Nier Automata (PS4): Learning 2B Human.

I really wanted to like the "first" one of this series. A seemingly under the radar release from SquareEnix from what seems to be a completely new property? Sure, I'll give that a shot. And the initial impression of the game was actually pretty good. I was happily plugging along slashing at enemies until "the event" stopped me. A single soul-cleaving fishing game of pure unfiltered hate for the player that was required to proceed with the game. After 45 minutes of controller snapping frustration, I had not caught one single fish. Left with a broken spirit, that was the last time I picked up that game. It had its niche audience but ultimately faded away.

Then surprisingly at an E3, this title surfaced again. A new faster paced action, new female protagonist, and what looked to be a very cool combat trailer. But then I saw it was done by Platinum Games, makers of Bayonetta, which I love. THAT caught my attention, and they released a demo of the intro chapter of the game and signs were positive from there. So while I never was super ingrained into this series, I rather eagerly dove into this title in the hope that fishing would not thwart me yet again...

NIER: AUTOMATA(PS4)

I've come to learn that Nier: Automata actually has a longer and more convoluted story line spanning way far back into the Drakengard series on ps2. But you can play Automata without having known any of it and still enjoy the game. That's what I did, so forgive me if I get part of the story wrong. Here is the setting as I understand it.

Our story begins in the distant future, well past the year 11945. During what was know of the 14th Machine War, aliens descended upon earth wielding bio-machines and attacking the human populous. Being pushed to the brink of extinction, humanity actually had no choice but to abandon Earth and escape to the moon. There, they developed (very goth Lolita) combat androids known as YoRHa to try to fight and take back their home world from the machines that now overrun it.

As years continue to pass the game starts with us in control of 2B, a YoRHa series-2 combat model flying down to earth with a unit of YoRHa fighters to take down a Colossus class machine. Her unit is decimated but she survives and continues the mission. She is joined up with an scouting class series-9 unit called 9S tasked to provide her support. After a massive battle with the colossal machine, 3 more colossi enter the fray and force the two badly damaged units self destruct in order to wipe out the machines.

Their data luckily is backed up and they reloaded to new bodies on "the Bunker", the lunar base where YoRHa runs their operations. After a brief rebooting segment (which will become the hacking minigame), the two are tasked by the YoRHa commander to return planetside and assist  fighting and scouting for the resistance movement on the surface, in the continuing conflict of the machines. Specifically with the odd behavior of the machines in the nearby desert, and it's from this point where the game world really opens up.

Oh good. Starting the game with a tragic sacrifice. That's a good sign.

So I kind of had to give away the a majority of the introductory level of the game but it was kind of necessary to give the story context because much like Platinum Games likes to do, the game starts you off right in the action. Now the reason I was so into the idea of trying this edition of Nier is because Platinum developed it and as you might remember from my Bayonetta 2 review, I love the combat system that they put forth. So I was expecting more of the same: Fast paced hack and slashy action in post apocalyptic world.

But what I wasn't expecting is how the game switches its play styles on you, sometimes multiple times in a level. The game starts off with 2B descending with yer aerial unit and you begin to be attacked by machines, So it starts of as a vertical bullet hell shoot em up in the vein of an Ikaruga for example. Then as the level progresses you get a camera shift and now it turns into a multi-directional bullet hell shooter like Geometry Wars. I am a big fan of these kinds of games, so that was a welcome little surprise.

The bullet hell can actually be pretty forgiving. So long as you keep dodging, you are fine.

Once you actually touchdown on land, it then shifts to more of what I was expecting. It seems to be your relatively standard spectacle fighter style of action game. If you played either of the Bayonetta titles or Devil May Cry it's going to feel right at home for you. Analogs for move and 360 degree camera, light attack and heavy attack, Jump and dodge buttons. You also have a little support robot to provide covering fire and various heavy shots depending on what weapon you have equipped on it. So you better have spider hands, because all of the buttons have uses and you can fully customize them.

Ironically, Devil May Cry and Bayonetta luminary (and Platinum Games founding father) Hideki Kamiya actually wasn't in charge of or developed for this project. He was given input on the combat mechanics but ultimately wasn't part of it, which is actually a surprise to me because the familiarity to his previous works is abundantly clear. 

Even playing with this familiar combat style, there are camera shifts that can take place in battle which will drastically effect how you play. There are a lot of platforming segments that turns it into a 2d Castlevania style action game, and others where it turns into a top down hack and slasher. Thankfully through all of these shifts the game still functions well on its controls and never gets really too disorienting. It's incredibly clever how it makes use of a few camera shifts to make the game feel like a new experience. This is done exceptionally well in some of the boss fights.

You'll see how during the fight the camera shifts above for a top down segment mid-fight.

Automata is an open world game in a post apocalyptic setting but what I enjoyed about this more than others, is much like the setting in Horizon: Zero Dawn, nature and wildlife have taken the world back. Sure there are remnants of buildings, factories, sewers and an amusement park, but wild moose and boars (and seemingly nothing else) roam the lands in harmony with the number goofy toy looking robots. While certain areas don't open up until storyline contexts occur, the maps that you get are pretty expansive with lots of little side quests to find along the way.

I should make special note of the side quests here. Many of them are not required to actually progress in the game, but it should be made note of that blowing past them your first time through like I did would be doing yourself an injustice from a storyline context. Each of the side quests will usually result in a little bit of banter between 2B and 9S, and this these moments that really flesh out the characters, the world, and their relationship to each other. After completing the game you have the ability to jump around the story to complete the side-quests at your leisure, but this is the one time I would advise to do as many as you can as you play the story. Some of them have multiple parts, so be sure not to miss them.

Probably the best aspect of this is game, the use of the actual video game tropes as part of its story meta. Automata does this to such a degree I haven't seen since I played Undertale. As mentioned before, we are controlling androids. So naturally, the game features a series of menus and HUDs that are very mechanical and pixelated in nature in a very Original Game Boy monochromatic color scheme. But this isn't just a cute design aesthetic for the player, this is actually what the androids see. It is actually their internal workings and meta spills into multiple game aspects.

