Tales of Berseria - PlayStation 4

I've beaten several Tales games; Symphonia, Symphonia: Dawn of a New World, Graces f, Xillia, Xillia 2, Zestiria and now Berseria. Out of all of these titles, Berseria easily ranks within my top three. It possesses the character development that Zestiria fell short on, utilizes a battle system that is easily accessible to seasoned Tales players as well as new ones, and immerses you in a story that makes for a truly enjoyable JRPG. I am the type of player to look for a cohesive, thought-out plotline, and Berseria fits that bill and more. Plot: Velvet is a very interesting protagonist in the sense that she really is not a heroine, like many other games give (including many of the other Tales games). She and your other party members follow a journey for their own purposes, each one of them with their own goals and motivations that really are not the most moral or heroic. I don't want to post any spoilers or hint to any plot developments, but I'm confident when I say it is a game worth playing. It is not too difficult to maneuver through, and the side quests aren't unbearable to complete. It's definitely got a darker feel than the other Tales titles, and it starts off pretty heavy. Don't expect a happy-go-lucky feeling game. Gameplay: It's solid. You acquire different add ons from wearing different armor/weapons/etc. along the way. I ended up overlapping a lot (I spent some time just training characters), and while I would not consider this process my favorite, it's good. Controls and the battles are smooth, easily accessible for both the experienced player and the novice. You travel the world quite frequently, and I'm happy to say that maneuvering the battlefields is not as tedious as it is in Xillia (where during main and side quests, the maps can get generic) with reasonable monsters. All the while, you do have decent music to make a good soundtrack for a game. The best track to me is Velvet's Theme, but otherwise, nothing particular stands out to me. Should you play Zestiria first? A lot of people don't say it's necessary, especially since Tales of Zestiria the X is around, but I never watched it. You'll enjoy the game without playing Zestiria, but I think it's worth going through Zestiria first. The first game sets up for plotlines, settings and other developments that are introduced, but unfortunately never explained upon, leaving you confused. Berseria takes care of all of those questions, and makes allusions to things you see in Zestiria that are quite interesting. It makes certain details feel more meaningful (Eizen's character, for example) - so, overall, I would recommend playing Zestiria. It's going to leave an emotional impact, meaning that I can't easily replay the game - but the replay value is there, if you're interested in acquiring extra costumes and other things. Overall, if you are invested in playing a game with a good plot, worthwhile characters, and an accessible battle system to boot, this is a good title, and one of the best of the series.

