Tales of The Rays celebrates Tales of Eternia's 20th Anniversary! November PV + Producer's Letter

Happy 20th, Eternia!

In November of 2000, Tales of Eternia made its debut in Japan. Happy 20th! Rays' November preview shows this month will be filled with Eternia love.

Bandai Namco's Youtube Channel has given us the gift of an early PV for November. Here it is!

Like before, they've also given us a new Producer's Letter, which can be viewed here. Below is info from the video and the letter!

First things first: two new characters this month! First up is Max from Tales of Eternia! He was teased in a preview tweet the day before the PV popped up (you can view it here). Many people were excited for his appearance, and the producer's letter even mentioned that they felt the love for him from the replies. It makes sense for people to be excited- after all, this will be Max' first 3D appearance in the Tales series! He's not the only new character shown in the video though. We also get a look at Rassius "Ras" Luine. This will be Ras' first 3D appearance as well! And with that, the entirety of Tales of Eternia's playable cast, including temporary and optional party members, are reunited to be fully playable in Tales of The Rays. What a perfect way for Rays to celebrate Eternia's anniversary.

That's just the new characters however. They'll be introduced in a special Eternia event, which naturally means some old characters will be featured with new stuff too. Not only that, but we also get not one, but two Overray Mirrage Artes! The first is Keele who summons Rem for his Overray, and the second is Meredy who summons... or perhaps it's more accurate to say she's saved by the gallant Shadow for her Overray. The PV actually gives us a good look at the animations for both Mirrage Artes as well, and they look fantastic. This is also the first time we get to see Rem in Tales of The Rays!

And.... that's it for the Preview. This is perhaps the shortest preview Rays has had. It only showcases one event: The Eternia anniversary event. Don't worry though, this isn't the end of new content this month. More info will be shown later, making this Preview only a taste of what's to come. Here's the current "schedule" for November, as shown in the Producer's letter. We only have the Eternia event, scheduled for the middle of November, and more info to be announced later.

Besides November events, the producer's letter also gives us more info on upcoming content, namely upcoming versions! Firstly, the producer's quite pleased that Version 4 launched without any major issues, but notes there are still bugs to fix. There's currently a bug where giving a character a gift in the room looks like it maxes out their bond level in one go, but it's purely visual and we're assured that internally the mechanic works as intended. There's also bugs with sorting characters that need to be worked out. We're promised fixes for all of these, and since they're just visual bugs the game more or less works really well.

Version 4.1.0 is promised around December, and with it, a change in how The Rays of Festival will work. For players who do not remember or are unaware, we had our first ever The Rays of Festival event in July, which acted as a poll to vote for which Crossover Mirrage Artes we'd like to see. For a refresher on how it worked before for comparison, check out our article on it here. As for the changes, he talks about the Voting and Battle systems.

For Voting, apparently the rays developers received a lot of requests to release all of the crossover Mirrage Artes, and not just the ones who win the poll. While such a scenario would be ideal it's not as simple as that. The producer tells us making a crossover Mirrage Arte takes 1.5 times more work than other kinds of Mirrage artes, so simply making 6 every Rays of Festival isn't feasible. In the future, he'd like to make a system to allow players to show their support for the Crossover Mirrage Artes that did not win and make them happen. He muses "Crowd Finding" [sic] as one method. He might have meant Crowd Funding, as he then follows up with a promise that they wouldn't use real money for it. If one of the losing pairs does end up getting made, they'll release them in events or story chapters outside of the festivals.

The Battle System for the voting sessions will receive the most interesting changes. The intention was to have an event that players would attempt every day without resorting to auto battle, but they ended up having issues due to having to balance it for players who prefer more relaxed play and more dedicated players. So a new system is being proposed, with the following image provided.

There will be no limit to the number of attempts per day now. Instead, you can play and get points quite easily, but for those who want to score higher, there will be the option to turn on extra challenge restrictions for score multipliers, such as disabling all artes or allowing less characters on your team. These challenges will change every day of the event, so dedicated players can spend their newfound unlimited tries trying to get the best score for their vote, while more relaxed players can simply play without the challenges to contribute well enough on their own.

And that's the end of Version 4.1.0 news. Lastly, the producer reiterates that This is not all there is for November. There's more to come this month. We get a tease of something special, and we're promised it's not a rerun or a second run of anything. What could it be? As for our speculation, we were expecting to get another Rays of Festival this month, so it's possible he's referring to a round 2 of Rays of Festival that would lack the updates to the system he talked about for version 4.1.0. However, the wording can also be taken to mean that there will be another collaboration this month. Neither are confirmed, but we'll definitely hear more about it soon enough, and you can expect us to cover it here all the same.

That's it for PV news. Remember, Arc 4 just started with a load of rewards, and we currently have a Spirit Gear Event for Kanonno running, both which you can check out here. We're also still currently working on an overview of Arc 4 changes, which is taking longer than usual due to how in-depth we'd like to cover it. Thank you for your patience, and as always, keep an eye out for more news!

Tales of the Rays
Tales of BerseriaTales of the Rays is a Tales mobile game for the iOS and Android featuring characters designed by Hidenori Matsuraba and a new ADF-LMBS (Advanced Flick Linear Motion Battle System). The game tells the story of hero Ix Nieves and heroine Mileena Weiss in the world of Tir Na Nog. Characters from the previous Tales titles appear in this game. The game initially had an English version, but was short-lived and now currently runs exclusively in Japan.

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Khayyaam
About Khayyaam 104 Articles
When he’s not playing Tales, Khayyaam tries his best to get as many people he knows as possible into the series. He’s also a fan of all sorts of games in general, especially Fighting Games, Action Games and RPGs, and he loves to write and talk about them too, especially from a gameplay and game design perspective. One day he’ll make his own game, or be a voice actor in a game, but for now he’s happy just playing games and talking about them.