Tales of Festival 2020 Alternative graced us with news for Tales of The Rays, and not long after we got July's PV and a new Producer's Letter, so let's take a deep dive into what's new coming to Tales of The Rays!
There's a lot of stuff to cover, so first things first. Let's go over what happened in the Tales of Festival 2020 Alternative stream. You can catch everything over at Bandai Namco's Youtube Channel. Here is the first PV.
The first important thing shown in the preview is the results of a previous campaign. For context, the Tales of The Rays Twitter Account held a campaign that allowed users to vote for their favorite scene in Rays out of the given selection. Each scene involved a pair of characters, and the top 3 would be given a fully voiced 3D recreation of the scene and a new Crossover Mirrage Arte involving the pair of characters featured in the scene.
As you can see, the Top 3 results ended up being...
3. Ruca and Spada
2. Edna and Eizen
1. Lloyd and Mithos
Due to being the winners, their scene recreation was shown first on the festival stream, and we get to see their Crossover Mirrage Arte in full as well. They've also uploaded those as a separate video!
This scene fulfills a long time wish of many fans of Tales of Symphonia: Lloyd and Mithos putting their differences aside and becoming friends. Their new Crossover Mirrage Arte is called Unison Blood and has them individually wield the Vorpal Sword and Flamberge together to create two Eternal Swords! The other two winning scenes will have their recreations uploaded separately later, so look forward to them.
Next up is the preview for the next arc, also given it's own separate video.
Just as we know, Arc 4 will be called Tales of The Rays: Last Cradle. It seems it'll be the climax of Ix' story, and also will focus heavily on his Mirrite Kocis. The theme song for it is called End of Dream and it was worked on by none other than Go Shiina, of Legendia and Zestiria fame!
We also get a good look at what returning heroes will be given the plot spotlight, at least for the early parts of the arc. First is Legendia pair Senel and Jay. At this point, Jay has made a single minor appearance in June's story chapter in Rays and isn't playable at all, so him getting focus in Arc 4 is a pleasant surprise. The other two pairs are Sorey and Mikleo from Zestiria, and Berseria's own Velvet and Laphicet. They've been in the game since arc 1, but it's clear they're here because of the new villains getting introduced: Heldalf and Artorius. Who knows what role they'll have in the plot, but evidently we will have to fight them (and potentially, recruit them).
Now that the first PV is done, it's time for July's PV. After all, Arc 3 is not done yet! Arc 4 will come, but there's still content coming in the month of July itself. They have also released a new Producer's Letter that goes into further detail on what's coming in the future (all previous Producer's Letters can be found at this archive). The original link is here. Relevant info from Producer's letter will be used to go more into detail on what's coming in the PV. Here's the video:
The first event shouldn't be a surprise to those who have seen the preview tweet on Friday. It's a Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon event. It's being done now to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X, which released on August 5, 2010 in Japan. Naturally the two new characters we're getting are the main characters, sibling pair Dio and Mel. The event will have an Arabian Nights theme, and the returning characters to get new seasonal artes and costumes will be Rondoline and Dhaos.
More detail on Dio and Mel was given in the producer's letter. They will not be given their full moveset as mimics like the original games (so Albert will not be present), but they'll still implement a limited form of Class Change. By inflicting a Critical Hit or using certain Mirrage Artes, Dio will be able to class change from Samurai to Sword Emperor and Mel class changes from Witch to High Witch. Dio will have increased attack speed while Mel gets increased spellcasting speed and larger area of effect on her spells. Both of them also get increased attack power and hitcounts. The class change is temporary, but defeating an enemy extends the time spent in the higher class.
Samurai Dio
Sword Emperor Dio
Witch Mel
High Witch Mel
The next event is much more surprising. The new characters introduced are Agria from Tales of Xillia, and Symonne from Tales of Zestiria. These fine ladies will be joined by returning characters Shizel and Elrane in what will be a villainess focused summer seasonal event. According to the producer's letter, the popularity of the Casino event last year gave them the idea to make another event focus on villainous characters, and the idea was combined with the usual summer swimsuit events.
The last event shown to come this month is the Tales of The Rays Festival, which is when the Crossover Mirrage Arte poll winners will be featured. We also get a sneak peak at the arte for second place winning pair, Edna and Eizen.
We also have more details on the Tales of The Rays festival this month. This event will have free multis on the gacha every day, and will also rerun previous raid events in a span of 10 days. Also during the Tales of The Rays Festival will be another special Crossover Mirrage Arte vote. This time around we're voting for our favorite pairing between 6 possible pairs of characters. The voting will be done through challenge stages given to each pair, with a limited number of runs per day. Each time a challenge stage is cleared, the points counted will go towards that pairing, with featured characters giving more point bonuses. Unlike the usual Raid format, there will also be a way to increase points by fulfilling conditions in-battle, just like the series staple GRADE system.
The theme for this festival is "characters who used the same artes" in the original games, and will be gradually revealed in the coming days, so keep your eyes open.
Here's the schedule for July.
The events will happen in the following order (no dates are given)
Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X 10th Anniversary Event
Tales of The Rays Festival
July Story Chapter
Villainess Summer Event
That's it for July's preview, but not it for news this month. Here are other major points from the Producer's letter.
Tales of The Rays Version 4.0.0 will come with the release of Arc 4. This version will come with a complete overhaul of the equipment and arte system. You'll still get new equipment and artes tied to them through the gacha, so the gacha system will remain unchanged. However once acquired, artes will be separated from equipment. Instead of a character's power level being decided by 4 equipped artes and up to 3 mirrage artes, they will introduce a new system tentatively called Equipment Level. The more equipment obtained for a character in total, along with higher rarities and limit boosts, the higher the Equipment Level will rise. All upgrades a player may have done before this system has released will carry over and increase the equipment level as well.
Other new features planned are automatically limit boosting duplicate equipment obtained and automatically selling any duplicate equipment that was limit boosted to the maximum level. Furthermore, equipment storage will no longer be needed with this update. If you've expanded your storage space, fear not, as all Dia and Mirrogems spent increasing the storage space will be refunded! As for Artes, new artes will be learned upon first obtaining a new piece of equipment. They'll be equipped in the same way they currently are, just without the equipment itself being attached. Arte enhancements will be retained and will also be sped up. Auto limit boosting and selling will come this month with Version 3.12.0. (which will also decrease App Start time, thanks to a new super programmer they hired.) Everything else will be with Version 4.0.0 later this year.
And that is finally the end of news for this month. It's quite a lot, so feel free to reach out in comments, social media or on our discord if you'd like any clarification for any events. Also, we updated the previous article for the currently ongoing Nebilim Raid as well, so check that out.
And as always, stay tuned for more news on Rays and Tales in general. Seeya!
Tales 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.