Tales of Berseria pleasantly surprised me after the last few turds that were pushed out as "tales" games. I have been playing the tales series of games since Vespiria, which was excellent in many ways, and that game got me hooked. Unfortunately for me, it has been a steady decline from that peak of enjoyment. As I eagerly awaited the release of the next tales game hoping it was at least as good as Vespiria, I'd quickly discover that it was not. Graces F was a big letdown, but Xillia managed to redeem the series for me by being substantially better than Graces but not quite at the level of Vespiria. The sequel to Xillia followed by Zestiria were both duds in my view. I didn't much care for either of them...but finally, Berseria broke what was a sinking ship of a series. Story ---------------- The story of Berseria borrows heavily from the Holy Bible, specifically Revelations 20, and when you use the good book as your basis it's hard to tell a bad story. You play as Velvet, an edgelord with an axe to grind. The world around you has humans being afflicted with "daemonblight", thus turning into literal demon-like creatures. Velvet's brother-in-law, Arthur (King Arthur reference?), a very skilled swordsman and exorcist decides to make it his life mission to end the daemonblight and save the world...but in the process of doing so, gravely wrongs Velvet. To avoid spoilers, I'm not going to get into details. I believe that the casual heathen will miss most of the theocratic references, for example, the word "malak" is derived from "malakhim" which means angel in hebrew, and in the game there are many characters of the malak type. So it does make the game a lot more fulfilling if you understand it in the biblical context. At some points the game may seem to be bashing God by portraying the church and its agents as evil, but in truth, it's really making an accurate statement about how the catholic church used to pervert scripture while using a facade of righteousness to exploit people for power and profit. Characters ---------------- Characters and Story are equally important to a good RPG, and I would hold Berseria above Xillia and nearly as good as Vespiria with regards to characters. The cast of characters in Berseria were well developed, and none of them were exceptionally boring or annoying. Even the secondary characters that you meet along the way were all made part of the story without feeling like time-wasting sidetracks. Personally, I really thought Magilou was going to be the grating cosplay reject who tags along for no reason other than to irritate everyone with dumb commentary, but she turned out to be quite tolerable though never quite likable. Her commentary, while long winded at times, was usually truthful critiques and observations. Minus the goofy outfit they put her in, Magilou has that sublime sexiness that is very difficult to capture in a fictional character. On that note, all of the characters were aesthetically pleasing, even the bros. As you play the game, you will care about each characters' plight and be amused with their interactions amongst each other. None of them felt out of place, or like afterthoughts, and they all have an actual role to play in the main story. Gameplay ---------------- If this is your first tales game, congratulations, this is the first tales game where combat isn't infuriating at lower levels. For all previous games, the "stagger" mechanic meant that being hit by an enemy would leave you stunned for several seconds and open to attack. It wasn't until 2/3 of the way thru that you'd gain some decent resistance to this annoying 'feature'. Berseria departs from this, and while staggering still exists, it's not nearly as prominent. You never feel "weak" in the game, especially if playing as Velvet, because when you use her demon claw you become immune to most of the annoyances in the game including death. It may sound like this would make the game too easy, but it doesn't. Combat always felt very balanced. While in demon form, your HP delpetes until it reaches 1 and you cannot be healed, so if you use it at the wrong time you will get killed. Berseria uses a points-based resource system called "souls". I believe you start with a maximum of 5 souls, but at the start of a battle, you will only have 3 out of 5. You gain souls by performing weakpoint strikes, stunning enemies, or dodging/parrying attacks at the last second with quickstep. While the overall combat flow is fine when you have a full stack of souls, there are some instaces where you will only have one or two. Velvet requires at least 3 to use demon form, and activating demon form consumes one soul. As the game progressed, I found it increasingly annoying that I'd have to fish for souls by playing defensively before attacking - especially with fast moving enemies or flying enemies that are more difficult to hit. In addition to souls, you get a "blast gauge" which is another resource tied to your special attack. All characters have a special attack. Velvet gets demon form, Rokurou gets a parry/counter/power boost, Magilou gets "spell absorber" (which is quite OP against enemy casters in my opinion, but awesome nonetheless), etc. To use these abilities you need at least one BG point. BG points are also used to activate mystic artes, aka the power attacks that you a little while into the game. Overall, I feel like the game was designed to be played as Velvet. If you play as any of the others and allowed the AI to control velvet, she'd never use her strongest attacks and you'd open yourself up to frustration. I tried playing with all of them, and they all felt clunky compared to Velvet. Playing as a caster is insanely annoying because the enemy AI keeps pecking at you to interrupt your spell casts...and your melee abilities as a caster are a joke. I you need frustration in your life, try playing the game as one of the caster characters. Unfortunately you don't get much of an "iron stance" while casting to prevent this, and it's sorely needed. Lastly, there's a swap-in system that costs 1 BG point, deducted from the character you want to swap out. I do not like this system. If you swap out the char you are playing, you go from one "feel" to another, and as I said before, Velvet is the most refined for the human player while the other ones have a very awkward feel. I never used this feature except in cases where one char died or was better for the fight. Usually I would swap an AI character and not the one I control. I played the entire game on moderate difficulty, with some "hard" thrown into the mix to get some items. My team was around level 72 at the final fight, and I logged over 100 hours of play time - because I did all of the side quests and was in no particular rush. Sound / Music ---------------- The game had a limited soundtrack, but it was good music. They did make new original music for the game and it fit well with the on-screen action. Sound effects were nothing special - not good not bad, but fine. I am pleased to say that "mutton chop" is outlawed at all of the towns. Voice acting deserves special mention as it is top-notch, and I commend bandai for not skimping on hiring talented English voice actors to bring these characters to life. Bravo. Tales Scale ---------------- With 1 being the best, I'd rank the games in the series like this: 1) Vespiria 2) Berseria 3) Xillia 4) Xillia 2 5) Graces F 6) Zestiria That said, the first 3 are all sort of up there in terms of being good, 4 is meh, but 5 & 6 are bleh and distant from 4. Cons ---------------- There was nothing outright broken in this game, but I do not like the gearing system nor did I care for the limited selection of costumes. I did unlock most of the in-game costumes that are not DLC, and I will not pay extra money for costumes. Extra content in the form of episodes? Maybe I'll buy that, but for costumes? No...and I think taht allowing players to get new costumes as they progress will only make the game more fun. As for the gear like armor and weapons - it's all the same with basic stat variations. There's no clear gear progression, it's basically just a matter of equipping whatever drops and leaving it on until you max out the "master" skill. I'd much rather prefer a traditional approach to gearing and leveling, where items are found along the way and some are items of "epic" signifigance, and have some correlation to each stage of the game. One other con is the game world - there is none. You get a map in which you "quick travel" to previously discovered points. Towns are connected by corridors, but there is no world-map per se. It makes the game feel small because it's mostly a series of instances. The towns are also fairly small; there is not much exploring to be done in this game, but the dungeons are decent. Final Thoughts ---------------- If you like any kind of JRPGs with a mature storyline that requires more than a room temperature IQ to appreciate, give this one a try. It's great. I bought Nier Automata along with this and have to say that Berseria is leaps and bounds better than NA in all ways that matter...or it could just be that NA is so incredibly bad. Like all Tales games, they include quite a bit of things you can do AFTER the game's main story is completed as well as a new game+. Personally, I don't really see the point of gearing characters or farming gear after the final battle because...what's the point? It's a story-driven game and the story ends...but it's there if you want it. NG+ is not bad though, let's you play through again while retaining the stuff you acquired through the first play thru.

