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Tales of Arise is showing itself to not only be a worthy entry in the long-running franchise, but also one of the best RPGs on the market. Despite some lukewarm years, Tales of Arise has single-handedly reinvigorated the series while also thrusting it into the mainstream for the first time ever. Part of what makes Tales of Arise such a great game is the cast of characters you can play with. The problem here is that the game barely gives you any information on how to switch your characters at all. This has strangely been a problem for most Tales games as they just seem to think you’d know how to do this by heart and Tales of Arise has the same issue. Let’s figure out how we can use all of our characters in Tales of Arise

How to Switch Characters in Tales of Arise

Switching out of combat

Tales of Arise is a very long game that can take you up to 60 hours to finish and during that time, you’re pretty much defaulted to looking at Alphen run around the map on his own. After a while, this might grate on you and you might wish someone else could take the reigns for a while. Worry no more as the answer is here to do just that. See, hidden on the menu screen is a tiny little label of a flag that signifies the leader. This means this will be who is shown on the screen when you are exploring. Despite this though, no matter what you do, when you enter combat, you will be controlling Alphen. There is a remedy to this, however.

Switching in combat

When it comes to switching characters, the only real-time you’ll need to is within combat. Tales of Arise’s combat is pretty speedy, so when you’re switching characters, you get to slow time down to a halt as you can switch in the menu. Bring up the main menu in combat where you would adjust strategy, equipment, and Artes, and from here, look at the right side of the screen. You will see your party order here and when you do, press R1 or RB to switch who you are controlling. When you exit the menu, your view should swing to who you have selected.

This isn’t the only way to switch characters though as you can also do so while you are picking which enemy to target. This is a little more flimsy though, so I wouldn’t recommend it as a real option. If you must change characters this way while picking your target, reorder the characters on the right side of the screen with your right stick. The character that ends up at the top will be the one you control when you exit the lock-on screen.

Summoning Boost Attacks

If you’re set with just controlling one character, you still have the option to involve your other party members. On the bottom left of the screen is the Boost Attack meter and this is filled up by performing Arte combos. Once a character is available to execute a Boost Attack, simply press the direction corresponding to them on the D-Pad and watch them lead to your target and deliver a devastating attack.

One of Tales of Arise’s biggest wins is how smartly it makes you use your party and even if you find some characters you don’t love to play as, you still have to make yourself use them because each one does something so much different than the next and that variety is what keeps the game feeling fresh so many hours into it.

Tales of Arise is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.

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