Board 8 > To gain +3 to inspiration, BCT plays Tales of Berseria. *spoilers as I go*

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just played an hour and have nothing to report. Killed another sub-boss monster (this game's equivalent to the beasts who unlocked Mystic Artes in Berseria, but instead they drop a useless weapon whose stats can't be improved, and thus serves no purpose even though it can be fused with anything) and saw a room with the crest of Innominat, which Sorry and Mikleo were unfamiliar with. Lailah knew, as of course did Zaveid and Edna. They didn't tell the full story, but it's too late in the game for a plot twist. Not that this game has had many of those.

I'm just ready to be done with this. But this version of the Throne is a maze and I have to figure out where I'm going. I also have an hour of equipment management to do, which is thankfully a much less common occurrence than in Berseria. I've let it go too long and now I have too much crap.

Gonna just give this a bump right now. I intend to play tomorrow. Anime con and all that.

I have played a little here and there, but this final dungeon is LONG. So no updates aside from that!

Should get an hour in this morning. That's about all the time I will have today. I have movies to catch up on too.

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot I didn't say that it should be incredibly obvious that Heldalf is fused with Velvet/Innominat, not Maotelus.

Took out Rose, though had to use an All-Divide (Rose did not use her Mystic Arte). Dark Toitolez is still too much, though, but I did get him under half HP before he started using stronger attacks.

No real comments. Just fluff after the Rose fight, but she did learn a new Mystic Arte that's pretty cool! Will try that elusive fight again after clearing a path to Heldalf. Should get another two levels and some additional equipment drops by then (I already got some in the forest on my way back - the obscene cost of fast travel has made me use it only one way).

Made it to The Staircase.

Zaveid seems to think he's dying here. Something with Siegfried, same as Dezel. He's trying to hit on the ladies again since he wants to die happy, but Edna is still calling him a moron (even whacking him with her parasol when he asks Rose if she'd be his vessel).

I hope I can finally put this piece of work behind me. This game has been a slog to get through. And next time (Arise), I'm just going to play on normal difficulty so I don't take ages. But I have a few games to play before that one...

Tried to fight the final boss, but unfortunately the second form doesn't seem possible on my current difficulty without grinding a few levels. Great. Just great. Plan is to fight my way back to Ladylake, stay at the inn and upgrade weapons and such, then warp back. I'm not going to just lower the difficulty on the final boss. I'm not cheap, because that would be a hollow victory (and an easy one, since difficulty imbalance is one of this game's numerous flaws).

Got back to Ladylake. Took me long enough. This is such a slog. If gaining a couple levels and upgrading some equipment doesn't do the trick, I may just put myself out of my misery and lower the difficulty even though that will make the final boss too easy.

Gave it another go. It did not go any better than last time. But more on that in a bit - firstly I'll do a recap of the badness of what happened before it. Trust me, this was abysmal. The writing here is so bad that I wrote better stuff than this when I was in 5th grade.

There's a scene by the door where Sorry magically knows Heldalf is in there. No mention of malevolence pouring out of it. No, he just automatically knows. Sorry and Mikleo just go first and the others debate whether they're strong or scared regarding Gramps, a scene that was meant to serve as a reminder that Gramps is in there. Which he is because he needed to be.

All of a sudden, Heldalf apparently has an evil plot much akin to Artorius a thousand years prior, which is precisely why he's made the Empyrean's Throne his home: Erase pain from this world. But this too would eradicate joy, and people wouldn't feel anything. Because they wouldn't. All of this came out of nowhere. Really, there'd only been a few interactions between Sorry and Heldalf before this, and we'd never really become aware of his plot because we were never made aware of his plot. No, that's not word count padding - it's emphasizing how bad and out-of-nowhere this is. He was just a one-dimensional bad guy in the way, and this felt like total fluff to justify it.

Halfway into the fight, Heldalf reveals his palm and Gramps is trapped in there. The game underscores this by having him yowl in pain or whatever and blah blah blah we'll purify you and free him but Lailah is doubtful blah blah blah what ever just countie voting. I never had much of an attachment to Gramps. I did not FEEL what Sorry and Mikleo did about him. He was only featured a small handful of times: The beginning of the game, a sidequest, the time when Rose got to see Elysia, and the flashback. I did not have the same attachment to the character that the protagonist did, which is a failure of writing. If your protagonist feels betrayed, the player should feel some of that pain. If your protagonist feels desperate to save somebody, the player should want to save that person. Maybe I've played too many games to the point of feeling apathy, but... I don't think that's it. I think it's that Gramps was simply Sorry and Mikleo's caretaker and nothing more than that.

