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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
 |
| 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.
Shut up.
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