Game Review: Tales Of Berseria
Fast-forwarding to this winter 2018, I saw tales of Berseria with a 50% off and had around a 100$ Canadian Dollars in my Steam account from gift cards. I, however, didn’t play it on the spot as I wanted to play Enderal: Forgotten Stories first. When I finished with it I went to Tales of Berseria around 2 months ago. And put around 65 hours in the game before finishing it, so it’s high time for a review.
I also haven’t made a post in forever!
So I took the chance and bought it. I didn’t play any Tales games before this one so I might be biased but I really loved that game, let’s get to the review now!
SUMMARY
The game is about Velvet Crowe and her band of misfits in a quest for revenge for the death of her younger brother 3 years priors. Along the way, she will meet a samurai in a quest for strength a witch who’s following for absolutely no reason or is she now? A pirate looking for his captain, a Exorcist looking to help humankind and a young child who looks just like her dead brother, along the way will be tears and laughter all to answer one question “Why does the birds flies?” and to be fair after finishing the game I’m not quite sure which answer was the good one, or was there any answer that was good enough for me?
CHARACTERS
The cast was without being groundbreaking unique, is quite a band of misfits. We have our main character Velvet Crowe a human girl turn demon after the death of her younger brother and searching for the “saviour” of humanity to avenge his death.
Next, is the young samurai turned demon which was freed by our heroine Rokurou Rangetsu who join Velvet group in order to pay back his debt and defeat his older brother as a swordsman.
The mysterious witch and fun relief character of the cast Magilou Mayvin, which can’t stop poking fun at anyone and everything she meets. But perhaps there's more then just she looks… or not.
Then we have Laphicet, a young Malak without free will that Velvet named after her younger brother after defeating his master which will grow along with the story and his new companions.
The lawless first mate of the Alfreid pirates then joins our merry band looking for clues to find his lost captain. But we'd be lucky if death doesn’t take anyone approaching the cursed reaper for everyone that gets near him might be affected by his curse.
And Finally Eleanor Hume the young exorcist looking to cure the world of the blight of demons which will follow the ground against her will after being defeated by Velvet and her group.
STORY
The story is set 800 years before tales of Zestiria and centred around the first Lord of Calamity to be, Velvet Crowe, in her quest of revenge for her dead brother. Along the way, she met colourful and funny characters. The story is about hero and villains but who’s who exactly, the more you go forward in the game and the more the abbey looks like bad guys. Same for Velvet and company outside of Eleanor and Laphicet the rest of the crew have no pity for anyone baring their fangs at them. But in the end, they’re not villain either.
To story “villain” is the saviour of humanity but in the end, he only wants to make a world free of pain. The cost of this wish made me rethink a lot of JRPG stereotype. In the end, I don’t think there was any hero or villain in this story just selfish humans that wanted to live. It’s more of a story about finding the courage to live being yourself and free to choose your path.
I don’t want to give a numerical rating but I will give a very profound and emotionally wild ride rating to this story. I mean that in a good way of course, for a story that can convey it’s feeling to their players is a story worth it in my eyes. And yes that ending made me cried up to the end of the generic. Damn, be those feelings...
In the end, I would have loved to continue my journey along with those misfits, but as each thing have an end. A new one begins...
COMBAT
understand that this game was initially released for PlayStation 3 but I must say that was a great waste of potential to me. The combat feels like a weird mix between an action combat game and a turn by turn game. You can move a character around a certain area then attack, block or dodge. But it really felt like one of the weakest point of the game. The artes are limitations and you must stop attacking to regenerate them otherwise you will easily get blocked but the enemies. The dodge mechanic felt like distance was broken and you had more chance to just move out the way than to dodge an attack. Enemies would keep blocking sometime and a fight would take literals minutes to get done with as they’re absorbing every hit.
Alright, it was clunky, but it was still quite fun to mix and match combos to affect enemies in a different way and played a lot like an action game rather than an RPG. I'm looking forward to their next game as I saw the trailer a few days ago and they seemed to have reworked the combat system for the best.
SYSTEMS
Alright, I really think it’s quite expected for a JRPG but they managed to make a grinding that was a no use during all the game, even more, 2 of them mains mechanics of the game were utterly useless. At least to me! Cooking was dealt with automatically you could decide who cooks what for the battles but I just ended making the first recipe we got for the entirety of the game. Then there were the expeditions were you were sending the crew to collect components all over the world which could be described as a cellphone game… You sent them they came back 30 minutes later and you sent them again… That was all there as to it.
Then there is the upgrade and scrapping system, which as a typical JRPG require grinding! You would upgrade gear and scrap if for components to upgrade other gear you can pretty much see where this is going. Fortunately, there are areas in the game which gives a lot of gear when farming them with of course XP. The system as a whole isn’t bad but near the end of the game gear can upgrade up to +9 and it was really too much of a pain for me to grind so I ended up upgrading what I could and not even bother grinding. I expect if you want to do the hardest modes of the game this is a no go! The last fight is quite hard even on normal so I don’t want to see in other difficulties.
WORLD
The world is a weird feeling, if I’m talking exploration wise most zones are blocked by default and you have to go forward for the story to get to new zones and dungeons. Dungeons are filled to the brink with enemies and can take literals hours to get through without any farming.
During exploration mode, you are travelling the world but you can only run around and interact with a few items and so on. There’s a lot of backtracking going back to the same zone a dozen of time but in the end, I didn’t hate it. I just wish we could jump...
I wish they would have made the combat and exploration on the same plane though as it was quite annoying that the next mobs sometimes disappear because you finished battle directly on them so you have to get away for them to reappear.
Later in the game, you also get an overboard which made travelling much easier as you can go twice as fast with it. And pummels low levels enemies that you don’t want to fight.
THE VERDICT
I might bash it a lot, but I really loved the game and think you who’s reading those line should give it a go if you haven’t this game takes around 60 hours to get through and you will be one for quite a ride.
I tried my best not to spoil the main plots points of the game. The systems as I said to feel quite clunky but they are not by any means bad. They feel weird by 2019 and even 1015 standard but the main point of this game is the story and the lessons it tries to pass.
On that ending note a question for you readers why do you think birds fly? I think I understand a lot better the hidden messages of this game but still is there really an absolute answer to this question?
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