I'll be the first to admit, as I was putting this game into my PS4 and watching it load up, I wasn't expecting too much. To begin with, I had concerns regarding the female main character as I tend to find female leads poorly done in video games most often, and the last few Tales games released haven't been as good as they could have been. I was beginning to fear I was just being nostalgic and that no new Tales game would ever be as great as the PS2 era games (Abyss being my particular favorite) simply because I was being biased or something. Berseria proved me wrong. It proved me wrong on all counts. To start with, for me, a huge factor of my enjoyment of Tales games has always been the stories and characters. Starting with Graces, I haven't been too thrilled with them. They were often poorly plotted with odd pacing or a strange sense of disconnect and I certainly couldn't fall into the world or the characters. Not the case with Berseria. The story here is darker than any story so far in the series, being one of revenge and the characters you play are more aligned with "evil" than "good" and even the common theme of a group of rag-tag heroes banding together is deconstructed by your party members. Characters I thought I would hate in the beginning soon turned into ones I adored, and even now I can't really decide on a favorite. I can't say any of the Tales games have the most original of stories, but a good story is still a good story, and Berseria tells a good story. You don't need to have played any other Tales game to play this, but people who have played Zesteria will get a bit more enjoyment out of hte game as this one is a very distant prequel. The game doesn't take the time to point it out directly, but there are places and people that have a connection to Zesteria and finding the connections littered throughout the game was really neat and made me really feel the world was the same as the one found in Zesteria. Sometimes I would just stop and look at a place, thinking to myself, "I KNOW this place. I've been here before." As for the main character, as I said, I was reluctant to embrace the female lead. As a woman myself, I often find the unrealistic depictions of women in video games to be...irritating, let's just leave it at that. Velvet, Berseria's lead, certainly dresses like a typical video game woman, but she has a well rounded personality, set of beliefs, and goals. She grows through the story, and was truly believable. She is probably one of my favorite Tales characters of all time now, and this game itself is landing amongst my favorites as well. Other things to mention: the battle system is fun as usual. I never have complaints there. The music was nothing special, not bad per se, but nothing to write home about, and certainly not on the level of Vesperia's music. More of the main story is told in the skit format, there are both optional ones and mandatory ones. At first I was a little disgruntled I wasn't getting full cutscenes for the mandatory ones, since those are often actually relevant to the plot, but the skits are actually very well done and the Japanese VA was engaging enough I found myself not really minding. Especially when these skits pop up all the time, you get a lot of story through these skits, and I doubt as much could have been packed into the game if they weren't using the cutscenes.

