After a rocky year and a half of providing its service to fans, Tales of Crestoria shut its doors to players on February 6, 2021. While the shutdown was brought on due to the many bugs and glitches that plagued the game since launch, many fans sent the mobile game off by playing it until the very last moment. While this feat comes from how many gamers enjoyed the title while they had it, it also comes from the fact that many Tales of fans feel as if the series may be outgrowing itself based on how newer games have carried themselves.
For 25 years, the Tales of series has never struggled with issues regarding its formula or direction, with the games being careful to keep long-term features intact as they changed things up from title to title. While every game had something different about it, the core values of the series would always remain. However, games themselves are an ever-changing medium. While more popular titles such as Final Fantasy would make great dives into ways to change up the RPG genre, the more obscure Tales of has more or less stayed the same. It seems that the image the series has kept with its loyal fans may be getting ready to change for good, though.
Tales of Crestoria
There were several design tenants that made it rather obvious that Crestoria was a Tales of game at its core. From character designs to the nature of the game’s original narrative, despite the game’s dark tone dealing with betrayal and how the truth is rarely ever black or white. The game shared familiar combat features such as Artes that could be activated with the press of a button, and still felt relatively familiar to execute even as Crestoria sat as a turn-based RPG. It also made sure to keep its key story elements, such as a focus on characters and their relationships, above any other aspect of the game - something that Tales RPGs are often praised for.
However, Crestoria also didn’t have too much room to fall away from what came before it, as the title also served as a crossover, with a majority of the characters players could get through gacha being from previous Tales of titles. While these characters weren’t the focus, they had their time to shine in the side stories and event stories as the stars of their own show. While the portrayal of legacy Tales characters in Crestoria was met with a fair deal of criticism for the creative liberties taken to fit these characters in the world of a different game, they were welcomed all the same, as they came with custom lines and affinity perks that made many loyal fans of the series happy.
Tales of Arise
From the very instant Tales of Arise was announced, it was made clear that the title sought to do something different. The game took a more realistic take towards the style the series was known for and tried to aim to be like more recent RPGs such as The Witcher 3 and Kingdom Hearts 3. The more realistic yet still more anime-esque art style for Tales of Arise turned out rather striking, yet many other changes such as the lack of 2D artwork for skits were something many fans thought was strange to go without for a new flagship title.
Still, true to the many Tales of games before it, while Arise may have tweaked the formula slightly, plenty stayed the same. Mystic Artes and other features remain, as does the character customization and overall push to focus on the character-driven story above all else. Tales of Arise has won Best RPG at the Game Awards in 2021 for good reason, as even if it distances itself from the general tone of the franchise, it still serves as both a great RPG and a great Tales game on its own.
Tales of Luminaria
With the arrival of Tales of Luminaria, however, the shift of the series up to now becomes far more obvious. Even though Luminaria expands the franchise further, once the trademark was discovered, many fans took issue with another game happening while Arise was in development, as it didn’t seem like a wise move on Bandai Namco’s part. When it was announced fully, Luminaria only barely scraped by the potential theories that it played a role in Tales of Arise’s many delays and quiet periods. As the new game was revealed to be an interesting vertical mobile gacha RPG, the idea of the title hurting Arise was dashed fast, only for fans to question how the new title would impact Crestoria.
On top of the questionable nature of yet another Tales of mobile game being launched, Tales of Luminaria is a far different game in the scope of its predecessors, as the game features a huge cast of 21 characters. Each of these characters is described as the “lead,” and many of them need to be gained within gacha rolls. For many veteran Tales fans, the gameplay serves to be clunky and difficult to work with for a majority of the characters. Further, with how cosmetics and weapons to strengthen the characters are also pulled through the game’s gacha systems, many feel that Luminaria is more more like Genshin Impact than a proper Tales RPG, and that doesn’t bode well.
As the character designs seem to distance themselves further from the classic Tales of feel more than Tales of Arise ever did, Luminaria serves to make it very clear that the recent console title was just the beginning of a further shift in the series. Luminaria had only been out for a few months before Tales of Crestoria was announced to be closing. With the crossover title that honored and respected the games before it now out of the picture, there may be a chance that another game like that will never come again. What Luminaria and Arise have started may be the direction of Tales as a whole, which may be drastically different from the norm if the former is anything to go by.
Despite how the latest titles for the series have sought to change things up in some never-before-seen ways, the Tales of franchise has also stubbornly stayed within its scope of familiarity in a good way for the last 25 years. While Crestoria has sadly ended, Tales of the Rays is a long-lasting mobile game that still has an active Japanese-only audience and serves to include legacy characters in the same way that Crestoria did after it. With Tales fans keeping old titles close at heart, even if the series itself forgets its roots, hopefully it won’t forget for too long. For now, fans will just need to keep an eye on how the series carries itself in the days after Tales of Crestoria to see if it resembles what they’ve loved for the last two decades.
