LogFAQs > #899677314

37. Tales of Berseria
Original Release: 2017
Developer: Namco Bandai
Platform: PS4

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Tales of Berseria was a massive improvement over the last few Tales titles but it still has the stench of that plagued those games. Still, it's much, much better. This is true when talking about the story and the characters, as it seems to avoid many of the regular cliches and checkboxes that seem present in the franchise.

Seriously, the story is good and is a deconstruction of the hero vs. villain theme in virtually every JRPG. You are the villains. You're a band of misfits and monsters who are looked down upon by society while the game's antagonists are white-clad, priestly, heroic knights. In the first few hours, Velvet decides that the best way to get a ship is to start a fire in a town as a distraction so she can sneak by a bunch of holy priest guys (exorcists), beat them up along with their leader and steal a ship. That's not a very heroic thing to do. It's a great contrast to Sorey's "do gooder" and "everyone must be saved and purified" mantra from Zestiria. I loved how this game did this. The story stays solid throughout, without selling out: there's a constant theme of revenge in the game and the game doesn't cop out with "well we have to join forces to take on a bigger threat" either.

The characters also range from tolerable to really, really good. Actually, by the end, with the exception of maybe Laphicet, all the characters are likeable and memorable. I loved Eizen and Rokurou in particular, and Eleanor was cute. Even Magilou, who spends the majority of the game being annoyed, has a damn good reason for being there. Keep in mind that no Tales game other than Vesperia had a cast where every character was likeable at least in my opinion.

Gameplay wise, I wasn't too thrilled. The battle system is basically mash mash mash. Par for the course for Tales, but here, we don't have TP so it's just mash mash mash until you build up enough soul points and then unleash your soul blast. The battlefield was too chaotic. Boss fights are mostly pretty good, though, especially when facing the villains.

There's a weird base-building mechanic about halfway through the game which had a ton of potential but unfortunately was underutilized. The base is a shithole that never improves (it used to be a dungeon prior to that) and at one point you escape and never come back. Some story beats were strange near the end of the game, falling back into typical anime/JRPG tropes with loss of free will and blah blah blah.

I also have to mention the weird equipment system which allows you to learn skills after being armed with that piece of equipment enough times in battle, ala FFIX. But these skills absolutely suck or are minimal (who cares about 0.8 extra resistance to fire) and I didn't care enough to learn how this thing actually works.

But overall, this game never at any point disappointed me. It's just a massive step in the right direction, and hopefully we'll continue to see the rise from the Tales cesspool that occurred between 2012-2015 as more new games in the franchise release.