I've been a fan of the series for many years now, and have played nearly all of them. Never has one of these games pulled me in so deeply as this one. Velvet, the main protagonist of the story is an extremely deep and well written character, with the right mix of attitude and badassitude. The rest of the characters are all extremely entertaining, and I often found myself laughing out loud at their banter. Many of them are also very deep and well developed. The story takes a lot of common fantasy and JRPG conventions and turns them completely upside down. Instead of playing as the legendary hero that will save the world, you play as the woman whom he wronged and is hunting him down to murder him. I was hooked on the story right from the beginning, and the characters just made the whole thing that much more entertaining. The graphics are so-so. They're not the super realistic stuff you see in other games these days, but they're still pretty good. These days it seems like developers are more concerned with making a game that looks pretty, rather than telling a good story, or making sure that the gameplay is actually enjoyable. I have always liked the Anime-ish style of the Tales series. It doesn't have to have mind-blowing graphics to be a good game. The gameplay is pretty smooth. The battle system is a lot of fun, and brings some new and very fun innovations to the typical Tales series battles. There's very little loading time anywhere in this game, which is always a plus. It loads off of the disc almost as quickly as if I' was playing the digital version off the HD. There are a few memorable tracks on the soundtrack, but for the most part you could substitute pretty much any track for any other track from any other Tales game and probably never know the difference. I rarely ever say this, and I really do mean RARELY, but the English voice cast of this game was amazing. They really brought the characters to life, and really seemed to put a lot of hard work and effort into their performances. Those are two things that hardly ever go into the English voice acting of JRPGs. If only other games were as well acted in English as this one. Plus, the less realistic, more Anime looking style of the graphics made for much better matching of the English to the character's mouth movements than you would see in a more realistically CG animated game. All of the voices fit the characters perfectly, the English translation is pretty decent, and the dialog is rarely ever awkward as sometimes happens with JRPGs. Cristina Valenzuela, who plays Velvet, gave an amazing performance and really made the game with the range of emotion she shows as the character. I have got to say that this game really blew me away. I've been playing games in this series for about 20 years now, and this one is by far the best to come out of it. I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the series, or anyone who enjoys a really well told story, with extremely entertaining characters, and very enjoyable gameplay. Any complaints I might have about it are completely blown away by what the game did well.

I am a long time Tales Fanboy. My bias is supreme in most cases. However, I can say without a doubt that Berseria is a breath of fresh air for what was a series beginning to stagnate. Tales of Zestiria was an unfortunately bland and shallow entry into the fabled series that is "Tales". Berseria breaks the chains of mediocrity set by its predecessor with an incredibly deep and intense story, fantastic characters, enchanting soundtrack and sound effects, and a simple, yet addicting combat system. First glances are deceiving. I was immediately upset by the fact that Namco decided to re-use the same monster skins from previous games, as well as use a dated graphic engine. This feeling of angst was so powerful that I ALMOST didn't order Berseria. This would've made it the first time in EIGHT Tales Games that I didn't order at or near launch. I decided, I am going to put my faith in Namco. They've rarely done me wrong. 37 minutes. It took Namco 37 minutes to completely eradicate any doubts I had about it. The lacking and dated graphics were quickly a non-factor as I was hit directly in the feels by what felt like an ice cold Louisville Slugger to my chest from the prologue. Both setting the tone for what was about to be a literal epic of a story, as well as developing an INTENSE desire to see the main character succeed in her mission, the plot is paced quickly and yet, smoothly. The musical score is beautiful, yet, dripping with melancholy at times. Setting the tone for the game and its harrowing moments with great efficiency. Bosses feel like bosses...sad moments make you sad...towns and cities feel and sound alive...and the music is the one piece that completely makes all of that work like a beautifully oiled machine. Namco...thank you from the bottom of my heart for returning the Tales series to the pinnacles of glory not seen since Tales of Destiny 1 and 2 from the PS1 days. For those reading this, whether now or later, this is a must play. Whether you are a seasoned Tales Vet like myself, or even a brand spanking new gamer, you want this story in your collection.

