Tales of Berseria (2016)

Having played many games in the Tales Of series, I found this one in particular to be the more compelling one.

The story is interesting, the lore is well developed (and has some connections to Zestiria too). Revenge is always a good way to move a story forward, definitely,.

The main character is BADASS – and we really needed that after Zestiria I think. I also feel like the interactions between party members are very real in this one – they are all on the same boat for different reasons and they sometimes disagree, fight. It adds a lot of depth to each of them and their respective story arcs, but it also adds to the overall picture.

Music is a 10 out of 10.

Visually is stunning. I do remember some of the corridor dungeons to be basic but apart from that the maps are beautifully detailed.

The gameplay mechanic is very addictive, and I played with most of the characters so I can say they put a lot of effort into that (which is something they dropped in later entries, sadly).

Strongly recommend!

This is a great JRPG game. The cast is one of the best I've seen in any game, period. The game play is fun with a unique take on combat I've not seen before that rewards skill and team management. An interesting plot that consistently answers every question brought up until the very end and a satisfying and intense ending. Side quest are as interesting as the main and with more enjoyable quirks to do with levelling up equipment, playing mini games and exploring the vast and interesting world.

The post game is a good challenge that provides even more character development on top of what the base game already does. The gameplay's increase in difficulty is welcomed and the achievements, for the most part, aren't too tedious to earn making them an extra layer of enjoyment when hunting them.

Another generic and stereotyped "Tales of" with old PS2 graphics, full of cliches and exponentially more convulse combat to fake the player in thinking this new title adds anything of substance to a combat system that actually reached near perfection many years ago and now just throws sand in the eyes to keep you busy.

Horrid, cheap, amateur dungeon design.

Usual low level story, writing and characters as per japanese stagnant gaming mentality.

I just finished Tales of Berseria and wow what a ride. I loved all the characters, skits and their constant interactions, the world, lore and backstory all kept me fascinated throughout the game.

The battle system was fascinating with a lot variation in play style offered by changing characters and I loved having the freedom to change the difficulty on the fly so I could just cruise by when I was in more of a mood to relax but also ramp things up when I wanted challenge.

My only slight dissapointment was ending was bit unexpected in a weird way I wasn't quite sure what to think or feel after it. I'm guessing there is a pretty significant tie in to Zestria I can only guess at having not played it.

But I digress as Eizen says its about the journey not the destination and this was one of the best journeys I've taken in a video game for some time.

I can't wait to check out more of the series and already have bought Zestria to follow on with.

El primer Tales series que he completado, si bien la experiencia al principio fue tediosa, el juego brilla notablemente y es una experiencia muy disfrutable que recuerda JRPGs clásicos, pero con el enfoque en la acción.

++ Videos buenísimos, son hechos por Ufotable que es una productora con muy buenos trabajos y que aquí obtuvo un producto muy bien logrado. Las voces en japones e inglés son también muy buenas. Personalmente me quede con el doblaje en inglés (lo cual es una herejía para algunos).

++ Magilou, el 90% del tiempo es una hdp que intenta tirar de los hilos de la protagonista :D, Y generalmente termina siendo ignorada y manteniéndose distante. En verdad es un personaje complejo y que logra un desarrollo muy llamativo sin tomar más protagonismo del debido.

++El ending es excelente D:

+La historia está muy bien complementada, las conversaciones incluyen cada plata/bebida/tradición y demás del mundo. Lo cual permite conocer cada rincón del mundo.

+El equipo es muy interesante, el juego se toma el trabajo de desarrollar adecuadamente cada personaje.

+Mecánicas detalladas para ajustar equipamiento y demás.

+Dificultad ajustable, útil si se está cansado del farmeo y a la vez recompensa el jugar en las dificultades superiores.

+/- El combate es muy activo, pero tiene la posibilidad de jugarse automáticamente como si fuera cualquier juego de celular. Lo cual hubiera sido mejor dejar por fuera. Ademas de tener mecánicas complejas de baja recompensa.

+/-La historia principal es algo meh, una historia básica de venganza ultra dramática que tiene su potencial, aunque eventualmente se siente sobre extendida.

+/- El arte es llamativo visualmente, pero debido a su longitud los NPCs y mobs se van volviendo repetitivos.

-Aunque opcional mayoritariamente en algunos casos el farmeo es necesario.

-La música, aunque con un par de buenas pistas puede ser muuuy repetitiva.

I made it about 15 hours before giving up, so take that as you will. I liked the characters and story, but absolutely could not get into a single one of the games systems.

Combat felt extremely clunky to me. Blocking and dodging didn't feel snappy, which is the biggest pet peeve of mine in an action game. There are far too many artes and a tired 'rock, paper, scissors' system of particular artes being best against particular types of enemies. That amounts to just creating a combo on each button for each element and mashing. There's probably more advanced things you could do with this that may be a little more effective, but I really didn't have the incentive to figure it out. Enemies guard constantly and only rarely attack, which leads to an extremely slow pace of battle. I'm sure fans of the game will say to just 'git gud', but there are a lot better games to spend the time on. The balance in the game also just feels consistently off. Regular battles and regular bosses are braindead easy, while the optional stuff is just frustrating.

The dungeons are completely uninspired and exploration is frequently just rewarded with katz souls, which can be used to unlock cosmetic items. However, katz souls respawn, so there's really not much of a point of hunting them down. The vast majority of chests I found just contained healing items, though a few towards the end of my time with the game included new equipment. A lot of the environments also felt very slow to go through due to the extremely slow movespeed, which hurt the pacing of the game for me.