For example, The game features an upgrade system to where you can add, merge and remove microchips that allows you to customize your abilities: give you more attack power, make you run faster, allows you to heal over time, gain more experience, etc. But in this chipset also contains you HUD chipset and OS. They are listed right there in the chips. So you could feasibly remove your HP gauge chip or GPS chip, and when you get go back to the game sure enough your life bar will be gone, as well as the mini map you had.

And when I say your OS (operating system) that is no bullshit. The flavor text of the OS chip says right out that it is what allows you to function. To remove it literally means death. If you ignore that warning and pull out the OS chip anyways?  The screen fades to black on you, you get a reminder to take greater care when adjusting your CPU, and then get a credit roll and need to start over from your last save.

You get 3 sets to customize your chips, so you have backups to use if you happen to die.

Another such example comes in with saving. Automata very pointedly tells you at the onset that this game does NOT have an autosave and that it must be done manually. At first, I was sort of annoyed by this because honestly at this era of gaming we have all become pretty used to autosave at this point. But from a storyline perspective, it makes total sense. 2B and 9S are androids gallivanting across the world and fighting robots, meeting the many cyborgs and robots along the surface, and collecting valuable data about the human society that has been lost to time.

But that data means nothing unless it gets backed up to the servers. Hell their very own ability to survive catastrophic damage is reliant on their ability to literally back up themselves back to the YoRHa bunker, so as you play through the game you will need to find an defend multiple server locations all along the map. These allow you to save your game given you are in range of them to do so (bluetooth still sucks apparently). Finding this also will eventually unlock the fast travel system, as well as allow your map to become more clear and detailed.

Some of the endings involve you dying. These will usually not require you to reclaim your chips.

It also affects your ability to play sometimes as well. Without venturing into spoiler territory too much there are certain instances in combat and gameplay that allows the game to make some screwy visual tricks that just sell the experience better. At one point I thought it was a cutscene until I realized I was still getting my ass kicked and needed to move. It's just and exceptional way of playing with the 4th wall of the game without overtly smashing through it like Deadpool. Taro Yoko may be an insane person and developer, but he certainly knows how to stick to the narrative he's built.

Nier: Automata features an absolutely exceptional soundtrack from the beautiful mind of Keiichi Okabe. I need to state that right off. It is very classical inspired featuring varied orchestral instruments accompanied by three very incredible vocalists all singing in English, Japanese, and French respectively. In the overworld, or in the resistance base the music is very melodic, chill, and soft as if to auditorily present that this area is safe, or the expanse is wild but calm. Walking the YoRHa bunker is devoid of music as the androids work in the silence of outer space.

But then you get into battles or boss fights, and the operatic intensity rises with increased tempos and more pronounced vocals. There is one such spectacular boss fight called only Beautiful Song, which just mirrors the boss' desire to be beautiful in appearance and tone as if performing for an opera (see above boss fight video). And the song "Weight of the World" that plays during the final credits sequence of the true ending, my god.... That song? It's perfection. It's the reason I really gave the soundtrack to closer listen in context to what I was playing. Compiled with the spectacular final true ending sequence, it's probably my favorite part of the game.

If I had to make one complaint about the music, is as beautiful as it is? It might be too chill, bordering on boring. I know that doesn't make sense considering how I gushed for two paragraphs, but what I mean by that is this: On more than one occasion, while I was playing the game slouched in my bowl chair like the disgusting slob that I am, the music was just so chill that I would nod off while I was playing it. For a medium that is meant to keep you engaged and alert, that's not actually a good thing. It's the primary reason it took me so long to get through it because I would keep falling asleep while I played. Given my history, that's not usually a selling point.

That said, this is a great soundtrack to catch a nap to. I do at work all the time too, 2B.

I do have a bunch of little annoyances with Automata though. The aforementioned chip idea for stats is cool and clever, but it doesn't do the best job of explaining how to best condense your chips to make the best of your limited space. By increasing the potency of your chips, it more often makes them require more space. Makes sense, but it also will sometimes basically scare you off from spending a chip you like for fear of not having to reorganize your whole chip set over again. It took me forever to realize the little diamond next to them is saying the chip is as small as it can be. So you really only want to merge those with other diamonds.

It also can make the game almost insultingly easy. Once I discovered chipsets like auto-heal, offensive heal, and deadly heal the game became a walk in the park. With a combination of those chips on I was restoring health for damaging enemies, killing enemies, and not taking damage. It still left me plenty of room to boost damage and speed, so I basically would be able to shred things with reckless abandon because if took too many hits, either I'd use a healing item automatically, or just back out of the fight a few seconds to heal up and dive right back in.

Which made the occasional cheap death that would come the fuck out of nowhere even more infuriating. I might have only died in the game like 2 or 3 times, and they happened in the exact same spot because I would just be ripping around the area at high speed forgetting about an environment insta-kill. This also clued me in that this game also does the Dark Souls thing where if you die, you lose everything you have equipped. Not everything, all your stored items and money are still available, but your chipset you were using are with your body, and if you don't go get it back, they are gone forever. Not expecting that after a cheap death is infuriating because then you are extra careful not to lose your carefully crafted character.

Your map is next to useless. The minimap might point you in a general direction, but the three dimensional monochromatic pixel map for a guy with partial red/green colorblindness makes finding your way to side quests or objectives kind of difficult to track down. There have been multiple points where I was right on top of the path I was allegedly supposed to take or on where a quest was supposed to be to find out I was several stories up or down where I was supposed to be. I was getting flashbacks to the new Doom and how little the map actually told me where to go.

You really need to go back to the theater after the boss fight there.

