Tales of Zestiria (Japanese: テイルズ オブ ゼスティリア, Hepburn: Teiruzu Obu Zesutiria) is an action role-playing game.

Multiple staff members from previous Tales games returned, including producer Hideo Baba, battle programmer Tatsuro Udo, designers Kōsuke Fujishima and Mutsumi Inomata, and composers Motoi Sakuraba and Go Shiina.

Tales of Zestiria is an action role-playing game set in a fantasy world with three-dimensional characters rendered to scale with the areas around them.

[10] During exploration of the field area between locations and while a specific Seraph character is assigned, the player can execute special commands; they are slicing through minor obstacles (all characters), smashing large obstacles (Edna), temporarily shielding themselves from enemy view (Mikleo), igniting special lights in dungeons (Lailah), or teleporting across gaps (Dezel).

[9][17][24] While in this form, the human character's stats are boosted, and they gain special abilities unique to the fusion: the character can wield a large sword and fire-based magic (Lailah), shoot water arrows using a bow (Mikleo), use stone fists and summon stone pillars (Edna), and gain blade-like wings and summon whirlwinds (Dezel/Zaveid).

[16] Throughout the land, an impurity known as "malevolence" generated by the negative emotions of humanity periodically transforms the living, the dead and even inanimate objects into monsters called the Hellion,[Jp.

[21] The game tells the story of the Shepherds during the "Era of Chaos", when the Hellion are running rampant across Glenwood, attacking both the countryside and cities.

[30] Dragons play an important role in both the world lore and main story arc, but do not follow their traditional representation as beings of good and evil or symbolic creatures; rather, they are actually Seraphim who are corrupted by [the aforementioned] malevolence.

Once Alisha departs back home, Sorey and Mikleo have a short clash with a Hellion called Lunarre and fearing for her safety, they decide to leave the village in search for her.

During the skirmish, Heldalf, the Lord of Calamity himself, appears before Sorey and he is almost killed, being rescued in the nick of time by an assassin called Rose.

After recovering, Sorey learns that there are four shrines with trials that a Shepherd must accomplish in order to become stronger and decides that he must clear them first before challenging Heldalf again.

It is then revealed that Dezel's true objective was to enact revenge on Symonne for causing the death of his friend and disgracing Rose's guild.

Sorey then merges with Maotelus to expel the malevolence from the world and usher in a new era, where both the Seraphim and humans finally live together peacefully.

[8][48][49] The game also returned to a medieval European high fantasy setting involving dragons, as opposed to the previous recent entries such as Tales of Xillia and its sequel.

He wrote the script keeping the concept of a long and fun journey in mind, and developed Sorey as a mature character representing the game's central theme.

[52] The story was constructed around Alisha's departure from the party, with the development team adjusting the outfits sold for her as downloadable content (DLC) could also be worn by Rose.

[52] In hindsight, there were concerns from staff that the scenario had not gone very deeply into the characters' psychologies, lessening its potential appeal, with Baba saying that they would attempt to take a more involved approach in future titles.

[38][55] The characters were designed by Kosuke Fujishima, Mutsumi Inomata, Daigo Okumura, and Minoru Iwamoto, all of whom worked on previous Tales titles.

The idea of encountering and fighting enemies in the same space as exploration was designed to help evoke a fresh sense of adventure for players, as the team felt the previous method of transferring to a separate battle arena was limiting the series' development.

[50][56] Shortly after the game's announcement, it was revealed that character designs and story writing were complete, while the battle system and graphics were still being finalized.

[4][74] In April, the game's characteristic genre name was unveiled as Jonetsu ga sekai o terasu RPG (情熱が世界を照らすRPG, lit.

The standard bonuses were four new Mystic Artes for Lailah, Mikleo, and Alisha, plus limited rubber straps portraying the playable characters.

[104] In a different review for the same site, Jowi Meli found the experience enjoyable despite a slow start and awkward English voice work.

[105] Opinion on the characters was generally divided in western reviews: while Danielle Lucas of PC Gamer, RPGamer's Adriaan den Ouden, RPGFan's Alana Hagues and Ben Moore of GameTrailers enjoyed the characters, other reviewers such as Hardcore Gamer's Jordan Helm, IGN's Meghan Sullivan, and GameSpot's Miguel Concepcion were generally less impressed, with Concepcion in particular drawing comparisons between multiple other games within the genre and saying that the cast came across as unoriginal.

[95][105] This praise and similar notes surrounding Armitization were shared by multiple other western reviewers, although a few minor criticisms arose concerning old-fashioned gameplay mechanics, and item and equipment management.

[96][97][99][100][98][101][102] A common issue raised by reviewers was the camera behavior both in battle and when navigating environments, which was generally described as wayward or distracting.

[94] Van Duine, while praising the art style, noted multiple dips in frame rate, showing that the hardware was having trouble coping with the game.

[96][104][105][98] Multiple reviewers also noted rough patches when traversing the open world, with a few commenting that it was made harder when the teleport system was disabled at certain points in the story.

[96][97][99][101] According to Media Create, Zestiria topped the Japanese sales charts upon release, selling 340,891 units, beating The Legend of Legacy for the Nintendo 3DS and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse for Wii U.

[38] Bandai Namco kept this situation in mind while considering whether to release Alisha After Episode with the main game or as a standalone product in the west.