This game is objectively so much better than Tales of Arise, why it has less positive reviews?

[BTGMX]

Title

[BlackBlitzkrieg]

The preference of this game over Tales is subjective. Art wise, Tales has a bit more polish behind it. The faces convey emotions and at least look a lot less doll like. They also seem to animate. Playing on PS4 had me seeing a lot of this game's environments and textures looking all sorts of muddy and eww. Tales demo looked and ran worlds better for me. Again, I know it's PS4 but that baseline speaks volumes.

Story wise both aren't all that special so that might be just personal preference. I will say Star Ocean's attempt at making dual protagonists feels a bit off when I started as each protagonist, Ray had a full CG opening and story setup. However, Leticia literally starts in the woods mid conversation with her Albard and doesn't get nearly the same buildup as Ray. It makes her opening feel like an afterthought. I will defend SO6 in that according to quite a few, Arise's story premise promised a lot more than it could actually deliver so in that sense its probably the bigger disappointment, story wise.

Gameplay wise, I personally think Arise's gameplay and combat have a bit more meat on them. The Duma system for traversal is an interesting premise but combat options and expression feel a bit barebones. And even Duma's traversal/exploration doesn't feel all that impressive for me but I only played the demos for each.

Performance wise, I think Arise is probably the better optimized game. but each computer brings a whole suite of special issues so that might not be the case. At least on PS4, the
SO6 demo seemed to run and perform worse than Tales of Arise's Demo. Both graphically and performance wise. Also the game's font size was a big point of contention for SO6.

Arise looks more polished and has a premise that seems a bit more intriguing. Evidentially, it doesn't stick it's landing but Star Ocean 6 seems to just be Star Ocean 2 but with a jetpack.

The other thing is Namco Bandai also supported the game with a stupid amount of DLC and marketing whereas Star Ocean seems to have not gotten the same.

Not trying to offend but offer an answer to your question's premise but just be aware I think the premise's bias isn't that accurate.

[Algester]

because technical issues SO6 SUFFERS A LOT OF pop in and sudden frame drops Tales of Arise is hella more polished than SO6 in that regard even if SO6 gameplay wise is infact well better

so I'm better off playing Tales of Arise

[Astellin]

wait just the demos........lol what

[Akira]

Originally posted by BTGMX:

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True. TOA is a worst Tales of game.

[RunningWild]

Simple.

Tales of Arise has fishing.

[Nonexistinghero]

Just bought SO6 so I've yet to play it, but ToA was pretty bad. The combat just lacks any kind of balance. The powerful monsters were just a matter of just spamming attacks and healing items until they're dead because it's often just literally impossible to avoid their attacks or stop them in their tracks. Story was also just terrible along with the characters. The setup had potential, but that setup was quickly abandoned and became something extremely tame and straightforward.

Been playing Tales of Eternia (aka Destiny 2) again on my Miyoo Mini Plus here & there recently and the writing, music, art design, characters, story, etc... they're all infinitely better. Combat's not that great, but it's still better than ToA's combat.

I do suppose ToA's story is a bit better than the upcoming Tales of Graces F remastered, but ToGF to this day still has the best combat in the franchise by far.

[Nonexistinghero]

Well, I'm towards the end of the game now. So far this game is infinitely better than ToA. Godo story, nice characters, nice visual sites and nice twists. There is still some jank I guess, the auto-aiming system is atrocious for example and menuing is pretty awful. And while towns are fun to explore, there's no one to talk to outside of people related to sidequests, people who want to play the chess-like minigame and NPC's related to the story.

Later half of the game also throws signficantly more and significantly longer cutscenes at you. And the worst kind of 'unskippable cutscenes' as well. Earlier in the game characters only talk a few lines to each other when exploring, but later in the game they just yap on and on for well over a minute regularly. Sometimes several minutes. Yes, you can progress, fight and grab chests during that time. But you cannot scan, cannot save and cannot enter the menu during those times.

But despite those annoyances, I think it's still a good game. In fact, I feel like it's the only JRPG I've played in recent years that's actually doing its own thing and it feels much like many of the JRPG classics I've enjoyed in the past. It very much feels like a proper main entry in the franchise.

[Eclisis]

Originally posted by Nonexistinghero:

Just bought SO6 so I've yet to play it, but ToA was pretty bad. The combat just lacks any kind of balance. The powerful monsters were just a matter of just spamming attacks and healing items until they're dead because it's often just literally impossible to avoid their attacks or stop them in their tracks. Story was also just terrible along with the characters. The setup had potential, but that setup was quickly abandoned and became something extremely tame and straightforward.

Been playing Tales of Eternia (aka Destiny 2) again on my Miyoo Mini Plus here & there recently and the writing, music, art design, characters, story, etc... they're all infinitely better. Combat's not that great, but it's still better than ToA's combat.

I do suppose ToA's story is a bit better than the upcoming Tales of Graces F remastered, but ToGF to this day still has the best combat in the franchise by far.

Skill issue you can perfect dodge pretty much anything in the game, and you can stop the unblockable attacks before they charge up to use them


Combat is way smoother in Tales of Arise it's not even close, this feels like a ps3 game in comparison, Tales of Arise main problem was the story towards the end, the combat is top notch in action RPG category

[0wnz0r]

bamco is a better publisher than squeenix. i cant believe that not only did i jus say that, but its also tru. how unbelievably ♥♥♥♥♥♥ sad lol dam... i never thought about it until this very moment. squeenix fell off so dam far...

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by BTGMX:

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I didn't review either game positively, but I'll say that this game has technical issues that prevent you from getting a refund.

Tales of Arise actually sort of works, lack of controller support thanks to Steam Input aside. You'll know within the first boot of the game whether it's going to work on your system. Whereas Star Ocean will compile shaders for more than 2 hours.

[Taika]

I agree overall with OP. Tales of Arise is simply beautiful artistically and joy to watch, but found the story unsatisfying, which the most important part to me. SO6 also has many moments of jaw-dropping beauty, and I found the story more satisfying so overall so definitely has the edge for me. But the PC performance issues really held it back for many users... got so bad near the end I was barely able to finish without crashing, and couldn't explore the extra dungeons or other endings.