Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn’s DLC is well worth the asking price and mostly hits all the high marks of the base game.
Tales of Arise stands apart from other entries in the franchise because of its darker, Westernized story, all while retaining its identity in storytelling and combat. The result is one of the best-reviewed ‚Tales of‘ games in the franchise, and Bandai Namco has seen fit to expand that experience with the Beyond the Dawn expansion.
Tales of Arise’s Beyond the Dawn DLC tells a new story set in a world on edge. It takes place one year after the base game, with the party reuniting to deal with some lingering aftermath effects from the merging of Rena and Dahna. However, that more grandiose element of the story takes a backseat when the party meets Nazamil, the daughter of a Renan Lord and a Dahnan. Because of her lineage, she faces prejudice among both the Renans and the Dahnans, and what follows is a more intimate and emotional story about prejudice, what it means to be a person, what it means to be a hero, and what it means to be true to one’s self.
On the one hand, it’s nice to see the DLC take a step back from the galactic catastrophe-level event that the base game focused on, though that’s not to say the DLC doesn’t involve Alphen and his party members saving the world again. It’s just much smaller in scope and different in tone. On the other hand, having this sort of plot tied into the more personal elements of the story does create some issues. There is a lot of back and forth, especially early on, where it feels like players are effectively running in circles and accomplishing nothing. Given its shorter playtime than Tales of Arise’s base game, any and all meandering is much more noticeable, and it’s certainly there as the game tries to introduce Nazamil to the party. This expands into an odd pacing issue not really experienced in the first game.
It takes at least 30-35 hours to beat Tales of Arise, and that’s not considering if players spend any time doing subquests. This allows the game to slowly ramp up its narrative and its combat, so the lengthier combat segments fit right into the overarching narrative by the end. This means longer combat sections, but it feels justified given how big the threat is and what all built up to it.
