Tales Of Arise Costume DLC Adds Hidden Skills

A Tales the game is not a Tales game if he doesn’t have a comically ridiculous wardrobe. In this regard, Tales of the Ascension, the latest entry in Bandai Namco’s long series of JRPGs, doesn’t disappoint. (See: screenshot above, screenshots below.) But heed this caveat: downloading the game’s optional cosmetic options makes the game easier.

Tales of the Ascension, officially available on PlayStation, Xbox and PC, offers a whole host of optional content. If you choose any of the non-standard versions of the game, be it Digital Deluxe, Digital Ultimate, or Collector’s Edition, you will get four costume packs: Premium, Warring States, School Life and, in keeping with the show’s affinity for dressing fantastic characters in modern swimsuits, Beach Time.

All three editions of the game also come with the Premium Item Pack and Premium Travel Pack, both of which give you instant access to a ton of extremely useful stuff, for lack of a better term. We’re talking about things like XP boosts; large discounts on suppliers; dozens of herbs like lavender and sage (which can permanently increase your party’s stats); hundreds of in-game cooking ingredients; and half a million Galds, the in-game currency. (For perspective, I’m several tens of hours away and never had more than 30,000 Galds on hand.)

You can download all bonus items piecemeal or wholesale at any campsite in the game. And if you are in urgent need of get five bottles of life this second, yes, of course you can see the full offers through the game’s “System” menu.

I would suggest at most picking up a few essentials piecemeal, as grabbing all the transport can seriously throw the game off balance. But here’s the other catch: even costumes can make your characters more powerful. You see, each costume gives your character a new title. It might sound pretty trivial, but Tales of the AscensionThe skill tree is dictated by the titles you unlock for each party member.

If you complete certain actions, such as “forge four props” or “meet four out of five owls”, you will earn a new title for one of the six members of your party. If a character gains a new title, you unlock a new branch in that character’s skill tree. If you unlock the five skills associated with this title (the first is free), the character receives a permanent stat boost.

Yes, you can skip all bonus skill trees altogether. But, again, the first skill for each tree is free. Keeping things somewhat vague for the sake of spoilers, this largely means getting instant access to combat moves as soon as you choose to add a DLC costume to your wardrobe.

Take the martial artist character Law, for example. By downloading all three costume packs, you’ll automatically add three honestly pretty decent Artes (Tales– speak for “special attacks”) to his repertoire. The same goes for the protagonist Alphen and necessarily the sidekick of the mouse mage Rinwell. To the best of my knowledge, these characters would otherwise not be able to learn these moves. Two of the Alphen have dramatically changed the way I play.

And then there’s the Beast of Temptation, which has, like, a 100-0 record with humans. Some of the skills available, like KO Prevention, a passive ability that keeps a character alive with 1 HP in the event of a knockout, is a real game-changer. You can unlock KO Prevention later, but accessing the costume DLC gives you an instant boost for certain characters. (Rinwell’s, for example, opens when you earn the Serious Swimmer Girl title, which you get with the Beach Time Pack.) Believe me: KO Prevention is arguably one of the most useful passive abilities in the game. I could catch it from the jump, I don’t think I would be able to ignore the option.

By all means, if you’ve purchased an upgraded edition, dress your team up in the game’s bonus threads. Just know that it will Tales of the Ascension a little easier. Of course, if the game becomes child’s play, no one will stop you from increasing the difficulty.

Anyway, here is a gallery of some obviously ridiculous Tales of the Ascension outfits: