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The game rewards performance in battle and consecutive fighting. The more combos you do, less damage you take, not needing to be revived, all impact your score. You get a high score, and you have a higher multiplier for exp/sp. I've gotten scores upwards of 400.
I'm playing on Hard, and have one shot every boss so far.
Except for the treasure hunt... It kinda took me a while to find the place.
It's clear this is due to the microtransactions in the game. No different from any mobile game these days now.
The reason is so you will buy the auto level up and the https://store.steampowered.com/app/1202052/Tales_of_Arise__Growth_Boost_Pack/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1202051/Tales_of_Arise__Relief_Support_Pack/
As they max you out or make leveling easy. And extra ways to get money apart from the one listed above that gives you 100k you can purchase up to 4 for real money.
There are also 6 auto levels which just auto + 10 or 5 you up of microtransactions on top of that
This is becoming a joke. It's clear the grind was intentional the other games were never really a grind at all. Other than resources. Like Tales of Grace F just off the top of my head. It was never needed you could play the game without grinding, complete it and have a great time. If you were going for 100% completion/achievement you would need to do some grind for materials to get rare weapons in order to take down a boss faster. That's how gaming should be grinding for materials and items, not for the system to frustrate the player by out balance the game so that he purchases microtransactions.
So sad to see tales do this.
What used to be NG+ Grade Shop options suddenly being DLC-exclusive instead for Arise is crappy, though (the artifacts). And having a few artes/passives per character hidden behind the Costume DLC is incredibly irritating, even if they're entirely unneeded and no better than what the characters already have (aside from Dohalim's AoE heal).
Arise requires virtually zero grind as well. Without any DLC, on Hard and then Chaos (once unlocked) difficulties, I 100%ed the game with less than two hours of grinding. I fought every enemy I passed only once and used Happy Bottles to keep the battle chain going (and even to start new battle chains when one wasn't going). I maintained level parity with enemies at every point (aside from bosses, which are designed to be a few levels ahead), had enough materials to craft every weapon, enough Gald to purchase every armor and to keep 15 of every recovery item in stock most of the time (aside from the start of the game), enough SP to unlock all but 2-3 titles for each character by the final boss, and learned every Arte aside from a few of Law's (since the AI will hardly use his buffs).
The DLC is sketchy as heck, but the game design has not become noticeably more restrictive in order to push it. Not even in Arise.
However in this game you're extremely under-leveled for the challenges, I believe this was done on purpose to make people buy micro-transactions.
Trust me, this issue has been long discussed on the Tales community, and we all agree something is wrong with the progression and difficulty in this game, Lord Ganabelt is a known roadblock.
The ridiculous amount of enemy HP don't help the matter, we take 2 min. to kill trash mobs, in previous Tales games you kill trash in less than 10 seconds, and bosses don't take 10 minutes to kill either.
I've no idea what game you're playing, but that was not my experience at all when I played it on the console, and I doubt there are any actual differences between that and the PC version. If you just progress through the game, do the sidequests, and do not skip random encounters in between, you will have more than enough experience. There is no need for any kind of grinding, or to buy microtransactions. Unless you're really bad at the game and you actually have to be overleveled to power through instead of win encounters. Random encounters do not take 2 minutes to win either, bosses I do not know, I did not time them but a long boss fight is not a problem, if you were actually underpowered you wouldn't even last 10 minutes.
This only happens if you rush through the main story and/or ignore the side content + avoid battles, at which point that is entirely your fault. You would be underpowered in any Tales game if you did that.
I been playing Tales since Tales of Symphonia on the Playstation 2, even got a PSP on purpose on purpose to play Tales, so I like to believe I know how to play a Tales game by now.
Thankfully I'm not alone in this opinion, it was a mistake for Namco to try and appease the general market, now we got to deal with rude folk like yourself telling everyone to git gud and acting like they know what Tales games are about.
Please stop using "we" as if you're representing the opinion of tales fans as a group in an attempt to artificially inflate the validity of your personal opinion. You might think that it makes the ground you're standing on stronger, but it doesn't. Instead, it just makes it seem like you feel so unsure of your own opinion that you feel the need to pretend you have the majority of tales players agreeing with you as insurance. Your opinion isn't unreasonable, so you don't need to pretend it's the majority opinion to make it valid.
