MILD SPOILERS
After rewatching the Venture Bros, I was in the mood for something with a different perspective, but also wanted to play a nice engrossing JRPG. So I searched for JRPGs where you play as the antagonist (relatively speaking) and I saw a LOT of recommendations for Tales of Berseria. This is basically my first ever Tales game, so everything I say is from the perspective of someone new to the franchise and who doesn’t play a lot of JRPGs generally.
First off, I was incredibly confused by the combat system for the first… 10-15 hours. It’s been a long while since I've felt this baffled by a combat system. I got the gist of it, but the tutorials weren’t great, and I just wasn’t sure if i was playing it well or not, beyond just using my “special” to burst enemies. It’s real time, fairly mashy and combo-based, where you can create combos by slotting in different moves you unlock as you progress. There’s a push and pull of trying to manage your “mana gauge” (not sure if that’s the actual name) which you use for special abilities and is tied to how long your combo can be, how susceptible you are to ailments and stuff like that. After reading a bit and watching a tutorial, I did sorta come to grips with it, but it’s really not my preferred style of combat. Having so much freedom to create combos from scratch without a lot of guidance is just more management than i’m used to, without a clear indication as to whether what i’m doing is working. So I spent most of the game playing as Velvet, the protagonist and just mashing my way through combat, doing the bare minimum while trying to check off all the sidequests and such.
Where Berseria does indeed shine is in it’s story and more-so in it’s characters. You play as Velvet, a nice girl from a small village who just wants to protect her younger brother. Shit happens, Velvet gets betrayed by her dead-sisters’ husband, he kills her brother, she becomes a d(a)emon, gets imprisoned and then becomes obsessed with revenge. Along the way she meets various morally dubious characters and they band together to take down the big bad (or the big good, since you’re the bad guys, technically speaking).
I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by how few punches they pulled in making your characters the villains and in general with the main cast. They go really dark in a few spots in order to justify your role as villains (or descent into villainy) and severity of some of the actions taken. I mean, poor Velvet sure gets put through the ringer and it’s hard not to side with her, in light of all of the awful shit that she’s suffered.
Now when making a game like this with a story like this, you can’t make your characters fully mustache-twirling villains, so of course your band of brothers and sisters aren’t actually evil, they’re just going against “the main authority”, which people see as good. You could very easily switch a few things and make the main authority evil (which, shockingly, they are, cause evil is a point of view yada yada) and have you go up against it. And it sorta does become that by the end, but i was ok with it since the journey was enjoyable most of the way through. There’s a lot of charm in the writing and acting, especially between the main cast and I liked all of them to some extent. Also helps that there is a LOOOOT of (mostly optional) interactions that flesh everyone out and they can get goofy. Despite being a fairly somber story, I’d characterize a lot of the atmosphere (up until a point) as quite cozy. And it’s refreshing to play a game like this (party of adventurers save the world) that avoids many of the tropes you’d see especially in JRPGs. The cast is not all about friendship and wanting to save the world, they’re in if for selfish reasons, they’re not that concerned with the fate of the world, and they don’t shy away from being “bad” when the situation calls for it (they also do a lot of “good”).
I will say that the actual ending wasn’t that great in my book. I get what they were going for, but it felt a bit hamfisted and predictable with a pinch of “deus ex machina” as well. Not to mention that i felt that the game had peaked emotionally at the previous “big turning point”.
So ultimately, Berseria doesn’t 100% deliver on the idea that you’re playing as the “villains”, more like some sort of vigilante (squad) that are going up against popular consensus, but for selfish reasons. The combat was something I… tolerated, and was at least engaged with it from a “what the fuck is going on” perspective, trying to figure it out. It was occasionally enjoyable, but never something I’d engage with if i didn’t have to. But I was very impressed with the characters, the voice acting (dub) and very much enjoyed my time in the presence of these very flawed but still very “human” characters. If you crave a game with a strong cast of engaging “villains”, Berseria is a pretty damn good time, despite a lot of flaws and rough edges (bland world design, slow traversal, somewhat bloated/unnecessary sub-systems). Spent around 49 hours with the game, doing most of the relevant side-stuff.
After rewatching the Venture Bros, I was in the mood for something with a different perspective, but also wanted to play a nice engrossing JRPG. So I searched for JRPGs where you play as the antagonist (relatively speaking) and I saw a LOT of recommendations for Tales of Berseria. This is basically my first ever Tales game, so everything I say is from the perspective of someone new to the franchise and who doesn’t play a lot of JRPGs generally.
