After the End: In the opening cinematic, we can see that Dhana once had thriving cities and lush landscapes.Deconstructed, in that even beyond furthering a slave system and hideous treatment of Dahnans, it leads to a complete lack of trust in Renan society, and the Lords are near-uniformly terrible people who all had to commit terrible things (willingly or not) to get there. To this end, the Lords all gather astral energy in master cores, which is obtained by implanting spirit cores into the Dahnan slaves and working them until they drop dead. The last one left standing becomes the Sovereign, who is the de facto ruler of the world until the next Crown Contest. Asskicking Equals Authority: The five Renan Lords compete once every ten years in the Crown Contest, which is where the five of them fight.If not for the healing artes of Shionne, he would have been burnt to ash. Asleep for Days: Alphen sleeps for a whole week after you defeat the first boss and he absorbs the power of the fire astral monster that was accompanying him into the Blazing Sword.Kisara has one but the AI doesn't use it a lot. Alphen, Law and Dohalim have these kinds of artes but Shionne, and Rinwell do not. The AI will also NEVER jump, and by proxy will never use aerial artes unless they use a ground art that launches them into the air first.The only way to avoid this is to deactivate any Artes that would cause issues so the character uses the right element, but if the player leaves any non-elemental artes on, expect the AI to almost entirely use them. The AI will often attack the enemy with any arte enabled, even if the enemy resists it, and will also struggle to use artes that have an advantage against the enemy too. The AI also has trouble handling elemental weaknesses and resistances.The AI simply doesn't recognize how competent Rinwell and Dohalim can be if they spam spells at range. Dohalim, Rinwell, and Shionne often will cast spells in melee range, requiring the player to turn off their melee abilities in order to keep them from running in and getting interrupted. Despite the AI being fairly competent, it has a few hiccups.Instead of just blowing Overlimit immediately or wasting it, the AI will always attempt to use a mystic arte, often timing it way faster than a player could. The AI is also quite good at using Mystic Artes and Overlimit.Alphen's Difficult, but Awesome playstyle is all about risk and reward, but his default AI is actually quite competent at not blowing his health away with it, and can actually pull off a few of his blazing sword abilities without actually getting interrupted.

Anti-Grinding: As per usual in later Tales entries the game does not want the player to be too high up in level in relation to the area the party find themselves in, you can only be around three levels above the highest-leveled creature in the area before the EXP and SP earned are massively decreased along with the required EXP for the next level shooting up that will usually force the player to hardly ever be leveled above the main boss of an arc.It's eventually revealed the Renans are not so much aliens as much as they are Dahnans capable of Astral Artes, kidnapped by the Helganquil, modified, and made to live in Lenegis as such, the invasion could be said to be an alien invasion by proxy for the benefit of the Helganquil after the first Spirit Channeling ceremony failed. Alien Invasion: While Renans are human, they pretty much did this 300 years ago to Dahna- and very successfully.The situation is mitigated somewhat once you unlock the Fishing game and access to the lucrative fishing spots, but you'll still be hurting for money until very late into the endgame. In addition, enemies don't drop Gald outright and you have to figure out what drops to sell, and even then, they don't sell for very much. For most of the game, you're not even capable of buying useful recovery items like Orange Gels for Cure Points (and thus, healing or buffs), and even then, you're often without enough money to buy more than a handful of them.

Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Perhaps appropriately enough because Dahna is under Renan occupation - or just recently freed from it, as the party travels through places - but supplies and Gald are extremely hard to come by, and trying to buy anything rapidly gets quite expensive.Shionne a heroine who takes charge and wields a rifle, Rinwell has absurdly powerful magic, and Kisara is a knight who jumps into the fray with her mace and shield. Action Girl: Shionne, Rinwell, and Kisara are all this.This thankfully does not affect the party's money supply at all.

Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Several skits mention things like Dohalim spending a lot of money on something useless.

Tales of arise post game