The item management system is terrible. The game floods you with garbage equipment, some of which has marginally useful affixes. You're then supposed to break down the hundreds of items you get to upgrade your weapons. However, at least to the point I was, it felt like a complete waste of time, since you learn passives from weapons, so you never want to stick with one for too long. I'm sure that'd change later in the game, but it was just another factor that drug me down.

In the end, I found the gameplay to be a mix of boring, clunky, and frustrating that completely turned me off to the game. It's a real shame, because I appreciated the direction the story was going in and the level of character development that was going on.

I'm a little over 10 hours in, and I'm enjoying the story and character interactions. The skits and constant focus on fleshing out the personalities and interactions of your party are a very welcome change coming off FF12. Unfortunately, I'm not enjoying the battle system any more than I did the one in FF12. It just feels clunky and unrewarding to me. Also, the characters don't need to shout the damn name of every move they use. Other than the battle system, item management is annoying and the map design is quite boring.

I'm not sure I'm going to make it through this one, which sucks. I really do dig everything but the, ya know, gameplay part of the game.

Story & Characters

“Why do you think birds fly?” The words kept echoing in the beginning hours of the game as it ripped out your heart with its opening sequence and left you emotionally scarred with its tale of a young woman bent on vengeance over her lost family member. By the time I finished the game, I still don’t know the answer, but I do know this; Tales of Berseria is one of the best games I’ve ever played and will probably be my favorite tales game for a very long time.

It tells a dark story about a young girl on her quest of revenge for the loss of her cherished family member. There is no “bright side” to anything, as our heroine Velvet Crowe drives the plot forward with her bloodthirsty revenge on the man that took everything she cherished away from her.

Accompanying her are some of my favorite cast members to date in an JRPG. This includes an enraged pirate Eizen, the mouthy yet almost comedic Magilou, the demon Rokorou, the hopeful Laphi and the exorcist Eleanor. Not your average group of hopefuls, each of them have a very gripping story behind them as they band together as a group of misfits to save the world.

Combat

I really love the combat in this game. It’s slick and it’s fast-paced, almost like an action game. Basically every move is mapped onto a button on the controller called “Arts”. After you press one “Arts move” then it goes to an upper tier until tier 4 and then the combo restarts. It’s a mix of classic action game with the combo mechanic of Devil May Cry which is definitely a plus, however I can see how it might need some getting used to if you have not played something like this before. I, however, am in love with it.!

Aesthetics

For the aesthetics – now, I do know that it is not as high quality as some may have imagined it to be, but it is still quite decent considering it’s from a PS3 port. I love some towns and areas, especially in Southgand, which to me is one of the best places in the world.

I also love some of the skits, they were funny and in my opinion they give short little breaks to the dark story that is provided by the game. It fleshes out the characters’ back-stories and tells a little bit more of their personalities which I enjoyed a lot. From Laphi’s sense of discovery that is like a child’s curiosity towards the world to Magilou’s corny and out of place jokes, they all serve to the overall narrative of the story, aiming to further elaborate on the characters and make me care about them as they all have a story to tell.

Soundtrack

As I said in my previous review, I’m not well-versed about soundtracks, however I would say that I love most of the OST in the game, especially the opening theme - velvet’s theme - and the one from the beach. Sometimes I would stop whatever I was doing and just relax in the game while conversing with the townsfolk and listening the soundtrack. For example,

Negatives

However, the biggest drawback for me is definitely the repetition where you seriously have to back-paddle a whole lot to accomplish any goal. For example, they will have you kill off a boss, then collect something, solve a puzzle, and then open the lock with a key, ALL in the same area, and sometimes not just that, but you will come back to the same place again.

I really hope we do not get this form of back-paddling in the next tales series, because it just feels like too much in my opinion. Back-paddling can be served to expand on the narrative of the story, however do it too much and it only turns people off, which I have to say was certainly the case for me.

Another thing to point out is the dungeons: some of them are uninspiring and look pretty plain compared to others. It feels like the creators were out of ideas in some of them. However, this doesn’t take away from the experience. It just felt lacklustre compared to some of the nicer dungeons in the game.

Conclusion

The game is an excellent game and certainly one of JRPG’s classics that people can have fun with as long as people take time for it and don’t mind too much of the over excessive back-paddling the game has you do. The cast of characters are enjoyable with their own unique quirkiness and definitely have their own charm. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who loves JRPG, especially the tales series, as I had a lot of fun playing it.

3 hours in to the game, im loving it so far, especially the prologue of the game as it introduce the character's motive and what not and how it all came to be for Velvet

Initially, i thought it was something like a pirate theme game judging from the clothing of Velvet, but luckily I was wrong. It represents something else, but I wont go into that for spoiler reason but I'm glad it came out to be that way.

I'm also loving the menu interfaces, its really simple and easy to navigate. Gonna continue the game after waking up as It's super late in the night now. Also love this image that I took as it is so calming.

Positive:

• Solid Gameplay
• Good Voice Acting
• Gorgeous Graphics
• Good Sound Design
• Lots of Things to Find
• Really Compelling Story
• Loveable and Convincing Characters

Negative:

• Sometimes Unecessary Backtracking
• Sometimes Too Long Empty Walks
• Teleport Shortcuts not working because of small Story Blips on the Way
• Needlessly Convoluted Battlesystem with waaaay to many Moves.

Cleared the bonus dungeon and beat the "true" final boss. That true form was no joke, that was legitimately the first time I had a problem with a battle in this game (0 grade due to 25 KOs lol).

I kind of want to do a Hard+ run just to see what drops I could get (and also because I feel the game is overall easy on Normal mode) but I think I'll go ahead and shelve this before I get completely and utterly sick of it.

Final verdict: dope af