Left: the Gildllan Empire.note Right: the Jerle Federation.note Bottom: the Adventurers.note
Tales of Luminaria is a mobile title in Tales Series after Tales of Crestoria. It was announced during Gamescom 2021's opening night, on August 25, 2021, with a scenario mainly penned by Sekina Aoi (Student Council's Discretion, Gamers! (2015)) and character designs by Shun Saeki (Food Wars!). The title was trademarked in Japan on October 14, 2020. The game itself was released on November 3, 2021.
In the distant past, the world was home to massive Primordial Beasts who freely roamed the land. Now in the present day, their petrified remains radiate a magical energy known as mana, leading to the creation of many human cities and nations who take advantage of this powerful resource.
The story of Tales of Luminaria is an anthology recording a period of war between the Jerle Federation (who worship the Primordial Beasts as gods) and the Gildllan Empire (who use advanced technology to forcefully harvest mana from the Primordial Beasts). It features an ensemble cast of eight characters belonging to the Federation, eight characters affiliated with the Empire, and a party of five "Adventurers" who are independently investigating the mysteries behind the Federation/Empire conflict and the Primordial Beasts.
In comparison to other Tales mobile titles, Tales of Luminaria features a fully-original cast with twenty-one main characters, and the goal of having none of them as the "main protagonist". The original plan was for each character to have eight episodes depicting their story, with a new episode released every week and often in Anachronic Order. There were also occasional "Crossroads" episodes which depicted important events involving many of the characters at once. It had a simultaneous release in Japan and overseas, like Tales of Crestoria, and was also the first mobile title in the series to have English voice acting as opposed to other mobile titles having only Japanese voice-overs when brought overseas.
A short anime adaptation (in the form of 2 half hour episodes), titled Tales of Luminaria the Fateful Crossroad, by Kamikaze Douga aired on January 20, 2022. Funimation streamed it, including a dub.
On May 10, 2022, it was announced that the game would end its service on July 19, 2022, a mere nine months after it began. This left most of the story unfinished, and there are currently no plans to finish the story in another medium. The final update released every upcoming costume and weapon that had been finished before the closure was announced, and a special "Episode Final" that revealed one of the most important mysteries: the exact series of events which led Hugo to defect from the Federation to the Empire.
Tropes associated with this game so far:
- A Girl and Her X: Yelsy and Toto; a young woman and her invisible creature companion. They have been best friends for two years and they are always inseparable.
- Action Prologue: The game wastes no time thrusting you into battle as Leo. Some other episodes also immediately start in similar manners.
- All There in the Manual: Much of the lore and worldbuilding is contained within the "Terminology" section of the options menu. Each character also has a "Chronology" (except for the Adventurers, who have a shared "Travel Record"), which shows when their respective Episodes take place in relation to major events.
- Anachronic Order:
- A number of the characters' episodes don't follow a linear story but rather take place at various points in time, which can be found by clicking each character's Chronology and seeing when each chapter fits into their life. For example, Leo Episode 1 takes place in the year 998, when he enrolls in the Aegis Knight Academy, while (as of this writing unreleased) Episode 4 takes place in the year 990 when he was around six years old. By contrast, all of Celia's episodes occur in a linear fashion.
- This also applies to release order, as the game starts with each character's Episode 1 in succession but the stories start at different times. The game makes players start with Leo's Episode 1 when he's already a member of Blaze, but Celia's and Lisette's first episodes involve his recruitment, and other Federation stories start even before that. In contrast, many of the Imperial stories and all of the Adventurer ones begin in the following year, after some major shifts to the status quo have already taken place.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Weekly Fav Fests awarded accessories to participating players according to their final ranking.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Despite the game supporting up to five characters and possibly more during map exploration, entering a segment with enemies forces it to only three participants.
- Big Bad: Chancellor August Wallenstein is shaping up to be this, though occasional hints are dropped that there is someone else pulling the strings (Episode Final reveals that Vicar Kanon of the Federation is a malevolent emissary of Origin The Creator, the ruler of the Primordial Beasts; and August is a vessel for a being who is opposed to Origin). With the game ending prematurely, who knows what the main evil force would have been.
- Bonus Feature Failure: The gacha was presented as the main way to get equipment to strengthen and customize characters, but the main story mode involved Level Scaling and cosmetic items were locked in each episode until it was cleared once. This meant that story-only players didn't have that much reason to invest in new equipment, and undermining the main monetization stream contributed to the game's death.
- Booby Trap: Occasional hazards encountered by various characters.