That's another thing about the map. It is both simultaneously huge and small at the same time. You are going to spend a lot of time back and forthing across the world from place to place and it's always going to take a few minutes to do, but when I actually think about it there is only like 5 to 7 locations in the whole game. Now to compare, this is essentially what they did in Lightning Returns: FF13 and it does give the game a sense of bigness to explore. But if you play through the game long enough, you are going to notice that you in the same areas an awful lot.

There is a weapons and upgrade system, and you can also find additional gear of the body's of players littered across the map, and I'm going to tell you right now? It all means next to nothing. I played through 3 times and never found any of the items to upgrade my little pod support, so it apparently doesn't mean much. Weapons only have 4 levels of upgrades, but your chipsets will play the bigger factor on dealing damage. There are lots of little items you pick up, and I'll be honest I don't think I used any of them. If you are using auto-heal, almost 90% of the items are useless.

The hacking mini-game work just like the flight units, and is surprisingly strong.

As I said before, the story is very convoluted. And while I very much enjoyed it, essentially playing only this game of its entire narrative spanning almost 5 games (There were 2 releases of the original in japan), I am left with a whole lot of unanswered questions. Why if they are androids are they programmed to experience emotion and personality, yet have directives to not experience or display them? Why if they are machines with databases, was human history so lost that they only loosely understand the concept of shopping? If the YoRHA are Androids, and the robots are Machines, Then what is the Resistance, Cyborgs? There are a bunch of other more spoilery questions I won't get into, as well.

But I suppose the biggest story thing to complain about it is even after playing through the major endings, I still don't really understand what the story point was. There is a lot of existential crisis and realization throughout the story of the game, and I truly did feel for almost all the characters I was presented with. But by the end of it I was left with a very "what exactly did I learn here?" feeling. That doesn't make it bad by any means, but apparently I don't have the super intelligent space brain required to see the deeper meaning here. Luckily, if you stick to focusing on the characters, it's still a very enjoyable experience.

The game also has a mind-numbing 26 endings. One for each letter of the alphabet. Granted a significant majority of them are very jokey endings, many of which you might get entirely by accident by making the wrong decision or walking the wrong direction. But to get the 5 major endings of the game to truly see everything, you are going to have play the game through a couple of times. The game pretty much tells you this after you finish once: "Congrats on beating the game! But you reeeeaaaaaallly should play it a few more times. wink wink."

There is also an trophy for trying to look up 2B's skirt too many times. Honestly this is coming from Platinum who has never had any problems with fanservice in there games so this doesn't surprise me. Especially after the whole controversy about someone taking a screenshot of 2B's surprisingly detailed robot butthole, (I stand by the theory that if she's an android operating at high speed, there needs to be an exhaust system right?). You can self destruct to blow off her clothes as well, but as I mentioned above the game can be easy. It never occurred to me to even try that until my sister told me I could do it. This is a game where the fanservice honestly wasn't necessary in any capacity.

But through all of these niggling little complaints, it is totally totally worth it. It took me a little bit to get the ball rolling on the story but once I was in I was completely in. From a technical standpoint the game is practically flawless. I can't think of any mechanic fault that wasn't intentionally put there for story context. Platinum Games once again just delivered a home run on a property that a lot of people didn't give a chance here in the west, and now it is being met with well deserved critical acclaim.

Again, the rage quitter has little rage about here. I came into Nier: Automata only expecting a few things and I got all of them, but some clever use of cameras, music, and playing around with the very mechanics of the game to make them in-story relevant really put this game over the top for me. It got me to spend hours watching videos of spoken word classical concerts of the series misty eyed as I watched the cutscenes behind the singers.

A lot of the reviews are saying "masterpiece" which I think is a little much. If the game has flaws it can't be a masterpiece (looking at you Breath of the Wild), but there are a whole lot of 8's, 9's, and 9.5s and I am very hard pressed to disagree with any of them. Nier: Automata was fucking fantastic and it completely turned me around on the franchise. Maybe enough to make me go back and re-try the first one. Absolutely worth your time and highly recommended.

Oh yeah, the fishing isn't impossible in this one.
and more importantly, it's optional. 

Tales of Berseria (PS4): Being bad never felt so good.

So of course, after stupidly making the proclamation that I felt this series had become better than Final Fantasy I ended up not finishing the last two of them that came out. Perhaps to learn a lesson in hubris.  But one I didn't finish just because it felt like it was too much too soon, the one that came after that I really liked, but it stuck me with a slow paced frustrating water temple, so I quickly fizzled out there.

But the reviews of this one before it came stateside were hot. Pre-release reviews of this one were saying this has potential to be one of the best. They changed up some things on the protagonist and the overall theme of the story. Even when one of these games isn't great I still greatly look forward to the next one. This one came out earlier this year, so sorry the delayed review.

TALES OF BERSERIA(PS4)

In the distant past in the universe of Tales of Zestiria, our story begins with a young Velvet Crowe fleeing from demonblight with her younger brother Laphicet. They are saved by Velvet's brother-in-law Artorius who has the ability to fight demons, but her sister Celica does not survive the Scarlet Night catastrophe. A few years pass and the three of them are trying to maintain a normal life. Velvet cares for Laphicet who is a sickly child, and Artorius trains Velvet to fight, hunt and protect instilling in her the various maxims and teachings of his.

But the Scarlet Night returns, infecting the entire village and turning them to demons. In the chaos Velvet tries to find her family, only to find Artorius sacrificing Laphicet the same way her sister perished years ago. Resisting his ritual and trying to save her brother she too becomes possessed with demonblight and becomes a Therion, sprouting a demonic claw that allows her to devour other demons for strength. Angelic presences called Malakim are summoned into the world, and with Artorius the subdue and restrain Velvet and she is thrown into a prison for demons.

Velvet is locked in their lowest cell deep underground for three years, feeding on other demons and hatred for Artorius, waiting and planning for her opportunity to escape and murder him. She eventually gets her chance when Seres, Artorius' personal malakim releases her from her cell to help her get her revenge. In the escape Seres is mortally wounded and instead of letting her die, Velvet devours her for her power. After pairing up with another demon named Rokurou and a perplexing self proclaimed witch named Magilou, the trio succeed in their escape. Now free, Velvet starts her pursuit of Artorious.

