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Game Title: Tales of Berseria
Platform: PlayStation 4
Developer: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Genre: Role Playing
Age Rating: PEGI: 16+
Release Date: 27th January 2017
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Game Score: 9.3/10
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Summery:
Tales of Berseria's dark tone and improvements makes this newest entry the best in the series since Tales of Vesperia.
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“Why is it that birds fly?” Well here is my answer to the recurring question that is heard in Bandai Namco's newest entry in their long running RPG series. As a long time fan of the series I had extensive hype for the game ever since it's announcement during the Tales Series 20th Anniversary stream. After playing through this game I can proudly say that Tales of Berseria is without a doubt not only one of the best Tales of games I played but also it's one of the best J-RPGs to come out this year.
So Tales of Berseria came out originally in Japan last year for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 and this year we English speaking gamers we finally see this game released for the PlayStation 4 and PC but with no PlayStation 3 release in English. It aims to not only improve on the issues people had with the previous game Tales of Zestiria but also deliver a emotional dark toned storyline with plenty of returning Tales game features that the more recent entries lacked.
Emotion and also Reason are the key words to describe the storyline in Tales of Berseria. Taking place in a distant timeline before the events in Tales of Zestiria the game follows a solo female protagonist named Velvet Crowe which is a first in the Tales Series unless you count Milla Maxwell from Tales of Xillia inwhich the choice was left to the player. In the beginning her village of Aball becomes attacked by Demonblight which turns everybody into daemons and her young brother gets killed by the game's main antagonist Artorius Collbrande which causes her to gain the demon claw on her left hand and her happy life destroyed forever. Velvet becomes a daemon known as a Therion and spends 3 years of her life in prison feasting on the lives of demons before eventually escaping from prison with the sole purpose getting revenge on Artorius. Velvet ends up facing against a group of blessed warriors called the Exorcists who defend and protect the people from daemons all through the world alongside siding with a group of pirates and also other characters which share her cause. Every character in the game is fantastic and have strong motivations and importantly they are engaging and believable, both the protagonists and antagonists as well. Velvet once lead a happy life before her brother's death turned her life upside down. Cristina Vee does a fantastic job in the English Dub of capturing the emotional rage and sadness that Velvet suffers through all through the game and I can never get tired of hearing her rage out at several parts of the game. It makes Velvet a strong a well developed female J-RPG character unlike the terrible excuse of a leading female character Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII. Velvet shows both emotion and reason for her anger and her desperate vows for revenge against the man who killed her brother and will do anything in her fight against the Exorcists. She does act strict for the party members sometimes but she still has her soft side and can still smile even in the worst of times. A lot of fans tend to complain about her main outfit being very revealing but honestly I don't mind it all that much and it does make sense considering the way her life is now portrayed. Her starting outfit becomes worn and torn out after 3 years of being locked up in her prison cell devouring daemons and has to make a quick outfit which characterises her now torn life well. It make sense also because Velvet is not your clear cut good guy and she has that anti-hero thing going on which is why she is after Artorius and the game makes it perfectly clear that she will do anything to get at Artourius killing anyone who dares to stop her. The other characters in the game are really strongly developed as well. You got Laphicet a young malik boy who starts out emotionless as well as believing in being used as a tool before realizing that there is more to just being alive and the will in himself and others, Rokoru is a samurai warrior who is trained in the Rongetsu style and uses