If you enjoy the combat of Tales games and like good story and character development, definitely consider playing Tales of Berseria. Velvet is probably one of the most interesting JRPG protagonist out there. She is an anti-villain on a quest for revenge and will cut down anyone in her way to achieve it. Her story alone is enough to warrant a play through of this game. There have been several times I cried or had my heart ache from the story. It is probably the best Tales story there is. For the non-story parts of the game, the combat is pretty good but easy and can feel button mashy at time. The world is pretty generic and nothing really stands out, but the characters and story were enough to make the game interesting to play through. Most of the music is pretty generic JRPG soundtracks with the exception of Velvet's Theme and the variations of it. Her theme coupled with Velvet's voice actress makes the cutscenes involving Velvet's struggle very enticing to watch. Besides Velvet, the other characters are all interesting as well with their own motivations. They keep the game from being too depressing by having light-hearted conversations in skits every now and then. However, skits can appear too frequently, sometimes having several of them back-to-back. They are interesting to watch if you enjoy the characters, or you can ignore or skip the skits entirely if it's not your thing. The other characters also receive good character development alongside Velvet, and the evolve from being a group of misfits into actually being somewhat of a team. In conclusion, play this game for Velvet and her story if nothing else. The story is definitely worth experiencing. The gameplay is decent but nothing mind blowing and not quite as good as Vesperia was. Velvet's Theme is amazing and the other soundtrack are decent but generic. The world is uninteresting but the characters are very interesting which balances it out. Even after I've beaten the game, I'm still shaken up by the story and its conclusion. My heart aches for Velvet.