As you might expect, seeing your two blood relatives die the same way in a
span of three years might bet a little taxing on Velvet's psyche.

For those of you who have played Tales games before probably already can see the major tonal shift this series has taken here. Never before in my memory has there been a Tales that focused on such a dark theme. Even Tales of Graces angst ridden whinefest wasn't so outwardly malicious. Outside of the initial animatic, you would think that this might be Tales as normal for the first hour or so. Velvet is cheerful, content in her life with her assembled family and village, and seemingly happy. It starts as most tales games usually do, but man oh man does it get dark in a hurry.

But the time we actually take control again, Velvet is a completely different person. She literally feeds on her own hate and rage, and spits pure venom to everyone. And why not? She's a demon, and she only has one goal set for herself and that is vengeance. No heroes here, no chosen ones, no legend or prophecy to fulfill. You basically are controlling a team of self centered misfits, and I have to say that I love the shift. It really shakes up the plot which is great because the Tales of series does have a tendency to feel samey in some ways.

Combat in this game shifted similarly to how it did in Tales of Zestiria where instead of the side view of the big rounded arena map, they basically just put the area down in that actual map you are traversing. Most of the time it doesn't change anything but in dungeons it can provide some obstacles. The camera in battle can be rotated but it generally remains behind the back 3rd person like Zestiria did. It's disorienting if you've played other games in the series but won't take you long to get used to.

The combat in this game is incredibly simplified, and it is definitely friendly to the button masher. Instead of having a basic attack button and techs that correspond to each button. Much of the time as you learn new abilities and techniques it auto upgrades and places them for you. But once you've learned the ability you are free to customize your own combos, which I used to make element specific moves.

Combat is pretty easy, there is no line system so can free move around and mash buttons to string together the combos you've built. You have a soul gauge that starts at 3 stars, and this can functionally be thought as your stamina. Its what allows you to chain your moves together. If you are doing well in the fight you can take a star from an opponent and extend your own, thus allowing you to do longer combos. You can have as many as 5 and as low as 1 so if you are taking a beating hang back and pick your shots to build the gauge back up.

The combat system is Tales is always its best draw in my opinion. It's just fun to play.

You can also "spend" these to use character specific abilities. For example if you burn one you can use it to attack with Velvet's demon claw and become "Therionized". Complete your combo with your claw out and you finish off with a big special attack based on the type of enemy you initially struck with your claw. Time them right and you can kill shot with that move to get your star back at no loss.

Like Velvet's claw, everyone has their own character specific ability which changes how they fight so you are free to play around with what character you are using to try them all. And as usual you will eventually unlock mystic artes which are the big animated attacks for huge damage. As is with all Tales games, there are a lot of little elements to the combat to make it more complex and precise, but ultimately its not necessary to learn all of it to enjoy the game. You also can set your teams behaviors to be more aggressive or defensive as you need to suit your play style.

I have always been kind of hard on the composer for the Tales series, Motoi Sakuraba, for managing to produce soundtrack after soundtrack of original music for this series yet somehow it all sounds completely unmemorable and the same. It's weird because his a very prolific game composer with such titles like Dark souls, Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean, and even contributed to Bravely Default which are all fantastic soundtracks. So it never made sense to me why the Tales soundtracks were so... Bland.

Thankfully this is a trend that seems to be changing. It started to improve with the last game and and even more so with this one. Many of the songs seem to have some noticeable hooks that will get you to hum along after a few battles and moments and some older familiar tracks appear for certain optional boss missions which caused me to smirk. But more than anything the Song of Velvet gets special mention for being some excellent scoring to really drive home some emotional moments of the game. To give it a very Kill La Kill term, it gives certain "Don't lose your waaaaaay!" feeling when it happens that can't help cause a grin and maybe a few tears. Vast improvement on the soundtrack front.

I like this cast of characters a lot. They tend to fall into a lot of the same anime tropes you might expect but its a Tales game so that is pretty much to be expected at this point. But it feels like all these characters have a lot more depth to them than in prior titles. Velvet is clearly the protagonist and she's not sharing the main stage like Milla had to in Tales of Xillia, but that doesn't mean that the rest of the cast or their motivations are pushed to the wayside. Eizen is searching for his kidnapped mentor, Rokurou is on a blood feud with his brother. Laphicet is learning how to actually live. The characters feel like they have more depth this time.

Even with characters like Magilou (who I love) who seem to be in the party just to be silly, she ended up having a much deeper backstory than I expected. All of them are well interweaved in the story so they can all take place in the main narrative without having to feel like I'm abandoning the main quest to see the rest of the content. I appreciated this since I had so many other games to get to.

I have to say this is one of the series better stories as well. Because of the shift of character moral compass, it shakes up a lot of the hero tropes you come to expect from JRPGs. I will say that it does fall into a handful of predictable pitfalls, but it also does a pretty good job of surprising you as well with almost every one of the characters. Although I will say that the characters do start to soften up at points, setting fire to a village to make your escape is certainly not something I would expect heroes to do. Thankfully, they aren't heroes at all and the story is much better for it.

Velvet and Eleanor actually make a great team, but they are constantly at odds.

Eleanor is technically the only "Good Guy" on the team. She finds herself in a tough
spot going against the beliefs she knows by the beliefs she feels, even if it means aiding a demon.

There are also a lot of little nods that reminded me that this game is actually a very distant prequel to Tales of Zestiria.  You don't have to have played the previous game in order to enjoy this one, but there are lots of little moments and storyline realizations that make you go "Ohhhh! thats why thats a thing!". There is also one very brief cameo of one Zestiria's better characters, which got me to realize something about the last game as well. I might have to go back and actually finish it now.

