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.

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.

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.