YMMV / Cris Tales

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A main feature of the game is Time Travel and the reveal that if one travels far back enough in time, it creates a temporal duplicate. This allows two versions of the person to co-exist. The time travel involved in the game also involves the potential to create alternate/new worlds. Marvel's Loki, released shortly before Cris Tales released, also feature "Variants" of people existing at the same time and time travel shenanigans as well, resulting in new timelines.
  • Ardo looks a lot like Kars of the Pillar Men from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
  • A few months after this game was released, another RPG game that had the name "Tales" in its title, a race that contained "Rena" in its name, and said race being involved in a racial conflict was released. The main difference is that the Renans in Tales of Arise are the oppressors rather than the victims.
• Surprise Difficulty: Don't let the colorful and whimsical aesthetics fool you. This is not an RPG meant for beginners of the genre. If you don't learn how to properly block attacks or how to make the fullest use of Crisbell's time abilities, even basic enemies can royally kick your ass.
• That One Boss:
  • The Time Empress. While her attacks don't hit that hard, her Perfect Cure ability is what makes her difficult. Her Perfect Cure not only heals her for an obscene amount of health, it also casts Regen on her. If she casts it once, and Crisbell can't use Regression, the battle is practically unwinnable.
  • The third fight against the Volcano Sisters at the Ceniza Ruins. They hit like a truck and elemental mage Christopher is unavailable for this fight, meaning your only way of exploiting their elemental weakness to water is Zas's magic roulette skill — which can be very difficult to time correctly and that's even if you get the chance to use it as she'll likely be spending a lot of time healing from the beating you'll be receiving. Without the speed to keep up with them, your chances of winning this battle will be slim.
  • The Adri DLC updates Ardo's moves to include Time Break Synchro, putting him into this trope. Time Break Synchro stops time for the party for a while, allowing Ardo to spam strong, unblockable special moves. One of your party members is guaranteed to lose all their HP in the process and be unable to fight. Once Ardo starts using Time Break Synchro, he will use nothing but it and Time Compression, an HP to One move, to where you're focused entirely on healing and reviving until you can no longer keep up.