Tales of Luminaria. The West Gets Love

     

     Tales of Luminaria is an upcoming mobile game from Bandi Namco's Tales series. Surprise, surprise, here I am talking about Tales again. I should be talking about Tales of Arise right now, but due to the newly announced DLC, I am waiting a little longer before writing my review on that game. However, the main idea of this discussion is the future of the Tales series in the west, and while Arise is the trigger, I feel Luminaria represents the resulting explosion. The critical and commercial success of Tales of Arise is paving the way for the series as a whole to get treated equally in both Japan and the west.

     There are several reasons I think Luminaria could be just as influential as Arise despite being a mobile game. First of all, if you did not know, Luminaria is going to be fully dubbed in English. This is a first for any Tales mobile game. When it comes to these mobile games, fans are lucky if the game even sticks around in the west. Tales of Link lasted just shy of 2 years, launching in April of 2016 and ending service globally in March 2018. Then, Tales of the Rays was released globally in July of 2017 and ended its service in May 2018. The big difference being that Rays is still active in Japan. Service only ended in the west. Western fans only got to play the game for less than a year. Meanwhile, the Japanese version of the game continues to flourish and get cool crossovers. This was around the time I first felt how differently Bandai treated its western audience. 

     Now, Tales of Crestoria is a different story. As of the writing of this post, the game is still active in both regions. However, the thing that sets this mobile game apart from the others is the fact that both the Japanese and global versions of the game were released at the same time and currently share a server. This means that one version of the game cannot end unless the other does so as well. This tells me that Bandai plans on supporting the game equally in both regions and gives me hope that this game will last a long time. 

     Back on the topic of Luminaria, as far as I know, this game is also planned for a simultaneous global release. Combine that with the marketing and it really feels like Bandai is betting that this game is going to be a success. Daily character trailers, pre-registration that is already open, (it took like two years since Crestoria's announcement for pre-registration to open), and an upcoming anime series that will also be dubbed. The Tales series is gaining more traction in the west than ever before and I could not be happier. There is even talk of older Tales games, including Tales of Destiny 2, getting remade (which I assume also means localized for the first time.) I don't know if this is just because Arise was so successful or if Bandai is just now becoming aware of overseas fans, but either I'm hype.