Graphically? Well, again, it's a Tales game. The characters are designed in that same familiar style that you have seen in this franchise, so its not going to blow you away on that front. It's very anime. I will say however that unlike the last game, Berseria seems to take full advantage of the ps4's hardware potential and runs any 60fps for any moment that isn't a cinematic which makes all the gameplay feel fast and smooth, yet movie-esque for the scenes where you just need to watch and pay attention run at 30.  It does use the best of what it has on that front though specifically when it comes to emotion through eye reaction. It also has some very pretty environments as well. Overall the game looks good.

I'd also like to thank the Tales team for making the whole waypoint marker thing clearer this time around. In previous games they give you an objective but sometimes not really give a clear direction on how to get there. So you can find yourself accidentally wandering off the wrong direction for like an hour and then needing to backtrack. While this doesn't hold your hand it does help more keep pointed in the correct direction without sacrificing my ability to explore.

So what don't I like? Well, lets get this out of way right now. Tales? You need to fucking knock it off with the mascot character. Please stop. It's never anyone's favorite character. Mieu, Teepo, Normin, and now the ever fucking annoying Beinfu. This has got to be one of the worst ones because A.) its basically just a Normin with a top hat on. B.) It has probably the most obnxious character voice I've ever heard (and I got through Star Ocean: Last hope and Infinte Undiscovery), and C.) he has like 1000 lines! I've never so much wanted to skip character building dialog as much as when Bienfu is talking.

Kamoana also deserves special mention for her two purposes: Crying, and Crying more.
Tack that onto the 2nd most obnoxious voice in the game and you will be scrambling for the mute button.

While I enjoyed this combat system immensely, it does have the tendency (as does most of this series) of throwing a fuckton of information at you at the end of every battle to when you start the game, so a large portion of the mechanics are going to be completely lost on you until you go back into the the tutorial to read it. The other problem is as said above it can be button mashy. For a guy like me who enjoys combos, I spend a lot of time figuring out the proper sets so I could string together long 17 hit combos, but to anyone who doesn't have the patience for that will end up just mashing any old button. And the problem with that is it can get boring (see Dragon Quest: Heroes easy controls).

Berseria uses a learned skill system similar to Final Fantasy 9's system where you use equipped gear for X number of points and it lets you use a new ability. My problem with it is getting some of these abilities take fucking forever, and for some reason a lot of the ones that require the most points are pieces of gear that get obsolete very quickly. And equipment is practically falling out of enemies so you can find yourself struggling to keep up with it. I couldn't put on the tag that gave me improved skill learning fast enough.

As always, with the right timing and moves the combo chains can get pretty high.

Then we have Velvet's outfit. Look, I don't mind a little TnA in my video games but the reasoning behind it is just stupid. Velvet is locked away and her clothes begin to tatter after being the only thing she has for 3 years, ok that makes sense. Then when breaking from jail she find a new outfit, which honestly couldn't even be called a lateral move if we are being generous. The armor covers her right shin and arm, and the rest is just tattered belts and strings. Sexy yes, but so unbelievably impractical I couldn't believe they went with it. The argument was because she's a demon she doesn't feel cold anymore, so it doesn't bother her.

It's fine, I guess. I enjoy fan service as much as the next guy does. But I couldn't help but keep thinking it was just stupid, the pursuit of murder takes away one's sense of modesty? Uh, ok. It's basically the factor that got me to cave on paying for DLC. Which is the consistent annoying trend in the Tales series of just gutting you up the ass for extra money. But the fairy tale outfits and ninja clothes were just too cool this time. And honestly a lot of the other costume packs that they put out have been much better too. So yeah, I caved this time and bought one. You win Tales, you finally got me. Fuck you.

In addition to the DLC there are lots of little extra accessories to find to customize your look.
Nice Hubert cosplay, Eizen. You eff'n dounk.

Tales of Berseria is a fantastic game. I really enjoyed this one a lot, almost to the point when I first played it I felt it had game of the year potential. Now that I've had time to stew on it and compare it to other releases that's probably not true. But I will say when I play games in this series, I am always holding it up to the standard bearer of Tales of Symphonia which was the first Tales game I played and the one that I considered the best. Some of them came close to besting, but never supplanted.

But there is one very emotional story moment about midway through the game that moved me to actual tears as I played (yes, I know I've said this before. I'm a sensitive guy{ladies}). No other Tales game has done that before. Taking this game from its combat system, music, world setting, characters, and storytelling as whole I have to say it: Berseria is better than Symphonia. Not only did it shake up the franchise enough to make me love it again, but I honestly think this one might be the best in the series and I don't say that lightly. I still go back and watch that moment on youtube to remind me of how much I loved it.

Can I even call this blog Rage Quitter anymore? Jesus christ just looking at the games I have yet to play and have yet to review I already know how these are going to go. And this one is another one to add to the good pile. Even if you are a newcomer or an old hand at the series, if you are looking for a solid action-rpg with a fun combat system, good music, compelling story and interesting characters (Beinfu aside) you can't go wrong with Tales of Berseria. Highly recommended.

Yes, I bought the DLC for the Alice in Wonderland dress.
Shut up.

Persona 5 (PS4): Stolen My Heart, {Because of course it did}.

Ok, I can't even pretend to have some kinda cutesy anecdote about this one. At this point in the life of this blog it's pretty well documented how much I've fallen in love with this franchise. I talked about it non-stop until I played Undertale. Now I expect it to swing back that direction because a new one has finally been released, so the question really is going to be how does it hold up to it's lineage. Let's get to it. 

PERSONA 5 (PS4)

There is a bit of introduction so I'll try to cliffnote it here. The game starts off with you taking control of a masked thief being referred to as Joker. He's a got a briefcase and is being pursued as he being looks to make an escape. He is in radio contact with what appears to be a whole team. He dispatches a series of shadows (giving us a brief combat and stealth tutorial) and makes what seems like a daring escape through a decorative window, only to be ambushed by a large scale police force and apprehended.

After getting beaten down by the police and drugged up, he is forced to sign a confession of guilt. The prosecutor of his case arrives to interrogate him, inquiring how one could "steal someone's heart" but she wants a truthful story out of Joker. Despite her disbelief of the whole situation you are told to start from the beginning.

Joker is actually a high schooler called Akira Kurusu (Manga), who is moving to Tokyo after being expelled from his original school. He was removed from school due to a criminal probation, as he was sued by a man who was sexually harassing a woman on the street, and Joker physically put a stop to it. The case didn't go his way, he was taken out of school, and sent by his parents to live in Tokyo for his probation staying with a somewhat cold and distant cafe owner named Sojiro Sakura.

After making his day one introductions, digging his roots to his new room, and finding a mysterious app on his phone Joker runs into local delinquent Ryuji Sakamoto on his way to the first day of class. However, the pair never make it to school as they find a medieval castle in its place run by what seems to be an oversexed and overblown version of the schools PE teacher, King Kamoshida. They are attacked and accosted by the King and his Shadows which causes Akira to awaken to his persona and fight back.

During their escape, Ryuji sees many of his fellow students being tortured and caged. They are able to make their escape by releasing a talking cat monster called Morgana who seems to have an understanding of this world, which turns out to be a manifestation of the teacher's twisted desires. The boys make a deal with Morgana to come back and help them as "Phantom Thieves", and in return it will allow them to change Kamoshida's heart to confess to the possible abuses he has done back in the real world.

I am probably glossing over a lot there but as we all know by now the Persona is a very narrative driven game, so admittedly they reason they start you off In Medias Res is to let you get a feel for the action early because once that is done you are in for a bit of storytelling. I will say that it feels like this one gets Star Ocean 2 levels of long before it really lets you off the chain to explore the world more. Which is fine, I don't mind a little exposition for a longer narrative, but you really gotta get the hooks in early for some people.

The Persona franchise is a split between a dungeon crawling JRPG and day-to-day Japanese Life simulation. That really is the best way to explain the two major aspects of this game. One of the key aspects of the Persona franchise for those who don't know is the contemporary setting forcing a balance of daily normal life on top of the fantastical dungeon crawling. You aren't legendary heroes on a quest, you are high school kids trying to go to class and save the world on the side. So why does the game force you simulate normal life? Because it affects your ability to fight.

While dungeon crawling the game has a very standard JRPG system about it: wander the map, find treasures, fight monsters, get to the boss. As you fight various shadows, you have the opportunity to collect them as personas to make them fight for you. You might think this apes the Pokemon system but the major difference here is that your persona's abilities also directly effect you. If your persona is weak to ice, then that means you are too so you have to be careful about what you are using to what you are fighting. On top of collecting them, you can fuse them together to make new ones with the abilities of both.

So what does this have to do with your daily life? Personas are tied to various tarot arcana, and they can be strengthened by increasing you bonds of the said arcana.  This is done by bonding with the various people you meet in your daily life. Some are teammates, some are classmates, some are strangers, but as you continue to deepen your bonds with them, it increases the strength of your fusions for massive experience boosts. So while you might love a Persona you've been using for hours, eventually the game will out pace you and they won't be relevant anymore.

So typically, when you have the freedom, your day will start with you going to school and getting a bit of news about whats happening, you might have to answer a question in class so pay attention (seriously). After class you can go out and work a job, hang with your friends, study or do other various activities to boost your stats. As you improve your relationships, the corresponding arcana also increases, and when you fuse a new persona of that type, they will grow much stronger. Both of them play a factor into each other, so you will want to make time to do a little of everything.

The goofy dubs they do spoofing on American movies are fucking hilarious.

If you chose instead to dungeon crawl, then your objective should be to clear dungeons in as few attempts as you can possibly muster. If you can go from start to finish in a single day that is ideal because then it maxes out your time to socialize with other people. There is a degree of pressure to this because Persona is a game that's defined by its deadlines. When you are given a mission you are then restricted to a few weeks time to complete the dungeon as well as fit in all the socializing you need to do prior to deadline, so as said above it's in your best interest to try to complete the dungeon in as few attempts as possible.

I've touched on the combat a little bit, but for a more full explanation it runs the typically turn based JRPG standard this series has always had. In battle you have the option to fight, guard, use your persona, run and etc. All the enemies in the game have varied strengths and weaknesses, and if you manage to hit a weakness it knocks them down for you to do a follow up attack. If you are able to knock down all the of the enemies you get the chance to smash them for a big all out attack.

But that has changed a little bit this time around. Since you are thieves instead of just rushing for an all out attack, you instead can hold up the monster. In doing this you can then negotiate with them to give you an item or drop more cash at the cost of less experience, or you can persuade them to join you as a persona (Which hearkens back to the old Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games). These can be tricky since you need to look at their personality type, and respond to their questions appropriately. Since getting many of them will allow you to increase your strength, you will want to try to catch as many as you can.

There are handful of little tricks you can learn along the way too. Persona 5 brings back the "shoot" damage affinity since everyone has a gun they can use in battle. You can't often restore ammo and sometimes it's not as strong, but it can be used to hit a weakness. If monsters have varied weaknesses, you can use the "baton pass" ability to give your bonus turn to another character to keep the chain going. This is incredibly handy since your Skill Points used to cast personas are limited, and by being able to trade to other teammates, it will keep you from wasting all your hero's SP. 

The game has a minor stealth mechanic to dungeon crawling. If monsters see you it raises an alert percentage and makes the enemies more aggressive. If that number reaches 100% getting caught again will bounce you right out of the dungeon, forcing you to waste a day of time. Thankfully, the game is pretty forgiving. You have lots of little ledges and corners to hide behind, and as long as you are hidden behind them the enemies can't see you even if they are standing in front of you. Pretty much gives you a free pace to ambush them and bring down your alert percentage.

If you are on a wall, it doesn't where the baddie is. They can't see you.
The stealth in this game is very generous.

Those are really the big functional differences to the overall combat system. If you have a played a Persona game prior to this one then all in all it's going to feel pretty natural to you. The one thing they changed that felt odd was instead of using the D-pad to pick your battle options, your main abilities are tied to different buttons: Fight is X, Guard is O, Persona is Triangle and so forth. It's a subtle change that took some getting used to but after a while you won't even notice it. 

That isn't the only shortcut they added either. Usually when you fight things or if you captured said persona you can tap the L1 button to see its list of health, strengths, weaknesses, and immunities. But now they've added a handy shortcut button (R1) that will jump you to a knockdown option. It may not give you the best possible option (such as a stronger version of a Fire attack, or one that attacks everyone) but it will give you one that can knock them down, if you can't it will show you who can pass the baton to to keep the chain going. It was a nifty little feature I appreciated.

Persona has always been fetishistic a bit, so this didn't bother me.
This is not the worst thing in this game.

You are going to spend a pretty significant amount of time in some menus too, primarily in the Velvet room. It returns again as your hub to fuse personas, and they thankfully put in all the little updates to in previous iterations of the game so now you can sort out by results, manually choose which abilities to bring over, and get a clearer better overall viewing of what it is your are doing. They also added some means of turning old personas into items or nuking them for a free XP boost as well, in addition to adding kind of solitary chamber to increase their resistances. But I'll be honest with you I found myself not needing to use these very  much, only when I was trying to make something specific.

Ultimately, those are the major mechanics to this game. A lot of little changes built onto the solid core it has already established. If you have played a previous Persona game or are even loosely familiar with JRPGs then this one is not going to throw you any curveballs you aren't expecting, at least from a gameplay standpoint.

It's actually pretty ironic that the Velvet Room is a prison this time around,
because you are going to be locked in these menus for a while.

Graphically the visual styling has changed, sharpened, and matured. When I first started playing the game I couldn't rattle out of my head that it just felt like Catherine the RPG, but in retrospect that's not a really fair analogy. While it has kind of gone away from the more anime looking styles off Persona 4, the design definitely falls more in with the original design aesthetics of the Shin Megami Tensei series Persona initially spun off from.

Because of this, everything looks more mature. When I say that I mean when playing the older ones the character models looked very video gamey for lack of a better term, where in this one they are fully fleshed out and appropriately sized. Characters are taller and more human looking. More importantly, I feel it really allows to show reactions better. For example, the moments where a character makes a contract with their persona, or show actual terror the way the eyes dilate in that very Shigenori Soejima manner you've come to know.

From what I understand, this is a pretty faithful recreation of current day Tokyo, which is pretty impressive. It also explains why in the very beginning of the game when I was trying to get to the right character to actually progress with the start of the game It took me forever to get to. Persona 5 has done a pretty painstaking job of showing where everything is on your map with a minor exception of the way point maker. That would have been helpful navigating around the first few areas of the game.

Thankfully as you play through the game and visit more areas, you can eventually just menu jump from place to place without having to walk the entirety of the map. So you can go around and do your shopping and visit places and talk to people before you "spend your afternoon". It makes the whole time mechanic a little goofy since you can travel around town for hours and not pass time, but one trip to the batting cages wastes the whole day. You basically get the choice to do something during the day and something at night, unless you went to a dungeon. So you really need to use your time wisely.

Speaking of which, Social links feel way more important in this one. You could always use them to boost the experience your persona's got, but now on top of allowing your teammates personas you improve, the strangers that you befriend also have a significant effect on you. Through improving the many social links you meet along the way, you learn multitudes of new abilities both in battle and out. One lets you extort people for more money, One lets you learn how to switch your teammates in battle on the fly, one gives you more time to do additional daily activities, and so forth. It really forced me to take an interest in completing all of them because they all bring something valuable to your team.

She better have good ethics about games in her journalism. Yeah, that still pisses me off.

Let's talk Shoji Meguro. I've previously mentioned that this man is in my god tier of video game composers and he once again knocked it out of the fucking park this time. Now when I first started it didn't immediately grab me, and I'm not sure why. Meguro is known for using various styles of music throughout his works. Persona 3 had a more hip hop vibe, Persona 4 was more punk and rock influenced, Persona Q blended the previous two games styles with a Ska vibe and somehow made it work {which is a true testament to his ability because Ska is awful}.

To be a bit more descriptive, if I had to summarize what style of music this game had I would say it shifts itself somewhere between I what feels like a blending of Acid Jazz for the downplayed moments, and Disco for the more upbeat moments, with an occasional rock song spliced in here and there. For lack of a better way to describe it I would say it it's very "groovy". Watching the intro movie to the game left me feeling lukewarm at best... to start.

That being said, this soundtrack was a slow burn for me. As I was playing through the opening segments and going into new areas, the music just wasn't hitting me. But as I played along, I would catch myself kinda moving to the music as I played. I would catch myself humming some of the songs, so they were definitely notable. Then I hit the main boss music and I got this shit eating grin on my face because it was scored perfectly with this great guitar riff, it raised the tension of the fight and just made the whole thing feel bad ass.

Then the music started introduce the vocals of Lyn Inaizumi, which she sung completely in English, so then songs became songs I could sing along with which make them stick in you head more. Then I started to notice how some of the songs remixed to be softer when it rained in game. Noticed homages to other video games with the chiptunes they used, the callback to Persona 4 in the crane game, the type of song used for each dungeon. Everything about it felt.... Perfect. Not much longer after that I approached the final acts of the game and got to some later boss fights. Those fights had a song I loved so much... Well.. Look...

And that is why I hide in the corner at parties. Look at this mess.

That image isn't staged. For the final few fights of the game, I enjoyed the music so much that I actually made me get up out of my chair and dance while I played. I am not making this up. I genuinely enjoyed the music of the game that much. It took me forever to find a copy of the 3 disc soundtrack (only to have it domestically released right after) and it's currently bumped Undertale's Determination soundtrack off my listening for now. It's a fantastic OST and has forced me to come to terms with the fact that I might like disco. Shoji Meguro is a god.

