There was a few moments and the story did string you along for an Anti climax imo. When Ifrit killed Joshua early on and that whole fight scene but the game became average there too, killing off the best character a quarter of the way in, the stand out role and the fights just became over spectacle and boring because there was no down time, it was just too much spectacle. A problem many JRPGs face... not that this is an RPG, it's a Devil May Cry game wearing a mask of an RPG. The only true stand out of this game (apart from Cid, taken too early) was the HDR in boss fights, I was stunned by it, the effects and contrast between the colours was a feast for the eyes, I felt like my eyes were going to bleed playing at night and when the luminosity peaked I was getting burn in on my retinas. Really great job on that. Everything else is just as average as a game can possibly get. 

Hmm. I think Arise is a 10 or at least a high 9 cause of that later part in the game where the characters can't decide for 2 or 3 hours what to do and have to talk it out three times, you just tp around for a while, I really wanna dock a point for that but I can over look it. 

My problem with your posts though, is if nothing else, you can sat that Arise has the best combat system in JRPGs, tied with FF7 Rebirth... perhaps even better at it's core than that cause it has way more potential to become something genre defining and usher in the new standard for JRPGs, Rebirth has that potential too but it's also stuck in the past and doesn't go fully action orientated. It is a flawless combat system and so kuch fun as long as you keep the difficulty up and don't resort to going for easy where it looses all fun. And the boss designs and fights were spectacular, the art style and volour and HDR were all so vibrant and interesting, locations looked great... and the localisation was great, this is a tales game that actually got a budget, the first I finished and the first that didn't feel AA or indie. You'd have to be really depressed to see it as average. 

Tales of Arise is a completely retrograde product with some really nice art style and aesthetics and a good combat system. The game’s story and world building is completely generic(it even has areas designated by their Element!! Like you finish the Fire World and the go to the Ice World), the dungeon structure is basically completely linear levels with minor deviations where you’ll find a treasure chest(this is straight out of 1993), the overworld is just a linear series of paths, the Side Quests are just 1990’s style fetch quests(one of the quests where you fight an endgame super boss is a quest in which someone asks to fetch him some herbs or plants). So basically none of these things add anything to the game, and all you do is walk in a straight line and fight things. The fighting is good but it never serves any greater purpose and makes it all just feel bland, like it’s interesting in the moment but then it doesn’t really go anywhere, you’re just doing the same fight again soon. So what you’re doing never feels completely terrible but it doesn’t add up to anything besides a huge succession of meaningless combats.

Tales of Arise is a completely retrograde product with some really nice art style and aesthetics and a good combat system. The game’s story and world building is completely generic(it even has areas designated by their Element!! Like you finish the Fire World and the go to the Ice World), the dungeon structure is basically completely linear levels with minor deviations where you’ll find a treasure chest(this is straight out of 1993), the overworld is just a linear series of paths, the Side Quests are just 1990’s style fetch quests(one of the quests where you fight an endgame super boss is a quest in which someone asks to fetch him some herbs or plants). So basically none of these things add anything to the game, and all you do is walk in a straight line and fight things. The fighting is good but it never serves any greater purpose and makes it all just feel bland, like it’s interesting in the moment but then it doesn’t really go anywhere, you’re just doing the same fight again soon. So what you’re doing never feels completely terrible but it doesn’t add up to anything besides a huge succession of meaningless combats.

Yeah but there is so much m9re to it like those dungeons nearing the end of the game and not to mention the really cool post game stuff. It might be formulaic but it is still really high quality and goes further than it needs to for the players, even the side quest while not great were sometimes kinda fun and rewarding, like the whole side quest with the fighting arena or the end game quest that is a whole other ten hours of content or the training combat stuff that was addicting as hell to complete. As for "meaningless combat" there is no such thing when the combat is this fun and addicting. I left that game at like 65 or more hours and still was not tired of killing mobs.

I plan to go back for the plat, since I'm so close but to each there own. A lotta people saying Wu Kong is a masterpiece and where they see it as so I can only see a good to maybe almost great game. 

Twilight Princess is the first game that comes to mind and The Last of Us is the second.  Both games are really overrated, but even still they aren't bad games, just decent.  Most "middle of the road" games are forgettable to me.  There are all of these Need for Speed and Burnout games that I played and forgot quickly afterward.  I couldn't tell you which entries in these series I've played and which I haven't.  There are lots of games like this.  But with Twilight Princess and The Last of Us, they were hyped so much that I actually remember them being middle of the road games.

First game that comes to mind is Fallout 4. Releasing just months after Witcher 3 really started to show how deep the cracks were in Bethesda Game Studios design as far as modernizing.

I still enjoyed many aspects of the game. The commonwealth was still a fun open world to explore, combat was vastly improved, and there was nothing outright bad about the game outside of a middling main story, which who plays BGS games for the main story anyway, but throughout my playthrough there was always the itch in the back of my mind that there was nothing the game did better than Witcher 3 outside of maybe setting and atmosphere.

Reviewers generally overinflate the importance of two things in their review scores--polish and the state of not being offensive.

The praise of polish especially bothers me because one of the easiest way to make a game more polished is to simply remove complex elements.  Avowed's dead cities, for instance, look great in screenshots or if someone is rushing through a game for an article but at the expense of being boring and immersion-breaking. 

Not being offensive is essentially along the same lines.  Publishers would much rather be "okay" and get an 8 from IGN than to have features that might get criticized.  I think about Bethesda dropping dismemberment and the ability to loot clothing from a corpse in Starfield or BioWare lobotomizing the tactical combat of Dragon Age.

Games are steadily dropping components, where 10 or 15 years ago they were far more ambitious and willing to release something that was flawed.

Perhaps Bad Dudes, P.O.W. or Wizards and Warriors on the NES

I played the heck out of those three back in the day but in hindsight, they were pretty mediocre.  I'd still play them again, though  =)

Yooka Laylee

Finished it recently and....at first it was great, nostalgia and all but the 2nd half of the game felt like a chore and that final boss fight was a pain.


It wasnt good or bad, but middle for me personally - still enjoyable but not as satisfying as Banjo Kazooie or Banjo Tooie.