two short swords instead of his big sword that he carries with him, There's Magilou a magical witch who strangely wears books for a skirt and has that foolish carefree attitude which makes her hilarious and her voice played by Erica Lindbeck does a fantastic job of portraying that kind of attitude that Magilou unleashes making her the most comical party member in the game. There is also Eleanor a former exorcist who believes in the peaceful and emotional sides of people as well as trying to side against the exorcists who are plotting deeds which end up threatening the lives of other people and malikim alike and lastly there is Eizen which is a familiar name if you played Tales of Zestiria. Eizen lives as a pirate who travels the seas as he sees fit while also bearing the curse which always puts himself and everyone else in danger. Artorius the main antagonist of the game vows to bind people to reason and rob people of their free will in order to cleanse the world of people's emotions with the strong will to do what must be done. He does this by sacrificing the lives of malikim alike and also sacrificing Velvet's younger brother making him a excellent villain. The other NPCs and villain characters are also really great and are portrayed really well especially the people who ended up being turned into daemons. Tales of Berseria also goes out with a Pirate theme considering the way the ships are designed and how some of the NPC characters are dressed and I think the game really uses this setting very well. Tales of must have had some kind of strong child character development to fill because usually child characters in this genre are the mature types who want to try and act as tough as all the regular adult characters. There is Velvet's younger brother who in the game's most infamous death scene gets killed off by Artorius in which in the English the scene was altered to Artorius using a magical ritual spell to kill him instead of stabbing him with his sword in the Japanese original scene. There is a young girl named Kamanona who becomes a Therion who cries for her deceased mother and does distinctly like how a regular child would act and behave. Laphicet the young malik boy might just end up being one of the best child characters and one of my favourites in the game but in fact he might just be the best child character in the entire franchise. He starts out being just a number and as an enemy being nothing more then a tool for the exorcists before Velvet kicks him in the face when he tried to blow himself up alongwith with Velvet and co, threatens to devour him if he didn't use his arte to attack the exorcist he was under control by and lastly kidnap him. After spending a certain amount of time Velvet and the young boy start to open up to each other and she decides to actually name the young boy after her deceased brother. The cutscenes where Velvet and Laphicet are truly the most heartwarming and emotional moments in the game including the one scene where I actually shed a tear and I don't want to spoil anything more then what I just said.
Like some other entries in the series Tales of Berseria is a very story driven game and thankfully the game's English dub voice acting is really good during the cutscenes and skit sequences even if it has a few mistakes with the subtitles and voice track accuracy and in one scene where some of the voices don't play for some reason. Like Tales of Zestiria and the PS3 port of Tales of Symphonia there is the option of playing the game with the English voice tracks or with the original Japanese dub if you are a purist.
The game's frequent cinematics are either told in game, in a quick anime cutscene or through a skit sequence where each of the game's characters share idol chats or share their thoughts on the game's events. The new skit portraits that the game uses are really cool cause they now give a close shot of a character's emotion as well as showing the full body portraits like in Graces and Zestiria. The skits do show more emotion to the character's situation and a lot of the skits are simply outright hilarious, even more funnier then the skits in Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World, Tales of Xillia and Tales of Graces. Like in previous entries you can expect plenty of sexual jokes, few loose puns here and there, funny nicknames and plenty of characters arguing and swearing at each other. Overall Tales of Berseria has a very fantastic storyline, it's like a mix of Pirates of the Caribbean and One Piece while it does it's own thing really well.
