only made me even more curious and eager to master all the nuances of the combat system in Final Cut.

Since the announcement of the project, Bandai Namco’s idea has always been to Tales of the uprising a game that respects the franchise’s famous origins, yet is brave enough to give a grateful and needed boost to the future. From what you can see in this demo, the producer is likely to achieve his ambitions!

And you get excited about the release Tales of the uprising? What’s the name of your favorite franchise? Let us know in the comments below!