One other minor note on the sound? I would like to thank Atlus and Persona team for adding in an animal mascot character and NOT give them a voice that made me want to dig the business end of a screwdriver into my ear. I usually develop a numbness to some of them over time but they are usually insufferable (Tales of Berseria is a big offender here). While Persona has done this before Teddie and a lesser extent Koromaru, it was nice to have a cat person not be so sickeningly over the top.

Aside from a few meows in his words, Morgana is actually pretty normal.

As I've always said, there is no perfect game but my complaints in this one are minor as always. First and most annoyingly it's kept the very very stupid "Hero can't die" rule that the other games had. So regardless if you have the items, spells, or party members to save you, if the hero drops to zero it's an instant game over. So if you say accidentally use your own weakness in the late stages of the final boss and it gets reflected into you, get sent up fucked river for it. I don't know why they keep this. Morgana can literally save me on the next turn, why do I need to reload the fight?

Speaking of that fucking cat, Morgana? To steal a joke from Kotaku: I'm a big boy. I can go to bed when I want to. I don't need you holding my hand constantly telling me to go to bed. In Persona 3 being in Tartarus directly affected your health and you needed the rest to be in peak form. Persona 4 they outright said the TV world can be physically draining. They have said nothing of the like in Persona 5, so if I want to study or make coffee after doing some dungeon crawling, god damn it let me!

Didn't take the meme folk long to go to down on this one.
Atlus even made a shirt about it.

In addition to that, there really are long stretches of the game where you are subjected to a lot of story. Like, a lot of it. I said before it's a very narrative driven game, but some of the deadlines wouldn't feel like they are pressuring me so much if I was allowed to do more during the deader story moments. Functionally, only when you have the actual deadline counter on the screen, that's when you have the freedom to actually do things.

There is some great story moments in this game, but there are some pretty large segments that just feel like fluff to fill time. I don't know why but I don't feel as emotionally pulled into this one like I was with Persona 4. But that is more because of the theme of that one resonated with me more on a personal level. The pace of the story is pretty slow I will admit, and it takes a few dungeons before the main narrative really sort of unveils itself and drive me. Until it does, it has a very doofy "Aww man, adults are the worst and were the best because were teens" theme to it. Which is silly since they are year or 2 out of being done with high school.

There are two big story issues that I have that I'll keep somewhat spoiler free. First, they tease something right into the opening cutscene and build throughout the course of the game, and they do a pretty good job of throwing things around to make it confusing, getting me to 2nd guess my choices. But it's resolved by being what was probably the most obvious solution, which actually kind of stunned me that they went that way with it. It felt too obvious and thought my ideas would have been way better.

The other is the resolution of that situation where they have to explain how they got out of the other aforementioned one. It's such a long and contrived explanation that they basically leave it for you to find in a single missable conversation, where it tells you straight off "this can be long and boring, you sure you want to know?" and then will ask if you want to quit mid explanation. Well no, I already plowed through 10 other text boxes, you might as well keep going so I can understand what the fuck happened. I wonder if this is a matter of localization, but I'm not really sure.

And this is kind of a weird thing to note, but apparently in Japan older working women are super down with the idea of banging a 16 or 17 year old kid, because you certain have options to romance in your social links. Don't get me wrong, they all have amazingly useful effects and were my favorite social links to do, but it does give an air of creepiness about them.

The older social links are not exactly shy about what they want to do with

Joker if you choose to purse one of them romantically.

The game has an online mechanic for the "Thieves guild" which is cool. It shows you what people did on what days and what percentage of them did. But it also shows you what people picked on non-test school answers. Guess what, everyone is using a guide. It makes class easy mode because the right answer is usually ahead by an 85% margin. It sort of breaks the purpose of it but I'm not complaining. I was a bad student anyways.

My biggest complaint isn't really about the game, but with Atlus' draconian stances on streaming and sharing. They, like the Tales of series, locked off all native streaming abilities, and threatened copyrights and channel take downs if you played online. This pissed a lot of people off and there was a massive backlash. I was personally upset because I took 9 days off to play it and fully intended to stream. Now the backlash was really bad and just recently they lighted up the restrictions. You still can't do it natively on the console, but they are now at least cool with you streaming up to the last major act. It's still stupid, and makes getting screenshots a chore, but at least it's a minor concession.

This is Mara. It's a giant tentacle dick on a chariot. THIS is probably the worst thing in the game,
It also should be made the new Atlus mascot over Jack Frost because of their streaming policies.

But honestly, a lot of the things that can be seen as complaints are things that some people like about JRPGs. And you look at the things I was able to complain about in this you can see that they are minor complaints at best. The fact is I was able to plant my ass in a chair for 9 days and binge on 122 hours and then have to force myself to stop from continuing a new game plus because I have such a huge pile of games to get to.

The team at Atlus realized something that a lot of other games realized lately and have benefited from. Is that when you, from a story or gameplay aspect, make your game about doing heists? It instantly becomes more fun. Sure it takes some effort to slog through the dungeons but when you actually make the final push to finish and the song gets upbeat and you dash into the boss encounter? It's just impossible to not enjoy yourself.

Persona 5 is great. I knew it was going to be great, reviewers knew it was going to be great, YOU knew it was going to be great. I don't know why I needed to bother with 3500+ words to jack this game off. If you like enjoy anime based JRPGs or day to day life simulators with a sprinkle of Pokemon collectiblity, Persona 5 is going to scratch all those itches. It's not a game for those who are looking for a quick weekend play or games with a lot of reading.

But for everyone else, get it. It's incredible. This is going to be a very difficult year for people to decide on what the game of the year will be because there is so many amazing games that have come out this year already with more on the way, but you bet you ass Persona 5 is going to be that discussion. Five star A+ high recommendation. I love you Persona.

I'm sorry Punk Rock Doc, I know you are hot
but when I met "Becky" I knew I couldn't love you anymore.
I hope we can still be friends.