Tales of Arise Drops Multiplayer for Bigger Focus on Characters, Story

not disappointed at all. shouldn't be an issue. it's rare to be playing a JRPG in a co-op way anyway. i have done so in the past for a few moments but overall i do think JRPGs are meant to be played solo.
let the development team focus on what they want to focus on and deliver the game in the best way possible.
so excited for this game!

How have you managed to post this in the future, yet I can see it in the present? 🤯

Wow, I played through the entirety of Berseria (not a short game) and never even realised there was multiplayer in it 🤣

PERFECT.

Just make it a big, ambitious single-player campaign.

I had no clue past games had multiplayer therefore no loss for me. But I'm glad that they decide to focus more on story than such things like open world, multiplayer etc. cause story and good characters is what I expect most from such games (beside good music ofc)

I’ve never had anyone who’d want to go through a multi hundred hour story with me. So I don’t really care. But as it’s pretty much the only game of it’s type to offer this multiplayer I imagine there are some disappointed people. The publisher probably just looked at the play data and decided it wasn’t worth the investment though.

... Did Xillia have this multiplayer function too? It's the only one of the Tales games I've played myself (Which I found pretty so-so and can barely remember the experience).

Arise does look quite pretty at the very least... Hopefully the story, characters and combat can deliver!

It’s a bit of a shame and does seem to be the final nail in the coffin for this sorta gameplay. I’m glad it’s not another open world though.

Lol for Tales of Berseria have Multiplayer? Never even realized it. Hyped for Arise!

Its really not a big deal but I'd argue every tales game that I've played is very much story and character focused even with the multiplayer. Was it really that hard to keep that feature in when it's just tied to battles

Yeah, not the game I reach for when looking to play multiplayer.

Focus on Story and characters - sounds like they now where they should have been from the start.

Seems like a lot here don't even know a multiplayer exist. I tried the multiplayer. You didn't missed something. Even if you find a person that plays with you for hours, it's horrible with das fixed camera.

Same as most others here as I had no idea previous entries even supported multiplayer. Glad they’re focusing on the story and keeping the game more linear. I feel like every company feels a need to make their games open-world now like Breath of the Wild. Linearity isn’t a bad practice at all to me so I’m glad they’re keeping it here so they can focus on the gameplay and story more.

The previous multiplayer options were so bare bones anyway. Not disappointed at all.

JRPGs are just about the worst kind of game for co-op. Long and story driven. Battle systems that are more about strategy than the moment to moment game feel. And a big part of the engagement is the long term growth and levelling up.

Lord of the Rings The Third Age had a co-op mode when the second player couldn't even do anything until the battle started. It was probably more fun to just sit next to someone and suggest what they say should do next than actually play the co-op mode.

Don’t mind about no multiplayer but the “linear” comment concerns me. Is this like FFXIII Linearity where the game is mostly corridor traversals or more that the story is linear but you still can traverse open worlds to get there and obtain side quests and such on the way?

Most JRPGs are linear in nature. FFVII, which was universally praised, is more linear than FFXIII, which has a huge open area in the second half of the game. The Trails of Cold Steel games have “open world” areas, but they’re just large rooms connected by hallways, much like FFXII. I don’t need every game to be the Witcher 3. Linearity allows for a more crafted storyline

This is music to my ear, no multiplayer, no open world, only a good normal jrpg. I think I'm gonna buy this day one even if I don't have time/storage to play it, if there's steelcase version like p5 royal

Edit: And also most jrpg has already 30-40 hours of playtime without open world, we don't need every game to be 100+ hours story.

I love that stuff like "open-world" and "multiplayer" have become negatives when promoting rpg's nowadays.
Games with one or both are either bare-bones or buggy messes, and developers rarely seem to get it right. Ghost of Tsushima is probably the most noteworthy exception in recent times.

Why would couch coop stunt character story? Total cop out to me. I’m sure a lot of people only play Tales games simply because they are local multiplayer. I’m totally gutted!

@gh0stb0y Note that I see most of these comments say no multiplayer is good. They are talking about couch co-op which makes no change to the actual game if playing solo. Online multiplayer would ruin the game (I agree) but couch coop is a deal breaker for me. It needs to have it if I’m to buy it

I think there's space for both open world games and linear ones. I enjoy both. It really depends on how well it's executed. If you want to tell a poignant tale that is more immediate and makes more sense, you just about have to go linear. If you want to give the player agency, and build more of a world around him or her and then let the player fill in the blanks, you go open world. Both can be good. Both can be butchered.

@gh0stb0y Most people dont even knew about it. And the people that played are not really taken by it so i guess its a win win. 🤪

@ZeroOverOne if you attached another controller it would control the corresponding party member. It was about as meaningful as tales in the sonic games. @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy yes it did

@Flaming_Kaiser I get that some people don’t use it, but a lot do. I personally only play Tales games when it’s 4 player couch coop. The multiplayer battles are the best part about the game to me. Removing the feature doesn’t make it better for those that don’t like it, and makes it worse for those that do. It’s seems counter intuitive

@gh0stb0y I dont know maybe it does make it better if they can focus more on other things. But who knows i will see it when it releases.

It seems almost no one here knew multiplayer existed in these games, so everyone is cool with it.

But then you go to more centric Japanese/Asian gaming sites like Gematsu and everyone is mad/disappointed about this feature not been there. And that was something a lot of them used.

I knew multiplayer (during battles) was a thing in this game. I just never used it.

Ooh, nice! We really didn't need a multiplayer open world Tales game. That's not what Tales does best.

That's fantastic news, actually makes me more excited to play it not less.

I haven't used the multiplayer since Symphonia on the Gamecube, no loss

I am cool with it, rather have a good story with a solid experience.

@rpg2000 The 30 people here aren't representative of everyone. There are tens of thousands of people across social media who are extremely disappointed that multiplayer is cut. Whether it's 5% or 25%, I don't know, but I do know the Tales subreddit, Twitter, Gamefaqs and other sites, it's a lot of what people are talking about.

For me personally, multiplayer is the absolute most important feature in Tales and has been since 1997. It's not for everyone. I get that. There's this conception flying around that big story focused games apparently aren't for groups of people to enjoy together, but for my girlfriend and our friends, it's the opposite. There's no gaming experience better than sharing a Tales game for us.