Tales of Arise is one of the best Tales games in years and it’s due in part to how uniquely all of the characters play. In previous titles, there was some separation, but everything kind of find samey after a while. In Tales of Arise, that is far from the case as every character brings their own flavor to the gameplay. One of the most intriguing characters is to play as is Shionne as she uses a long-range rifle and Astral Artes as her major form of attack. Playing as Shionne is one of the more challenging things to do in Tales of Arise as she requires very quick reflexes and careful positioning to maximize her potential.
Tales of Arise Best Shionne Artes
While most characters in Tales of Arise come with an obvious way to play, Shionne is a bit less so. Defense-wise, she’s actually pretty solid most of the time, but because of her long casting times and somewhat slow basic attacks, she can get wrecked in a hurry if you aren’t careful. To counter that, we always are going to want First-Aid equipped. It’s not the most fun option, but damn is it ever valuable if you and your party are in a pinch. Resurrection is the other Arte that you could bring along here too, but that severely limits your firepower and turns playing as Shionne into more of a support character which might be fun for some, but it’s not the best way to use her. In order to balance that, we’re going to add some offensive Artes in as well. The first one early on that will be apparent as a go-to will be the ever-awesome Ice Tornado. It’s got a bit of a casting time to it, but once it hits this magical maelstrom absolutely wrecks enemies and usually opens them up for your other party members to combo for days. You do need to keep in mind that elements matter in this game though, so plenty of enemies won’t be affected that much if they are ice type. The other one to focus on is your bomb Arte. These basically act like grenades that you can then add damage to it by holding the button it’s mapped to after you throw it. the damage isn’t immense by the bombs on their own, but it can be very helpful to pepper enemies with these throughout and when you do decide to trigger them, the explosion will usually do quite a bit of damage.
Shionne Positioning
Tales of Arise makes it a point that your positioning on the battlefield affects everything from the damage you’re going to take to whether or not your attacks will land or not. Gone is the semi homing attacks of previous games and everything is much more position-based here. With some characters, you’re going to need to get up close and personal to do your damage. With Shionne though, we want to be as far from the action as possible. There are a few reasons for this. For one, Shionne is one of the best characters for sniping out the weak points on the bosses in this game. The reason is she can accurately hit the weak points that you might find harder to nail when using one of the various melee characters available. She has several arts that are non-elemental that travel in a straight line and when you level her up enough, she’ll become an absolutely deadly character from long range.
Shionne Boost Attacks
Shionne might start out a bit plain in the attack department, but once she gets her boost attack though, she becomes an integral part of your Tales of Arise team whether you are controlling her or not. Her boost attack has her set up in from of whatever enemy you have locked onto and unleash a barrage of blue lasers at them. With any luck, this can quickly break an enemy’s defense and open them up to a ton of damage. The best way to utilize this attack is by setting an enemy up with some damage to start which makes it more likely that the Boost Attack will deliver enough punishment to break them. Shionne’s bomb attack is where we want to go here because you can lay them throughout the battlefield and trigger the explosion with your special ammo. This alone likely won’t trigger the Boost Attack though, so you need a little bit more. The way Boost Attacks are unlocked is by completing combos, luckily for us, Shionne has some quick-hitting combos that take only one of the soul gauge to use, so stringing these together and ending with her bomb attack should give us the boost ability and that’s when you want to let loose.
Shionne is one of the main characters of the game, so you’ll likely be switching onto her a lot and although her mechanics are a bit intimidating and admittedly slower moving than some of her more action-heavy teammates, utilizing her properly will go a long way to helping you take down your enemies, regardless of what difficulty you’re playing on.
Tales of Arise is available September 10th, 2021 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Check out our review of the game here.
Published: Sep 8, 2021 11:59 am