I come to Berseria after JUST finishing Zestiria. I will say that Berseria is literally the "updated and polished" version of Zestiria when it comes to everything outside of character, and music. I find the Berseria cast to be more boring than Zestiria (took 20 hours before i actually started to find the skits remotely interesting), and the music in Berseria is...pure crap. Like, we're talking about classic Motoi Sakuraba forgettable yet irritating to have to deal with on repeat stuff. *sigh* The biggest pro for this game is the plot, but for me some of the more "omg this is so cool" moments actually comes from Berseria's placement as prequel of Zestiria. There are no "direct" links between the two games (aside from one character), but there are some revelations in this game that made me go "OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" when they revealed it. That, unfortunately will not translate to a lot of people who skipped Zestiria and went straight to Berseria. The overall main plot is very, very solid. It's one of the more unique and interesting jrpg story in years, and they managed to do it without requiring crazy amount of convoluted world lore (yes I'm looking at you FF13, Kingdom Hearts). You play as a group of anti-heros, but I find the characterizations and early reveals clearly puts the group in the "good guy" group despite them calling themselves daemons and "the bad guys". It really downplayed some of the potential character struggle that could've been developed. It would've been amazing if they could've made the PLAYER struggle just a little, to have to think a little harder than just what's on the surface, and to have a little existential crisis over the definition of what's really "good" or "evil." (When I think Antihero done right, I think Code Geass!) Buuuuuuuut they didn't, so what we got is a very solid plot, good story, but it's just that. A basic good story with well defined good guys and bad guys and not much in between. Now for characters, they're good but I couldn't connect with any of them. I think it took almost 20 hours before Eleanor joined the team (unless I got my time noted down wrong) and the group dynamic took off better but it still wasn't standout. The characters are perfectly likeable, just nothing special. No one, outside of Magilou, had a distinct enough personality. You can literally swap Eizen and Rokurou's dialogue and you wouldn't be able to tell who said what. Velvet is kinda flat "out for revenge" type of character with almost no personality to speak of (except for one story segment). The only character I ended up really liking was Magilou (her English VA is amazing btw). Unlike Zestiria where each character are incredibly distinct (from voice to personality), and when you put them together, you get hilarious skits that I often giggle over, you mainly get mundane dialogue from this cast instead. I think I kinda smirked at a few skits (Rokurou teasingly saying he wants to eat the sylphjays, or Eleanor's funny monologue thinking no one's listening in), but overall i actually started to just read the subtitles and fast skip over many of the scenes. I never did that w/ any of the long ass scenes or skits in Zestiria - but in Berseria, i was cutting off pretty much every scene because i read faster than they say it, and I didn't find any of the dialogue intersting enough to listen to the end. As for rest of the game, Berseria is definitely much better than Zestiria. They literally took the basics of Zestiria and polished it up. Combat is smoother, manual camera control, more skills, regaining souls/SG bar while moving. I still had a lot of lags though (playing on PS4, and no i'm not talking about the lags for making you feel like you're hitting things, i'm talking about actual 1second lags on screen usually right before a mystic arte, or sometimes when too much crap is happening i'd get lags so bad). Berseria seems to be much easier than ToZ as well - it feels like they took Simple mode from ToZ and plopped it into ToB as the "Normal" mode (Velvet is so OP). Overall it's still the same as before (button mashfest) just smoother and prettier button mashfest. The maps and dungeons are still as corridor-y as ToZ but it's prettier. The overworld map is still a pita to deal with. Still getting shitton of junk equip drops, but FF9 style equip skill learning was nice addition. The skit system is better than ToZ - no need to sleep at the in 5 times in a row to see all the skits - but there are fewer skits in ToB than ToZ. There are almost twice as many victory skits in ToZ compared to ToB - but ToB's skits are relatively uninteresting anyway so i guess it didn't matter much. Monsters no longer follow you literally across the map, thank god. Overall I find the pacing of cut scenes is better than ToZ - but it could also be because there are just less skits and cutscenes? No more having to backtrack for chests because you didn't have the right key! The Geoboard thing is awesome way to allow faster travel and backtracking w/o having to fight everything - and just as well because the one thing in ToB that went backwards instead of forward is the savepoint fast travel - it's gone. Now you can only warp to outside of towns, or if you're inside a dungeon, warp outside the dungeon. This means for some of the sidequests, you literally have to run through 3-4 maps to just get to the sidequest dungeon. For that reason, highly suggest leave all the sidequests to after you get the Geoboard. ToB also drastically simplified (ie removed) the map skills, so now you just press X in front of boulders and torches to light 'em, which sucks since i enjoyed the quirk that was map skills. There are basically no puzzle element to the ToB dungeons. But for all the improvements - if you get bored of the combat in ToZ after half an hour in a dungeon, you'll get bored here just the same. The smoother combat really doesn't take away that it's a very repetitive system, and the sheer number of mobs that are everywhere you go sometimes really forces your hand. ToB is the same game as ToZ, just smoother. Oh, and this game is even more linear than Zestiria, if that's possible. This is almost the same level of linearity as FF13 - you can't go anywhere 80% of the time, and there are very few sidequests in this game. There is one full set of sidequest per character (and none of them are very long), and only like 2-3 bonus dungeons. Very often you'll find that your ship gets locked out of every location, because it dictates that you must do the next set of story dungeons first before you can revisit a prior town. I remember finding ToZ to be pretty linear because it would block off exits to other maps (I played Final Fantasy XV right before ToZ so that was a huge shocker), but there were a good number of ruins/bonus dungeons scattered on each map. There are almost none in ToB (I can only remember 2 bonus dungeons before beating the game, and i guess 1-2 dungeons after beating the game?). Also, ToB is FULL of reuse assets from ToZ. All the monsters are reskinned stuff, no new designs except for bosses, and as usual, every new zone is just another set of reskinned same old same old. Considering I literally just put down ToZ, seeing the same stuff again definitely irked me. According to my friend, ToB had only a 1 year development time so I guess that's why there were a lot of cut corners. I'm okay with linearity (I loved FF13 afterall), but just a warning/heads up. It felt a bit like a culture shock after how so many games have gone path of being more open in the recent years. Overall this is really solid game, but it doesn't really do anything new or special - in fact in hindsight it felt a bit like I played an interactive anime. It's a typical "play and forget" JRPG. The highest points for me are one story segment (the big reveal), and all the references to ToZ.