The game attempts to rectify this somewhat after Heldalf's first form is defeated, with a couple of flashbacks, but it's too little, too late. Those flashbacks should've been something recurring throughout the game. Remember in Lastonbury when I praised the party interaction, and said I'd wished the game had more scenes like that? Flashbacks could've been a product of those scenes, too, which would've gotten the player more invested in the character motivations and added complexity. Anyway, Sorry and Mikleo exorcise Gramps from Heldalf, killing him in the process and getting them a "Well done" in his voice that makes it seem that he recognized he needed to die for Heldalf to as well. We are never told of this.

This entire sequence is just stupid, because Gramps all of a sudden is the whole motivation, when just a little before it was "Freeing the world of pain isn't the answer!" despite that not having been something shown before (one would've thought Heldalf would've been taking steps toward that goal, when instead he'd just been pouring malevolence over the world). No, they wanted to settle this score and find Gramps going in, so the waffling is just bad. Mikleo tries to stop Rose from slicing Heldalf's throat because he hasn't processed that there's no other way yet, and then he suddenly changes his mind to help Sorry bear the burden. This means Mikleo has gotten weaker as a person. Whatever Sorry does, Mikleo does too. He hasn't learned to stand on his own two feet and make his own choices and honestly felt like a more independent decision-maker early in the game.

After Gramps is exorcised and dissipates. Heldalf summons Maotelus and armatizes with him. Recall that Heldalf is fused with Velvet/Innominat but doing so has bonded him with Maotelus, allowing him to armatize magically because he can. This is our first time seeing Maotelus outside of the opening sequence so the investment is gone, which is good for someone who's played Berseria and knows about its dumb ending that didn't feel necessary.

Every quarter of the way through the fight, Heldalf starts launching this ultimate attack that insta-kills everybody in the party, meaning game over. As he does this, you're supposed to beat the shit out of him and knock him down, then fire one of the seraphs into him, taking that seraph out of the battle but severing one of the threads of his bond. The problem? I can't cause enough damage. Playing on Hard, he has 280,000 HP (I mean he is the final boss) and I need to take out 70K per "quarter." I've caused a fifth of that (14K) and it's still not enough. I think this fight wasn't properly tested on higher difficulties. Because this game sucks.

Part of me just wants to lower the difficulty to Moderate and get this shitshow done with. Part of me wants to see this through to completion on Hard as I'd planned, because Moderate would be too easy. If any of you are still reading this, please advise! All that said, Rose's third-grader level AI isn't helping much, since she'll get herself killed after de-armatizing for no reason, and that won't help my damage output. This really would be a lot better if I had somebody to play this with who'd actually be trying.

But instead, I'm gonna make another trip to Ladylake to hopefully gain another level, alongside better weapons. Current sword is a Caliburnus because that has an Arte Attack boost and the Adamantine Sword doesn't.

Just be prepared for a really scathing full review when I'm finished. Really, the best thing about this game? The music.

I turned down the difficulty to Moderate. That was more of a challenge than I anticipated, but....

GAME. BEATED.

About fucking time.

Nothing really to discuss. After the dragon form, there was a 1-on-1 between Sorry and Heldalf. Just by activating a Mystic Arte, I killed Heldalf and there really wasn't anything more to it than that. He was grousing about a new Lord of Calamity being born and yadda yadda yadda and Sorry just impaled him even though his bond with Maotelus was severed. Maotelus had no speaking role as Sorry formed a pact with him or something, IDK.

Despite having been fired at Heldalf, the four seraphs all survived, as did Rose, who Sorry had cut off abruptly for no reason and mouthed something like "I love you" to her, I think? Where the hell did that come from? There had been zero romantic inclinations between the two of them and they just spooned this on at the end thinking it would actually be believable. Their relationship during the game felt much more business-oriented than anything due to just how poorly-written this was.

The ending has the seraphim watching a new shepherd laying a white rose at a grave, probably... Rose's? I had to look this up, apparently that's years later when her guildmates were aging. This ending was way too ambiguous and hard to keep track of. They could've at least answered a few questions, like about Sorry becoming a protector seraph or whatever and allowing humans and seraphim to communicate. Did he actually do that? Did he succeed? What was the point of having more Shepherds if Sorry was supposed to be the last one? Why was Rose alone? It's just too much too fast without answering anything. If you're going to ask questions with your ending, fucking answer the ones you've already asked. The best endings, in my opinion, are ones that answer all the big questions but, in doing so, ask a lot more that leaves what happens next open to interpretation.