- Breather Episode: Some character episodes are more light-hearted compared to the rest.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: The fastest way of strengthening characters is to try and get good equipment for them from a gacha. (That said, this only worked for side missions and multiplayer since story episodes used Level Scaling.)
- Childhood Friends: Leo, Celia, and Hugo all grew up in Le Sant village together. Amelie and Falk were also raised in the same orphanage (though Falk refuses to acknowledge Amelie as a "friend"). Episode Final also reveals that Lisette and Gaspard grew up together, contributing to their current Sitcom Arch-Nemesis relationship.
- Company Cross References: A few characters' secret missions are Pac-Man levels with apple gels and Polwiggle enemies instead of pellets and ghosts. The stages even use Pac-Man music and give the Polwiggles "ghost" skins to enforce the reference.
- Cut Short: The plan was to have each character get an eight-chapter story. The game was shut down before it could finish releasing the Chapter Twos.
- Cutscene Power to the Max: Some characters demonstrate considerable feats compared to their actual gameplay.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying merely sends you back to the last checkpoint with full health. And since there are plenty of them, barely any progress will be lost.
- Death Mountain: The Odrgard Peakdoom.
- Dialog During Gameplay: Most of the story occurs not through cutscenes, but through the characters chatting while playing.
- Dirty Coward: Demoulin, a corrupt Jerle Federation general refuses to fight Bastien and is willing to dirty tactics such as using his men as human shields and threatening to kill children if Bastien doesn't let him go free in their second encounter.
- Disc-One Nuke: New players are given Leo's 5* armor and accompanying Mystic Arte for free which will make for quick work on bosses.
- Do Well, But Not Perfect: For episodes, much of the level design focuses on Dialog During Gameplay. As a result, many character interactions can be inadvertently skipped if players traverse maps or complete scripted battles too quickly.
- Doomed Hometown: Le Sant Village and Nahatgal.
- Dual Boss: Lisette's first episode features 2 of them.
- Dynamic Difficulty: Outside of raids, the game auto-adjusts enemy stats according to the current character's level.
- Elemental Powers: Most people are capable of using simple artes with enough practice.
- Elite Four: The Empire's Alphas: Alexandra, Laplace, Bastien, and eventually Hugo.
- The Empire: The Gildllan Empire.
- Enemy Mine: The Habakiri Incident involved Federation and Empire forces temporarily working together after a third party was exposed for manipulating both of them.
- Equipment-Based Progression: The primary source of characters' stats and max level cap.
- Evolving Credits: The opening and ending for each episode change depending on the player character's faction, with the opening also having some parts tailored for the specific character themselves.
- Experienced Protagonist: A number of playable characters have already risen up in the ranks by the time their stories start.
- Experience Meter: Can overflow past 100% when a character reaches their current level cap. The extra points will automatically apply once that cap is broken.
- Face–Heel Turn: Hugo was initially part of the Jerle Federation until he switches sides to the Gildllan Empire to prevent Vicar Kanon from following through with her implied threats on Leo and Celia's lives.
- Faceless Goons: More prominent in the Dynasty Warriors-style gameplay segments.
- The Federation: The Jerle Federation comprising of five smaller nation-states. The Gildllan Empire territories used to be members before seceding.
- Fighting Your Friend: The conflict between Leo and Hugo.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: August was once an apple farmer and lived a simple life in his village. One day, his village was attacked and his family got killed. This led him to become the Chancellor of the Gildllan Empire, and eventually its Emperor.
- Genocide Survivor: Many characters have lost their homes and families to the horrors of war.
- Giant Corpse World: Humanity has built their largest settlements around the fossilized remains of the Primordial Beasts due to their abundant sources of mana.
- Global Currency: Gald. Justified as the Gildllan Empire used to be a member of the Federation and is in no current position to replace a widely circulated currency in the middle of a war.
- Good Republic, Evil Empire: Subverted. The setting looks to be an example of this, but playing episodes on both sides of the conflict shows that they both have good and bad people.
- Green Hill Zone: Amr Qhaghan.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Other characters may join during an episode, but their damage output usually pales in comparison to the player.
- Happily Adopted: The characters who were adopted after losing their parents.
- Holy City: Temenos Archonis.
- I Am Very British: Maxime speaks this way in the English dub.
- In Harmony with Nature: The Jerle Federation. The Empire's disregard for this philosophy is the primary source of conflict between them.
- In Medias Res: Some characters' episodes are structured like this.
- Interface Spoiler: Each character's menu has a Chronology or Travel Record that highlights important events in their lives, many of which spoil flashbacks, future events, and hidden connections between characters.
- Invisible to Normals: Whatever species Toto is.