Anyway, I'm one of the first generation of "tales players", since that seems to be the metric you want to use. I've played Tales since Phantasia for the SNES in the late 90's using emulation and eventually an English translation patch in the early 2000's (sure was nice to learn what was actually being said). And I agree with the person you're responding to in premise...
...except regarding it all being just a 'git gud' situation - of course it can be solved by playing better, and everyone knows that; but that's beside the point, so it's nonsense to bring up.
Arise's leveling curve is actually incredibly well done, and you're supposed to be about five levels under any boss you meet. Never, under any circumstances, should you be "under-leveled for the challenges" unless you skip content (or fight optional bosses early). Fight every enemy you run by just once and do all the side quests as you can, and you'll easily keep your level where it should be.
Arise's normal battles are balanced around the Boost Strike mechanic. Once you unlock Boost Strikes, most normal battles shouldn't last longer than a minute regardless of your difficulty setting, because nearly every enemy should be being killed by comboing into a Boost Strike. If you're killing normal enemies by depleting their HP bars for most of the game, then yes, it will take longer because you're not making full use of the mechanic. Before you unlock Boost Strikes or against certain lategame normal enemies which can't be Boost Striked, on the other hand...they take a while.
The bosses are longer in Arise, yes. But I wouldn't call them harder. Well, most of them, anyway...which leads to my next point.
Lord Ganabelt is a ridiculous second boss, I completely agree. Difficulty-wise, Ganabelt should have been at least the third lord fight, not the second, mainly for access to more healing items. They do give you an amazing tool to beat him, however: those craftable accessories that reduce Light damage by 50% for your entire party. All of his attacks (possibly excluding his few purely melee attacks? Fairly sure those as well...) are Light element - you effectively half his damage. More than anything, Ganabelt is a mechanic check for dodging. Most of his clones will be on you for most of the fight so long as you don't die, which means far less healing items used on your AI allies, so focusing on dodging into counterstrikes while your allies dish out a large chunk of the damage a bit more safely is key.
Ganabelt's imbalance reminds me of that wolf Gattuso, the first real boss in Vesperia, which is infamous for being woefully overtuned. He puts Ganabelt to shame. Boy, did I hate that boss my first run through. And my second. And to this day. Both bosses are clearly overtuned.
Such bosses do little to spur DLC sales, though, considering you can just temporarily lower the difficulty setting for them. If you're already on the lowest difficulty and are properly geared for the fight yet still struggling, then, well...at that point, it really does become a 'git gud' situation.
In this game I was forced to use items against bosses for the first time, so is clearly not the same.
Plus "stop saying we", you have more than enough sources online from real fans of the series that agree with me, https://www.reddit.com/r/tales/comments/pym5hu/tales_of_arise_is_stupidly_hard_even_on_normal/
In Arise, whether or not I can beat a boss is very much dependent on how efficient I am with my item use and how much supply I go in with. I mean, unless I've just mastered the boss and can perfect-dodge absolutely everything to solo it - that's still possible if not absurd.
"No true scotsman" is the fallacy here, and if I didn't see the truth in your points on their own merits, then it would have made it extremely hard to take your posts seriously. Doubling down on a fallacy does your opinion no favors. That's why I mentioned "stop saying we"; you'd actually have a stronger argument if you just said "I". Let your opinion stand on its own merits. It's good enough for that.
Keep in mind that I'm not disagreeing that Arise is surprisingly hard, but I vehemently disagree about it being stupidly hard. I also disagree that it is artificially harder than it should have been in order to sell more DLC.
It got only worse in NG+, killing enemies with 2 hits is even more boring than killing enemies with 200 hits.
The huge HP pools of the enemies are the main issue of this game (in NG), I was comboing trash enemies past 100, and they were still kicking (the arena.. is a good place to fall asleep).
Then in NG+ the issue is lack of enemy HP, ironic...
To me it shows a clear lack of balance, to the point the famous roadblock Ganabelt mechanics cannot he done due to his high HP, your party is going to take that AoE regardless if you like it or not, prepare those items (there are actual mechanics in that fight that prevent you from taking that AoE attack, you can do them in NG+).
I lost to my first attempt against Ganabelt because I didn't bother creating those Light resistance accessories. I figured, "Eh, I'll just dodge whatever he throws at me." I wasn't expecting goddanged Indignation mystic arte spam! Which you can't dodge. Was still difficult but actually possible after I made the accessories and tried again. How hard a boss he was really caught me off guard.