Of course Tales of games main important aspect is the gameplay and Tales of Berseria does a few new things while sticking to it's tried and true formula that series veterans should be very accustomed to. You'll go through fields, towns and dungeon areas exploring around for treasure and random loot whilst making your way through area to area as you follow where the game tells you to go. You could be in a forest area and then you'll be exploring around dark filled caves, mountain paths, a beach area and an Ice covered landscape that has a lava filled volcano next to it. Fields and dungeons will have plenty of random encounters to fight which are triggered when you touch them on the map. Dungeons will have a series of different puzzles which aren't too difficult to figure out and at the end of each dungeon you have a boss encounter to fight. It's pretty standard stuff for the franchise but Berseria makes a few returning features such as cooking and playing some minigames as well as adding a method of transportation which was missing from recent games. You still can get the option to instantly warp to another location with a click of a button using the Inoph Bottles which is purchased in stores which helps cut down on backtracing but you have to buy more to keep using them and also you have to have visited the area once in the game to be able to warp there. Another thing about using it is that there will be times where you can't warp for plot related reasons and will have to wait till the story event is completed to be able to warp again. You will be spending the majority of the game walking but about halfway through the game you'll get access to the Geoboard which is a magical board which allows you to go through places faster, only catch to using it is that you need to collect Geo spheres in which there is one of those in each area to be able to use it. It is very useful to going through the game faster but it takes time to get used to the controls and you don't get it till nearly as I said half way through the game. Tales of Berseria has a vast number of minigames which range from Chamballoon 2 which is a series of trials where you use attacks to pop all the balloons in the fastest time possible, there's Slash Beat where you deal as much damage as possible with any character in order to reach a high score and also a fishing game which isn't as fun as the fishing minigame in Final Fantasy XV. There is also a card game which houses dozens of references to other Tales of titles, a serving minigame where you got to serve food to greedy and rude customers (no seriously) and also a face matching minigame. The Chamballoon and Slash Beat minigames are the most enjoyable and offer the best opportunities to grind for Tales Coins which is what you earn for completing a minigame. Tales Coins can be spent on either materials or some unlockable costumes. Some of the minigames can be rather difficult as the controls with the Geoboard take time to learn and also some of them aren't as well designed as the others but they are not worth complaining about cause they offer a brief relaxing time from journeying around the world.
There is another minigame where you set out a scout ship to hunt out various treasure that you otherwise can't find in the main game such as other outfits, recipes and other attachment as well as unlocking new destinations that the scout ship can go to. It also unlocks some treasure which houses a ton of references to other Tales of games including all the ones we got an English release of. This minigame is aright but you barely do much interactivity with it which kind of makes this addition rather a hit and miss.
Tales of Berseria also sees the return of cooking where you can cook up meals for your party and restore their health. This is very handy considering if you are fighting a lot of tough battles this helps save the recovery items for combat use. Each character has their own cooking skills and various effects such as one character can reduce fatigue percentage and increase defense when the meal becomes active in combat for instance and each character can level up their cooking skills which makes this feature rather useful and enjoyable.
Obviously the main draw behind every Tales of game that gets released is the combat and Tales of Berseria makes a lot of improvements and changes from the previous game Tales of Zestiria. Now for those who never have played a Tales of game before the combat takes place in real time where up to 4 characters engage in combat against random encounters. Each of the characters has their own line up of Artes which you can use against enemies in order to perform powerful combos. Tales of Berseria's combat allows you to freely roam around the battle arena like in Tales of Zestiria but the change is that there is no free roaming button to do that as it is now fully implemented onto the left analog stick allowing you for complete free movement without needing to unlock it. Another change is the way you can now equip Artes, instead of having of having one button for artes and assigning artes to different directions on the analog stick the game allows to assign a set of artes on the four face buttons on the PS4 controller and what's cool is that each arte can also be assigned in 4 different stages. What that means is that you can start the combo with the first arte with one button and follow it up with another assigned arte on that button also or follow it up with a different button that has an arte assigned to it to continue the combo and vise versa. It allows you to assign up to 16 artes to the controller through different stages which allows you to unleash combos as you see fit. Each arte you use drains a portion of the Soul Gauge and once it is empty your next attack will be blocked which staggers you for a few seconds. Souls becomes an important aspect of the game's combat because the game uses a new system where you can increase your initial souls up to it's max capacity with it's strength and weakness system. If you strike an enemy's weakness, get a critical hit or unleash a status effect on an enemy you'll gain a soul point but if an enemy gets the drop on you or your other party