- Leaked Experience: Not experience exactly, but all characters receive a fraction of stats from all other characters within their faction.
- Level Cap: Uniquely, each character had an individual level cap that could be increased by acquiring and improving their equipment through the gacha (with some Leaked Experience in play, as other character's equipment also counts some towards increasing the cap).
- Level Scaling: Story chapters scale themselves to the character's level. This ended up working against the game, as players who didn't participate in the side missions or multiplayer had no incentive to use the gacha to strengthen their characters.
- Lip Lock: The English dub comes off as awkward in some places due to the actors being forced to match the Japanese delivery and lip flaps.
- The Lost Woods: The Silvayer Forestdom.
- Mêlée à Trois: Played with. While the Jerle Federation and the Gildllan Empire are up against each other, the Adventurers were doing their own investigation of the Primordial Beasts.
- Merchant City: Walsbald.
- Military Coup: The Empire has a history of this with varying degrees of success.
- Military Academy: Aedis Knight Academy.
- New Game Plus: Players need to finish an episode before they can invoke Equipment-Hiding Fashion when replaying it.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Leo's life philosophy of being "noble" inadvertently almost lets an Imperial spy escape capture.
- Nicknaming the Enemy: Feddies and Imperials.
- No Ending: Due to the game shutting down, it doesn’t receive a proper ending for every 21 characters. The final episode leaves a cliffhanger where Hugo officially joins the Empire.
- Non-Uniform Uniform: None of the playable Aedis members wear their uniforms properly. Except for Hugo who eventually defects.
- Only One Name: Most characters have their full names given, so the ones that don't stand out. Laplace and Charles aren't human and "Falk" is explicitly an alias, but there's no reason given why Raoul doesn't appear to have a last name.
- Our Titans Are Different: The Primordial Beasts are massive creatures with catastrophic power that once roamed the land. However, they have now been petrified into fossils that secrete mana into the earth and are responsible for the various climates and resources throughout the world.
- Point of No Return: Each chapter has multiple checkpoints that usually prevent players from returning to previous areas for collectibles they may have missed, forcing them to replay the chapters.
- Power Glows: Embleos, Reactors, and other power sources when activating Mystic Artes.
- Praetorian Guard: Blaze for the Federation and the Alphas for the Empire.
- Red Is Heroic: Leo has red hair and has a Hot-Blooded but kind personality.
- Revisiting the Roots: As opposed to the Turn-Based Combat gameplay in Tales of Crestoria, the game is more akin to Tales Of The Rays' Hack and Slash mechanic with RPG elements but replacing the returning cast with its Original Generation characters.
- Rewatch Bonus: Some characters' behaviors and actions in one episode may take on another meaning after playing a different one.
- Rising Empire: The Gildllan Wilderness after it invented Reactors.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: The featured characters of nobility aren't afraid to get their hands dirty.
- Shifting Sand Land: The Huazar League.
- Skyscraper City: Highgarden.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Miasui Icedom.
- The Song Remains the Same: While the game boasts full English voice acting, the opening and closing songs are still in Japanese.
- Spell My Name With An S: Ed's rather strange rendition of the common name, Edward, as "Edouard".
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: A frequent occurrence when traversing maps with multiple party members.
- Stat Sticks: Characters are given multiple equipment slots to boost their stats.
- The Stinger: Each episode has one after the ending credits, followed by a Find Out Next Time.
- Strange Salute:
- Followers of the Federation religion greet people by clasping their hands with the right fingers up and left fingers forward and reciting "May the Primordial Beasts be with us."
- Empire citizens hold their right arms parallel to their shoulder, hand in a fist, and chant "For the Empire."
- Succession Crisis: The Empire went through a war of succession after their first emperor's death.
- Sympathetic P.O.V.: The war and surrounding events are told through 21 viewpoints from people on both sides and outside the conflict.
- Team Switzerland: The eastern island nation of Habakiri remains neutral to the war plaguing the mainland.
- Undercover as Lovers: Falk and Amelie are forced to masquerade as husband and wife to infiltrate an enemy city and rescue a hostage.
- Villain Protagonist: August and Laplace are presented as such. But notably, it's only them and the rest of the Imperial characters aren't given the same treatment. (Falk is the closest as he's a Jerkass, but he's not evil.)
- White-and-Grey Morality: While the presentation seems to be that of a Good Republic, Evil Empire, most of the playable characters and the NPCs they interact with, regardless of faction, are just decent people trying to live their lives.
- Your Days Are Numbered: In Crossroads Ep. 1, It is revealed that having more than one Embleo implanted into their bodies will shorten their lifespans.
