Tales of Arise - what are "Cure Points"

With the Tales of Arise public demo on the horizon, fans worldwide will soon have a chance to get the first glimpses of the Dhanan/Renan war themselves. To make sure new-and-old fans alike are best prepared, it’s important to get a better idea about one of the most considerable mechanic deviations from the Tales series’ prior: “Cure Points” (CP).

So what exactly is CP? While in previous titles, offensive, healing, and support artes were all pulled from the same resource, such as TP, that is no longer the case in Tales of Arise. Offensive artes and attacks use a similar Soul Gauge system to its predecessor, Tales of Berseria, but healing is pulled from a brand new gauge called CP. 

Mechanically speaking, CP behaves much like TP has in the past, with the biggest deviation being that the whole party shares these points. The means, regardless of who uses the arte, in or outside of battle, your single source of cure points total will be spent. 

The use-cases for cure points are not only constrained to only artes-based healing in Tales of Arise. When you lose a fight, you are instantly sent back to the map with your party revived and healed to some extent. How much health you regain depends on the amount of CP you had left. If you don’t have any CP left, you will still be revived outside of combat, with a single point of health.

The second important application that CP has allows you to interact with elements you encounter in the field. By spending your points, you can do things like open up blocked pathways or shortcuts around the map. Some of these paths will lead to chests with powerful gear or items to take with you, which helps balance the need to spend such a limited and essential resource.

Now that you’ve healed your party and opened up those paths leading to some good loot, you will probably be running pretty low on CP. Unfortunately, unlike TP, which you could slowly replenish after encounters, CP lacks such a handy feature. Instead, you will have to rely on items such as the series’ staples orange and pineapple gels to refill your tank, resting at an inn, or cooking up various meals. 

The reasoning behind the more restrictive replenishing direction, as described by Arise’s producer Yusuke Tomizawa (find our full interview with him here): “It's partly because we don't want players just to be able to keep using those abilities in a battle scenario...it's a choice we wanted to give the player whether to use their valuable CP”. It’s certainly an interesting direction to take; making users choose between the ability to heal or to find rare items is an eye-brow-raising pairing potentially.

I first dove into the Tales series back with Tales of Eternia (Destiny 2 in the States) and fell in love with the series with Tales of Symphonia.  and have experienced all sorts of different play systems. I can see Cure Points being as big of a series shake-up and potentially as divisive, as the Soul Gauge was in Tales of Berseria, but we will have to wait and see. Tales of Arise, and its CP, releases in less than a month.

Cure Points in a nutshell

CP - Biggest differences from TP

• Shared among the entire party
• It doesn’t replenish on its own

CP - What do you use them for?

• Healing in-and-out of combat
• Interacting with various elements and objects around the map
• Reviving+healing characters when you lose in combat

CP - How do you replenish it?

• Using items such as Orange and Pineapple Gels
• Resting at an inn
• Some cooked dishes