Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn Review (Jiyo)
This isn't worth $30. For new players, just buy the ultimate edition on sale to save yourself money and from the expectation that everything that this game offers is worth $100. For previous buyers of the game like me, just buy it on sale, $20 is the amount that i would consider it fair. You get around 17-20 hours of extra content depending on playstyle. Should've included the Classic outfits a part of the expansion tbh to make that $30 price point work.
The story is alright, but it doesn't really go that far into world building. You get side quests that focuses on character development for each member, providing content for the people who are invested in their story. It's about how the characters can make the world a better place a year later after the events from the main game with the additional character as the main focus of the story.
The game save data doesn't even carry over so you lose out your armor, accessories, materials, and weapons that you had grinded from the main game so you basically start from scratch. Some people may not like it, but its just to balance out the combat experience, which I don't mind since now I completed the game and its achievements on normal difficulty without DLC buffs. The whole thing about locking player's from their rewards and equipment from the main game with the intention of "balancing the DLC" is just a contradiction to their DLCs that have items that baby the experience altogether. It just doesn't make sense to add balancing when they have pay-to-win items that completely breaks the games balancing. Why not let people who have actually earned their grinded items the option to carry it over?
It just feels they did they did the bare minimum for a DLC expansion. You dont get new mob enemies, lack of world expansion, boring sidequests requiring material gathering most of the time, and no NG+ sidequests. I genuinely like the Tales of series, but this is 5/10 expansion for me.