I thought the "interrupt his mystic arte by killing the barrier generators" mechanic was very intuitive; it's too bad it really is impossible to accomplish in NG, at least on Hard (never played Normal or below, so dunno). I actually managed to pull it off in the optional boss rush quest at the very end of postgame, which felt good - thanks, Reigning Slash and Incineration Wave!
In general, I feel like a lot of Tales titles aren't particularly well balanced. Many of the games have a mix of bosses that feel stupidly hard (though not to the point of Ganabelt or Gattuso) or mindnumbingly easy alongside the actually well-balanced fights. I feel like they use the ability to change difficulty settings on the fly as a safeguard against this, so they don't try all too hard to avoid it, as the player can adjust the difficulty as desired.
As for normal enemies, I found the best strategy was to focus on getting one to about half HP first, then trying to focus on combos for a finishing Boost Strike. Boost Strikes do strong damage in a large AoE around the enemy you use it on, so, after working toward the first, I can usually just focus on combos and chain them until the battle is over as nearby enemy HP will have a huge chunk taken out of it.
In the arena, on the other hand...as you said, it's just a slog. ESPECIALLY Alphen's, as for some reason they always give him the tanky enemy types that he can't guard break like Law, or the huge enemies like the Hammer Bros in his level 60 solo. Group arena matches were fun, though.
I act like I know what they are about, because I do. I haven't played all of them, but ever since Tales of Eternia on the PSP I've played a majority of them that were available on the PS3 and the PS4, and all of them on moderate or high difficulties. I find it really funny that you dismiss somebody and are so sure of yourself at the same time simply because I seem to have a different experience than you. You couldn't be more wrong though, Tales and PErsona series are what got me into JRPGs and are two of my most beloved franchises. Well maybe Disgaea is somewhere there in the top 3.
Regardless, I will absolutely use the "git gud" card here since it is very much applicable. Tales games always had a skill based battle system (well, I guess I don't know what was there before ToE but ever since then definitely), this one is not an exception. And yes, you could absolutely get your ass kicked in the older games if you didn't know what you were doing, that's why the lower difficulties were there to begin with, for people who couldn't figure out the battle system. The battle system has also only kept getting more complex as time went on, for example if you compare Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Xillia for example, the difference i huge. Personally what was always my favourite part of those games, the battle system.
And maybe that is why I did not have issues with Arise's difficulty, because I was already playing all the other games on moderate and hard difficulties on my first go so I always had a challenge to overcome. I personally find Arise's combat system to be a downgrade to Xillia or even Berseria, but maybe I have just not played enough of it yet to actually understand it completely, but so far I found it relatively simple with only a few things to keep track of and manage that were actually tricky to get into the flow of. Regardless, as I said I never felt like I had to buy or use any of the DLC boosts for gold or exp, it was never a problem. I don't know what to tell you. Did the game feel harder on normal than the previous games, yes it did. And I love it, I hated how stupid easy Tales games used to be. Was I ever gated by something that felt like it was unfair and designed to make me want to buy a boost? No.
So ask yourself: why are you struggling when I was not? Maybe you just didn't learn the combat system well enough? Maybe you actually had to git gud instead of complaining. Or, if you don't want to do that, you can always lower the difficulty, I will admit I do dnot remember if they have an easy difficulty in Arise but I bet there is one, so swallow your pride and play the game on easy mode if normal is too hard. The game is not forcing you to spend any additional money, and if you feel that way then that is 100% a personal problem.
Oh also, before you do something silly again and suggest that I am trying to defend the game, I am not. I actually find Arise to be a poor Tales game. It's a good action RPG, but a good Tales game it is not. And I would be sad if this was the direction the game went in, because it feels like they are losing too much of their core identity with this entry. What I am doing is simply correcting people who are talking nonsense that is not true, and blaming the game on their own personal failures, lack of skill or overblown ego that is preventing them from playing the game that is clearly too difficult for them on an easier difficulty. I 100% guarantee you that if there were no mtx that give you bonus items, exp or gald in the game, there would be absolutely no complaining about the difficulty. None. People would just say "oh this Tales game seems a bit harder on normal difficulty than the other ones were" and that would be the end of it. The only reason we are having this discussion is because they exist, and as I've written above, some people prefer blaming those rather than their own ineptitude. I know it, you know it (even if you refuse to accept it), everybody knows it. Do I want them in the game? Hell no, mtxs are horrible plague that I despise is a modern trend. Are they the reason you cannot kill that boss? Nope. So yes, unironically, get good.