Tales of Berseria

Faster, smoother, and bursting at the seams with content, Berseria delivers a much needed kick to the series.

Tales of Berseria is, simply put, one of the best entries in the series. Its dark and emphatic story and additions to its familiar gameplay turn this game into one fresh experience. Though it has flaws like a story with ups and downs or a linear design in all of its dungeons and map sections, this game offers so much content that will guarantee dozens of hours of entertainment. It is a game that every fan of the genre and franchise should try without exception.

This latest Tales title is definitely on my shortlist of the greatest. Watching the story unfold as I travelled the world with a collection of folks from all walks of life was a lot of fun. Thankfully, the developers added some variety in the overworld maps and if the dungeons were more interesting and sidequests played a larger role then I could see this being a contender for one of the best modern RPGs.

Tales of Berseria will tantalize any JRPG fan with a narrative unique to the franchise while still entirely Tales. There's room for improvement on all fronts, but that doesn't stop Berseria from being the best franchise title in a while.

Tales of Berseria isn’t a reinvention of the series, but it delivers a more emotional story mixed with a great combat system to make this adventure worth taking. The game’s fantastic cast keeps things entertaining even during moments where nothing particularly noteworthy is happening in the plot, and the way the character’s develop throughout the game is endearing. The dungeons are nothing to write home about, but the game’s consistently-thrilling battles are able to pick up some of the slack.

It's rarely been so good to be bad. [Issue#184, p.80]

A much more interesting story and lead character than usual for the series, but the weak script and aging combat system fail to make the most of it.

This game tells you a story that I don't think I'll ever forget, the characters and the plot are the best of the genre

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Waren die frühen Tales Spiele zu SNES Zeiten noch wahre Kleinode des JRPG Genres, ist die Serie mit dem Sprung ins Polygon Zeitalter in meinen Augen immer mehr zu einem Fließband Franchise für mittelmäßige Standard JRPG Kost geworden, die sich nur für Hardcore Nerds lohnt, die wirklich jeden Scheiß spielen müssen. Immer mal wieder hab ich in die Serie reingeschaut - Tales of Zisteria, Tales of Xillia u.s.w. - immer haben mich die langweiligen Dungeons, die öden Gebiete und stereotypen Charaktere schon nach kurzer Zeit gelangweilt. Umso überraschter war ich, dass mich Tales of Berseria gleich von Beginn an ziemlich gecatched hat. Denn statt das Kommando über die immer gleicher Weltenretter Heldentruppe zu bekommen, kriegt man in Tales of Berseria einen Bunch von Dämonen, von Bad Guys, von Aussenseitern hingeworfen, die sich in der Regel auch nicht gegenseitig mit Nettigkeiten supporten, sondern vielmehr Spaß am gegenseitigen Bissigkeiten und Sticheleien haben und vor allem ihren eigenen Rache- oder Macht Motiven folgen. Also so gar nicht mit Welt retten uns so. Man ist eben Dämon. Dass die Dialoge dieser Truppe zudem überaus charmant und spaßig geschrieben und inszeniert werden, hebt das Spiel deutlich aus dem Einerlei der Tales Spiele heraus. Gut, man rushed am Ende durch die gleichen öden Gebiete und Dungeons wie in jedem Tales Spiel, sammelt random Items und Kristalle auf, und kauft die xte leicht verbesserte Rüstung im Shop. Doch die eigenwilligen Charaktere, wie auch das gute Pacing des Storyplotts motivieren auch das Ende der Story erleben zu wollen. Alles in Allem ist Berseria tatsächlich ein Tales Spiel, das sich lohnt. Zumindest wenn man an gut geschriebenen Dialogen und charmanten Charakteren und deren Entwicklung Interesse findet. Natürlich rettet man am Ende dann doch irgendwie die Welt, doch irgendwie deutlich anders und inspirierter, als man dies vom Fließband Franchise Tales gewohnt ist.

Never have I ever played a game that wastes your tine as this one. The world is too big and empty, and bombed with enemies - in combination with that the combat is boring. Resulting in you- the player doing nothing but dodging enemies along huge maps or corridors. And be prepared for lots of backtracking since fast travel does falsely exist -it never work when you need it. Dialogues are voiced and good but just too much. The main cast is interesting. Well written and entertaining but the dialogue is as mentioned too much which makes the pacing terrible. This game was really behind for its time: -crazy to realise it came out 2016 when it feels like it had released 10-15 years prior: an early 2000s game.

What a slog. Endless amounts of garbage dialog. An obnoxiously overcomplicated spammy mess of a combat system. It seems like every other fight they throw more rules at you. You have to craft combos of attacks to target the enemy's weakness every battle, and there are all sorts of different kinds of arts, switch triggers, break points, and other tedious hidden **** story and dialog is pretty bad imo, and follows the usual anime cliches, with the usual tropes of the cringy outspoken girl, and annoying autistic child, and it seemed like ever 100 ft they would stop and yap aimlessly. There's just so much poorly written dreck, I started skipping through it after a while because it added no value. I love the dialog in BG3, and listen with hushed reverence to the dialog in FromSoft games. The writing here is **** itemization in the game is also terrible. You're given a ton of generic loot like a looter-shooter, and you have to disenchant copies of the same item to upgrade to +X versions of it similar to Nioh. It is tedious and makes the whole process of receiving loot to a be a chore. I actually dread going to the merchant to play account manager with my inventory.Technically, the game is competently made(music, graphics, QA, etc..), and there are moments of joy to be found, but it's all for naught when the fundamental building blocks of gameplay are so badly designed. Overall I just wanted the experience to end, and rushed to the final fight.