So I've been a big fan of the Tales series for a long time now. I think I first played Tales of Destiny back in 2002 when I was living in California and that was the spark that grew to almost rival my love for Final Fantasy games.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of 1 game in the whole series that I didn't like (bonus internet points if you can guess which one ) and only played through till the end just to add it to the list of done games. Tales of Arise seems so far to be a pretty good game. Music, graphics and story are on point as usual with a Tales of game, My one small gripe graphically is Alphen's Sword(s) as it seems to hover about 3 inches off his back - I know its hardly world-destroying but little stuff like that annoys me, especially when the answer will be "a wizard did it " Shinonne at least has an explanation as to why she isn't always carrying her gun.
Gameplay-wise, it's a little different than the standard button bash until things die with things relying more on dodging and parrying - This is all well and good for the player but the AI (Shinonne) seems to think they are a tank and in no time in all will be down relying on you to chuck them a Life Bottle to get them back up as I found out when I was taking on my first stray Zeugle. She did do a bit better on the first real boss tho so maybe I'm missing something at the moment.
Magic is a little different too with everything running from an action gauge much like Berseria, so rather than having Magic Points, Tales of Arts run from the ever replenishing action gauge except for the Healing arts which run off a parties CP which depletes a set number points per heal/cure and can be refilled by resting or using Orange Gels
Anyway I better be off, got to clean out the PS4 so it doesn't sound like a fighter jet taking off - actually will be replacing the TC and TP later this year but that will have to wait for a month where I have some money. Questions, comments and all that good stuff are welcome as always and I'll do my best to reply