I'm about 5 hours in and so far I'm in love: I wasn't sure what to expect as this is a jrpg but I'm enjoying it. The writing is witty and full of feeling. The game talks a lot and sometimes i just want to battle but I don't want to miss any key moments of the story so I watch everything. I think they found a good balance though. I am a huge fan of anime so it wasn't hard for me to get into this game but if you only care about the combat and are not interested in story then this might not be the game for you. The game has some depth as far as character building. I haven't done this yet but I'm pretty sure you can break down weapons and put there affects into a new one. Just speculation however (when you start the game there are 2 menus that are blank, one of them was cooking and I'm pretty sure that the other will be item crafting). The combo system is a lot of fun but if you are good at dark souls then reading the telegraphed attacks in this game will be trivial. so I suggest cranking up the difficulty (wich u can do at any time) and enjoying the difficulty, because one thing I cannot stand is a hack and slash where all you do is button mash. Because that's kind of how you attack in this game. There is no pause to do say a different arte (as the game would call it). The combos are linear meaning u just press one button after another. This is okay becuase you get to set up your combo sets, even during a battle so you are always prepared. I give the game a 5/5 or 9/10. The game works for me though with the deep story and fun combat. (Not like in final fantasy when you randomly get thrown in to battle and it's just like omg I just want to get from point a to b lol. I find myself looking for daemons in tales).

outstanding jrpg wasnt expecting anything as i never played a tales game before but this seem a great entry point. at first when i saw teh sleepy village and peaceful setting i was like typical jrpg fair again i guess but then suddenly there were daemons werewolves bloodmoons and metal guitar riffs and i was hooked in! wonderful party members and great voice cast give it a look!

Berseria is basically a story about Velvet's (main character) revenge. Velvet's brother in law takes Velvet and her brother in when their older sister dies and they become family for years. All Velvet knows is one night the brother in law murders her brother and has no idea why. Her goal is to find her brother in law and kill him for her brother's murder. You might not notice it at first but Berseria takes place in the same world as Tales of Zestiria, just 1000 years before. Personally I hated Zestiria. The story was really poorly written with lots of plotholes and unresolved story but Berseria is definitely worth playing. The story in Berseria is more developed and has a darker theme to it. It was interesting to see that shepherds/abbey in Zestiria were treated like heros with Seraphim/malakim as companions but it looks like that wasn't the case 1000 years ago in Berseria. The Malakim/seraphim were basically enslaved by shepherds to do whatever work. It's interesting how they could forget this in just 1000 years. While I disliked Zestiria, I'm glad I played through it because I can see all the interesting connections it has with Berseria. Remember how Edna's (Zestiria) brother gave in to the malevolence and became a dragon? Well in Berseria, he's still a Malakim/Seraph and hasn't transformed yet. The gameplay itself between the two games are pretty much the same. It looks the first malakim that you have join your party temporairly before she dies even has the same moveset as Lailah from Zestiria. It is the same battle system so if you're familiar with Zestiria, you'll have no problem with Berseria. Item customization system is also very similar. Like with tales games, there are also plenty of side quests. This one includes collecting and freeing Katz to get to Katzworld. Unlocking them will also unlock costume items for character customization.

While faithful to the typical 'tales of' series, this one contains several welcome changes. Without giving too much away, the story line is also a little surprising, and steps outside the zone of previous renditions. Definitely worth picking up!

Neste jogo, além da excelente jogabilidade e enredo, a Bandai Namco acertou em cheio ao lançá-lo com legendas em português.

Excelente juego. A pesar de ser un RPG lo considero bastante accesible a aquellos que no le hayan entrado al género aún, pues su combate es en tiempo real tirando a un estilo de un Hack and Slash muy sencillo. La historia a pesar de no ser revolucionaria es contada de una excelente manera con giros que realmente me hicieron sorprenderme y emocionarme. Los personajes cargan muy bien con la narrativa, sobretodo los secundarios, aunque la protagonista es un personaje plano, las interacciones con sus compañeros, sus comentarios y chistes logran que realmente pongas atención a cada charla que haya a lo largo de la aventura... hay muchas, MUCHAS charlas y aún así no se sienten pesadas, eso habla muy bien de la escritura de guión. El gran pecado del juego es lo técnico, ya en su momento se veía como un juego viejo, así que las texturas, gráficas, escenarios pecan de simplistas y poco detallados, aún así la dirección de arte le da una gran ayuda a este apartado y con el tiempo de juego llegas a acostumbrarte a esas graficas de inicio de PS3. EN POCAS PALABRAS: Un juego excelente, divertido, gracioso, entretenido y fácil de jugar y entender, con una historia y personajes grandiosos que hacen que las horas pasen volando. Llevo casi 60 horas de juego y aún no me ha aburrido. Simplemente RECOMENDADO.