First off, I was incredibly confused by the combat system for the first… 10-15 hours. It’s been a long while since I've felt this baffled by a combat system. I got the gist of it, but the tutorials weren’t great, and I just wasn’t sure if i was playing it well or not, beyond just using my “special” to burst enemies. It’s real time, fairly mashy and combo-based, where you can create combos by slotting in different moves you unlock as you progress. There’s a push and pull of trying to manage your “mana gauge” (not sure if that’s the actual name) which you use for special abilities and is tied to how long your combo can be, how susceptible you are to ailments and stuff like that. After reading a bit and watching a tutorial, I did sorta come to grips with it, but it’s really not my preferred style of combat. Having so much freedom to create combos from scratch without a lot of guidance is just more management than i’m used to, without a clear indication as to whether what i’m doing is working. So I spent most of the game playing as Velvet, the protagonist and just mashing my way through combat, doing the bare minimum while trying to check off all the sidequests and such.
Where Berseria does indeed shine is in it’s story and more-so in it’s characters. You play as Velvet, a nice girl from a small village who just wants to protect her younger brother. Shit happens, Velvet gets betrayed by her dead-sisters’ husband, he kills her brother, she becomes a d(a)emon, gets imprisoned and then becomes obsessed with revenge. Along the way she meets various morally dubious characters and they band together to take down the big bad (or the big good, since you’re the bad guys, technically speaking).
I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by how few punches they pulled in making your characters the villains and in general with the main cast. They go really dark in a few spots in order to justify your role as villains (or descent into villainy) and severity of some of the actions taken. I mean, poor Velvet sure gets put through the ringer and it’s hard not to side with her, in light of all of the awful shit that she’s suffered.
Now when making a game like this with a story like this, you can’t make your characters fully mustache-twirling villains, so of course your band of brothers and sisters aren’t actually evil, they’re just going against “the main authority”, which people see as good. You could very easily switch a few things and make the main authority evil (which, shockingly, they are, cause evil is a point of view yada yada) and have you go up against it. And it sorta does become that by the end, but i was ok with it since the journey was enjoyable most of the way through. There’s a lot of charm in the writing and acting, especially between the main cast and I liked all of them to some extent. Also helps that there is a LOOOOT of (mostly optional) interactions that flesh everyone out and they can get goofy. Despite being a fairly somber story, I’d characterize a lot of the atmosphere (up until a point) as quite cozy. And it’s refreshing to play a game like this (party of adventurers save the world) that avoids many of the tropes you’d see especially in JRPGs. The cast is not all about friendship and wanting to save the world, they’re in if for selfish reasons, they’re not that concerned with the fate of the world, and they don’t shy away from being “bad” when the situation calls for it (they also do a lot of “good”).
I will say that the actual ending wasn’t that great in my book. I get what they were going for, but it felt a bit hamfisted and predictable with a pinch of “deus ex machina” as well. Not to mention that i felt that the game had peaked emotionally at the previous “big turning point”.
So ultimately, Berseria doesn’t 100% deliver on the idea that you’re playing as the “villains”, more like some sort of vigilante (squad) that are going up against popular consensus, but for selfish reasons. The combat was something I… tolerated, and was at least engaged with it from a “what the fuck is going on” perspective, trying to figure it out. It was occasionally enjoyable, but never something I’d engage with if i didn’t have to. But I was very impressed with the characters, the voice acting (dub) and very much enjoyed my time in the presence of these very flawed but still very “human” characters. If you crave a game with a strong cast of engaging “villains”, Berseria is a pretty damn good time, despite a lot of flaws and rough edges (bland world design, slow traversal, somewhat bloated/unnecessary sub-systems). Spent around 49 hours with the game, doing most of the relevant side-stuff.
My thoughts on this game are very strange. Firstly, the protagonist is one of my favorites ever, but she's in a game that I think is otherwise mediocre to bad. A lot of things in the plot happen more because the script needs them to happen, as opposed to it making sense for these things to happen. The villains are lame and nonsensical. The theme feels ill-presented, and the combat is... Not exactly fun. It's not BAD, but it's an ocean wide and a puddle deep.
Honestly, our protagonist Velvet carries this game on her back like Atlas holding the world - though two members of the other 5 are also pretty good. The first 3 stars in my review are simply for Velvet Crowe. The other half star are those other characters. But this game is severely held back by its other elements.
Honestly, our protagonist Velvet carries this game on her back like Atlas holding the world - though two members of the other 5 are also pretty good. The first 3 stars in my review are simply for Velvet Crowe. The other half star are those other characters. But this game is severely held back by its other elements.