Board 8 > Tales of Berseria is $6 on PSN (lowest price ever)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Shows once you add to cart if it isn't showing already.

https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0700-CUSA05258_00-PS4TOBERSERIA001

Arguably the best Tales game as well as a top jRPG of the entire generation, and as such most fans have played it, but it also stands out as a very good entry point (despite being a prequel, really doesn't matter!)

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Especially when the game it serves as a prequel to is an abomination to RPGs everywhere.

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I mean yeah, that's the accepted creed of the Tales franchise: fuck Zesteria.

That's on sale for $12. Don't buy it! Don't make the same mistake Pun did.

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Oh shit, thanks for the heads up

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zestiria wasn't amazing but i don't understand the vitriol

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Zestiria > Berseria but they're both like 7/10 games

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Speaking of 7/10 games I'm obligated to tell everyone that the PS4 port of Ys memories of Celceta came out today.

Ys!!!!

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Zestiria is a great game.

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Day bump!

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Snrkiko posted...

zestiria wasn't amazing but i don't understand the vitriol

yeah. I wouldn't recommend playing it in 2020 unless you're a completionist but at worst it's a mediocre game with a bad story and a terrible skill system, which still puts it ahead of Xillia and Abyss.

Berseria still shares some of the flaws of modern Tales games (the maps! are so! bad!), and it doesn't fully shake off the stink of Zestiria's story, but the skill system is much improved and it has arguably the best cast in the series. makes playing thr game a breeze.

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Zesteria arguably has the worst back half of any actual major game release I've experienced in my life. The idea that it's better than Abyss, one of the best games in the franchise and genre, is ridiculous. It's absolutely much worse than Xillia, too.

Zesteria also stands out as a game that we know exactly HOW it ended up so bad behind the scenes.

Berseria does indeed have pretty awful dungeon environments, though, it's only real weakness.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

The idea that it's better than Abyss, one of the best games in the franchise and genre

????

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like

the only time Tales approaches 'best in genre' is in regards to its battle system, and that's with Graces F.

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Abyss is in my top 10 video games, it stands to reason I would consider it one of the best jRPGs!

Oh no doubt Graces F has the best combat. I literally paid them more money to do more combos in it.

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This one was pretty good. felt like it got kinda uninteresting towards the middle but picked back up again towards the end.

Probably the best one I played between it, Symphonia, and Graces F.

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And I'm not saying you're not entitled to your opinion, but if you're gonna try and lay out "Zesteria is better than Abyss and Xillia", you have to understand you're in an unquestionably severe minority in that front. Sure, there are gonna be a handful of people out there that share it, but you're basically at the level of "Final Fantasy 2 had problems, but it's at least better than 4 and 5".

Zesteria is UNQUESTIONABLY the most hated game in the franchise by the majority of the fanbase, other than perhaps Legendia. The recency of Zesteria probably puts it higher in the vitriol list, though. People just forget about Legendia.

Apologies for using unquestionably twice but I ain't gonna change it to save face.

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all tales games are bad except for berseria and parts of vesperia

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I think Yuri Lowell makes a pretty strong case for Best Protagonist in Genre. At least Ive never found a lead I like more than him yet

Velvet Crowe pretty handily took that from Yuri for me!

Of course Yuri never took that from Luke in the first place.

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Graces F needed the battle system to be good because the story was fucking atrocious. It was the sort of thing you'd expect like a third grader to put together

ShatteredElysium posted...

Graces F needed the battle system to be good because the story was fucking atrocious. It was the sort of thing you'd expect like a third grader to put together

I think that's a BUT rough, but it certainly wasn't great. Just really hurts to think about what an amazing game it could have been with a better story and cast.

Probabably the best difficulty system I've ever experienced too.

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Graces F best Tales combat

Abyss best Tales story

I haven't played anything past Xillia 1 yet other than the HD remasters

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I am genuinely struggling to think of RPGs I've played with a worse storyline than Graces F. It's a credit to the rest of the game that I actually played it to completion. I didn't even hate the cast. Just the story was awful and the way characters acted at times was mind boggling, it wasn't remotely believable.

I bought Zestiria and Berseria back in Black Friday and played them recently because of quarantine. Berseria is excellent that everyone agrees. But Zestiria isn't that bad. I don't know why people hate it so much.

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ShatteredElysium posted...

I am genuinely struggling to think of RPGs I've played with a worse storyline than Graces F. It's a credit to the rest of the game that I actually played it to completion. I didn't even hate the cast. Just the story was awful and the way characters acted at times was mind boggling, it wasn't remotely believable.

I mean you've got games like Infinite Undiscovery and Star Ocean 4/5 out there. There are plenty of worse RPG stories and casts, they just aren't played by as many people.

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Safer_777 posted...

I bought Zestiria and Berseria back in Black Friday and played them recently because of quarantine. Berseria is excellent that everyone agrees. But Zestiria isn't that bad. I don't know why people hate it so much.

I mean I could go into an entire tirade here, but I've done it like five times and am just tired of it, lol.

Of most note, maybe as a game director don't completely upend your game's development cycle and rewrite your story around a single side character of formerly undetermined importance that you turned into the female lead because you started screwing the voice actress.

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Ah that is the main problem? I see now. But the other character has a story DLC! What now?

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I liked star ocean 4

I mean the story and voice acting was bad, but it wasn't "tales bad"

Zestria was honestly painful every moment I put into it. It was tedious to an absurb degree, none of the characters were likable, and the battle system was the worst in the series.

Beseria is great, probably because its literally atlas shrugged the video game.

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That DLC is very bad!

But regardless that's not actually what's wrong with the game, it's just what caused it to get so messed up and sloppy in the first place. Still just wild to think about.