members with the methods above they'll take a soul from a character. This is not a problem because thankfully you'll always have one soul in reserve and can't lose it no matter what and also the system compensates for this allowing you a opportunity to gain your character's souls back. You can also find souls in the battle arena which can help you retaliate back at the enemy if your party is in trouble. Guarding is now assigned to L1 and you can quickly tilt the analog stick at the right time to dodge an enemy attack like in Graces and Zestiria which works really well and becomes helpful during a lot of tough fights. Each character has their own Mystic Artes which can destroy most weak enemies instantly and each have their own requirements to activating them. A new feature added is that every character has a Break Soul attack which is activated with the R2 button and each character has their own powerful Break Soul attack which can deal massive damage, heal yourself which can help save on recovery items and if lucky can get additional souls which can help turn the tide of battle. Velvet's break soul attack allows her to get out her claw and deal massive damage, Laphicet's allow him to pull off a temporally barrier which protects the party and Magilou's allow her to absorb enemy spells and use it against them. Each character's Break Soul is really useful and you'll find yourself relaying on it against many of the tough enemies. Each character's Arte is categorized in either Hidden, Martial and Malik Artes which are either melee or magical artes which work on a rock paper scissors style system. What that means is that each Arte a character uses has a certain level of effectiveness against certain type of enemy, some enemies are weak to a certain magical element but resistant to others, some enemies are weak to Hidden Artes or some might be weak to Martial Artes so it's important to keep an eye out and analyse the weaknesses of enemies. This is because every single enemy has their own behaviour pattern and weaknesses that you need to consider when fighting because you can't expect to win every battle just be mindlessly button mashing and using reckless tactics. Reckless tactics will only get you through the first couple of bosses where trying those tactics at later portions will likely get you killed. Many of the later bosses use break techniques to break out of your combos and counter attack your party members doing massive damage plus you have to be careful of their Mystic Artes as well otherwise your party will be wiped out. Speaking of being that you can now swap out a party member at any time during battle which costs 1 BG to use which can be replenished by using Break Soul attacks, switching can also be helpful if party members are almost about to be killed and if a character is on standby they can regain their lost health points while also allowing for more strategic flexibility. You can also set the AI behaviour in the strategy menu as well as allowing yourself to take control of other characters which like before have their own fighting style and attacks, you can use recovery items if anyone is about to die and if the battle is getting out of hand you can always flee from a fight except for the boss encounters. The game makes an improvement over the item usage, while you still need to be cured of status effects like in Zestiria and Graces in order to heal HP but remember the petrify complaint in Tales of Zestiria? Well the developers fixed that by having Panacea Bottles all status effects and that includes petrification and curse. Another thing about the status effect system is that some of the character's healing artes can also cure status effects which is rather helpful, that is if you can keep the enemies off the caster's back. Like all other Tales of games the combat is very fast paced, the party members are capable of holding their own against enemies, the various artes are impactful and enjoyable to use even the Mystic Artes and lastly the bosses are challenging and enjoyable to fight.
Tales of Berseria uses the equipment system from Tales of Zestiria except with a change. Firstly there is several pieces of equipment which increases 2 of any stats and also offer combat skills when equipped. These can be increased stats, resistances to other elements, effectiveness to certain enemies and so on. What is cool though is that each weapon and type of armour you equip has a skill that you can learn from it just like in Tales of Vesperia. You can upgrade your character's equipment with upgrade materials that are found around the world and each equipment can be upgraded up to level 10 when you unlock the requirements. This is a good system considering there is plenty of depth in trying to equip the right equipment for the job but however it does have it's issues. One thing is that because you want to learn the skills from each kind of equipment and also that you want to equip the right weapons and armour so that your character's stats are equal you are going to be spending a lot of time in the menu figuring out what to use and it can be a bit of headache. Also because of the new upgrading system you want to spend time upgrading the right pieces of equipment that you are using otherwise you are just going to be wasting important materials. You can use the dismantling feature to gain some of the materials from useless equipment which does help quite a bit on the grinding of materials but you will spend quite a bit of time grinding for the other materials either in battles or by playing the various minigames for Tales Coins.
You also have a list of different titles for each of the characters that you can unlock which can improve each of the character's stats or improve their combat abilities and skills. As always like in previous titles these are are unlocked by fulfilling various conditions in battle or by doing other stuff in towns. You can also increase the title levels which improve the effects. These requirements involve using Switch Blasts, entering battles playing as other characters, attacking enemy weaknesses and so on and it helps to give your characters better skills to make them more effective in combat.