Seriously, I just wanted to put myself out of my misery. Here's what I liked about this game:
-The music, particularly Go Shiina's originals, was fantastic and a much-needed departure from the redundancy of the Sakuraba scores
-Edna, as the only party member actively TRYING to create cast chemistry
-World-building was good, though under-utilized

Here's what I didn't like:
-The cast was too business-oriented and rarely got to let loose, thus lacking chemistry
-Bland dialogue - I rarely found myself laughing the way I did in Berseria
-The voice acting was average
-Bare-bones character development
-Rose was always meant to have sound logic and be infallible. While she's a Mary Sue, I didn't find her as abhorrent as others do, but I don't really like her much.
-It felt like the last third of the game was written with Berseria's existence in mind without them going back and revising the first two thirds
-The plot justifications were often poor or nonexistent due to the sloppy writing; too many things at endgame just didn't make sense or came out of nowhere
-The ending was terrible. Way too ambiguous - it literally didn't explain anything at all, like you were working toward nothing
-Humans being unable to see seraphim throughout the entire game was a grave issue; there should've been plot events that changed this
-Armatization got stale fast and made the battle system too one-dimensional
-The battle system camera was wonky and at times hindered my ability to win a fight
-Enemy diversity in areas felt even scarcer than other Tales titles
-The higher difficulties felt untested and unrefined, leading some fights to be broken, including the final boss
-Some character designs didn't feel right or were unmemorable - Rose is the most guilty, but Sorry is as generic as can be too. Best designs are Alisha's and Edna's, and I particularly liked how Edna's design was meant as an antithesis to her character
-A convoluted skill system where you had no way to control which skills you'd get on which weapons, yet had to combo them anyway to unlock characters' full potential; it was contradictory
-The UI was terrible. The worst part was in shops when you were upgrading weapons, you couldn't see how new fusions would affect your skills and had to back out and deduce it yourself. Like... what? A lot of time was spent in menus just doing that. The game menu was also too structured and to get to what you wanted you had to navigate specifically, when there should've been ways
-No real way to track Code Reds or herbs like existed in Berseria, which made for a bunch of headaches
-Stupid shit like relegating skits to save points and inns only, the snack system, Windstepping not being permanent...

I could probably name more things. But really, the game is abysmally written. I still remember things like that scene in Marlind with Rose and Dezel that was written by a 6 y/o, the Wind Temple having people committing suicide off the top despite there being no real way for them to get up there, and the absolutely baffling setup for the Scattered Bones execution.

But the game never develops its world beyond what is initially established - it lays the baseline and that's it. Nothing really changes in the game, and it should. It feels like the game was a whole lot of nothing, and the battles being far less fun than most Tales offerings certainly didn't help carry me through it. All I did most of the time was button mash and it worked fine for comboing. Previous titles actually had you think about your loadouts so you'd know what to combo.

I honestly think the only reasons I kept going were 1) it's Tales and 2) this topic existed. Oh and MAYBE 3) I was looking for things to scrutinize.

In the end, the only people I'd recommend play this game are the Tales diehards and RPG game developers, the latter so they can see everything this game did wrong so they'd know not to replicate it. This is about even with Skyward Snore for the worst game I've ever beated, and I don't know why I forced myself to do it. I look back and feel like I got nothing from it, except this freedom. This amazing sense of freedom from playing this shit. I'd give it a 3/10 - it's playable, but that's about it. I'm sorry you had to get shoved into this shitshow, Edna.

But at least we got Berseria to redeem the franchise. I'll just pretend Zestiria doesn't exist in the same world.

So I guess this means you won't be playing through the post-game dungeon?

Mewtwo59 posted...

So I guess this means you won't be playing through the post-game dungeon?

I didn't do anything like that with Berseria because I was tired of equipment management. I don't really feel like doing that here at all, so maybe I'll just go do Berseria's instead...

IDK, it feels liberating to not have to worry about Zestiria anymore.

Congrats!

MysteriousStan posted...

Congrats!

Thank you! A few days later, this really feels like an accomplishment. I suffered through this way too long, at first hoping it would get better, then to just say I did it.

I really have no interest in playingthe post-game dungeon. I would find that monotonous. I think I can probably just look up a video walkthrough for the part with Jade. Yes I read about that. I hope his dialogue is half as good as in Abyss and really hope there's a fun exchange between him and Edna.

Anyone have an opinion?