Here's the big secret though: the Zesteria anime Is pretty good! Kind of amazing how they cleaned up that mess.

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I mean I beat Star Ocean 4, so I must have at least tolerated it enough to finish. It's been over a decade, though, and I can't remember anything but the cringiest moments. It really didn't make an impression on me.

Star Ocean 5 is hilarious though. I don't even have any hatred or vitriol for that game, it's just so lame it's a riot.

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*looks at SO3-SO5 platinums*

I should get to the PS4 version of SO1 eventually

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Zestiria was alright

Don't see why so much energy has to be spent trashing it.

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voltch posted...

Don't see why so much energy has to be spent trashing it.

Because as a Tales fan it's an incredibly frustrating product, and it's failure is directly linked into enough brand damage to have hurt the sales of the franchise as a whole. It's the Andromeda of Tales.

This isn't even energy, though. For that you would have needed the playthrough topic in which I went from actually liking the game to over a dozen posts in half an hour as it suddenly and shockingly collapsed around itself all at once, followed by dozens of hours of despair. There is a single moment where you can see the production start to crumble, and it's just amazing to see such an obvious divide in the game from that point.

The 5k words of vitriol I wroteup afterwards to finish it off are unfortunately long gone, and I don't think I can bring myself to do it again without that immediate passion.

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I have a question. Zestiria was received badly yeah. BUT why the developers decided to make a prequel and not a completely different game?

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Just speculation, but I imagine the prequel was always planned. Hideo Baba "leaving" the Tales team after Zesteria probably was not.

Probably why Berseria's budget was so much lower, too. The fact that Tanaka was able to make such an incredibly superior game when everything was against him is a triumph. You can definitely feel it hurting for money in those environments.

I truly do not want to imagine a scenario where Baba still had the reigns on Berseria.

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If it was the Andromeda that killed the franchise, why would they have made Berseria?

Isn't the Vesperia PC version something that came after it?

Why even make Arise if the brand is so tarnished?

Quite a few users in this topic don't seem to think mind it so much. Seems like an overreaction.

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I mean nothing can quite compare to Andromeda, will admit that's a bit of an extreme comparison.


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As for Arise, they're taking they're sweet, sweet time on that specifically to recover the brand. Even with near universal agreement on it's quality and obvious superiority to Zesteria, Berseria still sold significantly worse. They have newest entry that gives them good will and word of mouth, they just need to put out a game that both capitalizes on that and hits the numbers it needs to recover the image. Obviously Vesperia helped, but that's still a rerelease.

The other issue with Zesteria that ties into this is that game was SUPPOSED to be the breakout Tales game that put it into the mainstream. A lot more money was put into production then most. They were banking on Zesteria. It's failure to do so is almost certainly tied into Berseria's reduced budget as well.

I don't think we're completely guaranteed to be out of the park yet. They have the head of the God Eater team producing Arise, and there's no named director as of now. Obviously I want Arise to be a slam dunk, but right now it's more fingers crossed than anything.

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Too much negativity in here though. Supposed to just be a pro Berseria topic!

I will say one nice thing about Zesteria. Good music! Also this scene.

https://youtu.be/DpIgZEvjr-A

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I still need to play Berseria along with a couple others in the series. I never did finish Graces f, but if I go back to it I have

Graces f
Xillia
Xillia 2
Berseria

I think thats it...was planning to get Zestiria at some point anyways despite hearing its not great

Graces does have very fun combat but both Berseria and (especially) Xillia 2 are even better IMO

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Ironically, as one of the biggest disparagers of it here, I still probably got more out of it than most people! I enjoyed a good 20 hours of that game, most would say nothing in it is good.


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UshiromiyaEva posted...

but if you're gonna try and lay out "Zesteria is better than Abyss and Xillia", you have to understand you're in an unquestionably severe minority in that front. Sure, there are gonna be a handful of people out there that share it, but you're basically at the level of "Final Fantasy 2 had problems, but it's at least better than 4 and 5".

I didn't offer a defence of Zesteria. I literally said it wasn't worth playing. I just said it wasn't uniquely bad. my preference for it over the other bad Tales games is because the battle system is better, the only thing people should be coming to Tales games for as they've proven they aren't consistently good at anything else!

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Xiahou Shake posted...

Graces does have very fun combat but both Berseria and (especially) Xillia 2 are even better IMO

I repurchased Graces recently, but haven't actually played it since release. My memories tell me it'd still better than Berseria by a hair in combat, but maybe my stance will change with a fresh viewing.

Hoping to have my Xillia playthrough completed soon enough so I can finally play Xillia 2, which is the one I missed.

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iiicon posted...

I didn't offer a defence of Zesteria. I literally said it wasn't worth playing. I just said it wasn't uniquely bad. my preference for it over the other bad Tales games is because the battle system is better, the only thing people should be coming to Tales games for as they've proven they aren't consistently good at anything else!

Surely you can recognize that, as someone who is admiting they don't really like these games in the first place, your opinion about which ones are better than others may be skewed compared to those who actually do?

I hate the GTA games, but I would probably say 3 is the best one to me because I had the most fun playing it. I don't in any world beleive my opinion on GTA has any validity!

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i mean can we be honest for a moment

even without the hilarious stuff with the voice actress, zestira was never going to have an amazing plot

tales games just don't have good writing

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I'm not gonna pretend they're flawless, but I think Abyss and Berseria made the B8 Top 60 Stories in gaming list for a reason. A lot of people really like these stories.

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What did i do?

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Heroic Bigpun posted...

What did i do?

You bought one Tales game and decided to go with Zesteria. That's not your fault, just unfortunate!

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