It's otherwise the only thing I do have against Tales of Berseria but as long as you find the various stat increasing herbs which permanently increase a character's stats and also equip the right pieces of equipment then you'll won't have trouble with the combat in Tales of Berseria. In terms of other issues I do not think I can actually think of that is worth complaining about, it manages to improve on the issues that Zestiria had and the combat is just as enjoyable as other games. I know there is going to be a certain amount of players and critics complaining about the game's graphics. Now let's be reasonable about this, this game was originally designed around the PlayStation 3's hardware as a primary concern with the PS4 and PC as ports but even so Tales of Berseria actually looks really impressive. You can see plenty of tree bushes and leaves and pieces of grass waving back and forth and the dungeons blow off some pieces of dust. The attack artes, character and monster designs and animations are really well designed and the weather effects just look stunning. My favourite area in the whole game is Maclir Beach which has water reflecting and waves animating and the sun shining which are all incredible details put in. I also like that character's show their weapons in the equipment screen as well which is also a neat touch. The town areas are also well designed and has plenty of people getting on with their lives and some of the people can uphold a conversation with the main characters which are rather and sometimes humorous to watch. I think the biggest improvement is that the game runs at a smooth 60 FPS without taking much of a dip in performance whenever you are exploring or entering battles which is sweet and all but you can tell the game engine is in need of an upgrade. It runs on the same graphics engine as Tales of Xillia and you can see plenty of ageing details like pieces of a character model clipping through their body especially with some of the funny attachments you can equip to a character and you are going to see a fair share of pop in but thankfully not for the various NPCs though. Then there is the various DLC outfits which range of the stable swimwear, school wear and cameo outfits which do look great alongside the free DLC skits which are also funny to watch as well.
Tales of Berseria's soundtrack composed by Motoi Sakabura is rather enjoyable to listen too and also fits the serious tone and mood of the game with the battles obviously being the highlights and this game really has some excellent battle tracks. My favourites being the battle theme that plays in the beginning and also the one that plays in the cameo battle and also the track that plays in the final dungeon.
Overall Tales of Berseria does lot of things to improve on the issues the other games have had in order to refine the experience while also doing actually what the series was known for. It's not like Final Hallway XIII or Final Roadtrip XV or whatever the franchise now decides to call itself where everything just changes and does it's mechanics all wrong. Tales of does what it does best and it knows how it can improve with the next instalment although it is clear the equipment managing isn't great and the graphics engine is going to need an overhaul, thankfully this is the last Tales of instalment to hit the PlayStation 3 so hopefully we can expect a and revised graphics engine for the next instalment. Tales of Berseria has a fantastic dark toned story with brilliant characters, there are dozens of minigames alongside multiple sidequests and the list of trophies you can earn. Completing the game will take 100 or so hours with the amount of content that is on other but you can get more game time playing it on New Game Plus with additional bonuses and playing it on the harder difficulties. If you haven't played a Tales of game before then seriously this game will surely be able to convince you to give the series a chance. Tales of Berseria is an essential purchase or those who enjoyed other titles in the franchise but really wanted to see more from it and for those who have a PS4 and love J-RPGs. The Tales of Series barely gets enough support from it's fans especially in the west and it is a shame that we English speaking gamers do not get the Tales of treatment the same way we get treated with Final Fantasy. As a Tales of fan and also as a gamer who was very disappointed with Final Fantasy XV Tales of Berseria is the J-RPG that lived up to the hype that it promised since it's trailer showings unlike the 10 year wait we hoped for FFXV. Tales of Berseria is a superior entry in the series and as far as I am concerned it's the best entry in the long running franchise since Tales of Vesperia.
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The Good Points:
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1. Fantastic dark toned storyline and characters
2. Dozens of minigames and sidequests to enjoy
3. Excellent combat system with improved camera and mechanics
4. Solid presentation and smooth gameplay performance
5. Skits that are both funny and emotional to watch
The Bad Points:
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1. Equipment managing can be a little difficult
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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