Okay, do new thing" with no nuance, no moments to breath or world build. The game only took awhile to get through because the gameplay and side stuff took awhile, the story moments were always super short and just "This is the thing to be done, next thing, go. The game also felt like it was flying through the story. It feels like there was something that could have been interesting but the writing talent wasn't there to do it justice. Each area looked like it was really worked on to give it it's own personality. Compare this to the 25 year old Tales of Destiny. It didn't feel like they had any character. The snow area and fire area were just mostly white and brown/red respectively.
Many of the world areas were just flat to me style wise. And they are mostly large, open area rooms with like one thing in a corner then you go to the next room. People talk about the great graphics and all I can even say to that is WHERE? Most of the areas are boring, the dungeons almost all are just the same one or two room designs copy pasted. All of the characters do this at some point, Law just did it the most and some of the stuff really stood out. I hate it when characters just continually act stupid for no reason and the game acts like it's perfectly normal for people to act in that way. I either did not care about the main characters or in some cases, actively hated them (Namely Law). The characters are shallow and forgettable. The plot is weak and the storytelling of said plot is very poor. I personally think story and characters are more important than any other part of the RPG genre and it is sorely lacking here.
I feel like Arise hits all the same issues that most JRPGs and many other RPGs are all seeming to have over the past few generations of gaming and namely it all comes down to writing. So let me preface this by saying it's not a bad game, it's a mediocre one. I'm gonna be a little harder on this game than I usually would because I think the praise it gets was never earned.