Story: 4⭐You play as a "post-sacrifice female Guts" seeking revenge
Characters: 5 ⭐Highly focused on character construction and interactions
Gameplay: 3.5 ⭐Even though it has many mechanics it plays a little janky, but gets better with time

- I don't recommend you're not into anime (for the cheesy scenes) and/or you're just looking for a good gameplay without story.
- Story to me seems leagues better than Tales of Vesperia, so if you didn't like all the nonsense from the start of Vesperia, try this instead. (if I like too much Berseria I could even consider going back to Vesperia)

Time played: 6h

Look, I love this series like crazy, so it’s hard for these games to disappoint, but even I know this whole series is just loaded with exposition. The world-building is arguably, uh, terrible because it is purposefully made so convoluted as most of the mystery and drama of most of these games’ story scenarios comes from characters unfolding and connecting passages from their respective world’s Book of Genesis, until the cast of characters find themselves twisted into their world’s Book of Revelations. Tales of Berseria’s scenario does well, though, in pacing out their discoveries and exposition so it never feels like you’re being given important information so late into the game. There are plenty of moments of characters going “Ah yes, of course, it’s just like the earth synergy.” “Earth synergy? What’s that?” but it’s never to a point where it feels like it’s too overbearing, or lazy, or goofy. I played a lot of this game spaced out over the last seven months and never forgot the important details of how this world works, as it was given to me, and I think that’s a pretty good testament to how this game doesn’t overload you. Even in the last section, where other ‘Tales’ games might dump a lot of last minute stuff on you, this one feels like it’s trying to stay linear.

I also think expositional dialog works here because each of the main cast are of different backgrounds. Demons, priests, witches, pirates! Everyone has lived a different life and, thus, can bring different knowledge to a discussion about the world! This makes what could be heavy-handed expository dialog a little lighter as the cast converses like a bunch of strangers of different strokes coming together to play ancient history detective. Then, of course, we learn more about these characters that we like as we learn about the world and its mystery.

The characters are all great. The party of six are each hits, all of them just endeared themselves to me so fast and easy, and the perfectly consistent writing of their personalities and how they clash and interact just had me giddy during some scenes. Sometimes a family isn’t a nuclear family of parent and children, sometimes it’s a gay samurai and a gay pirate and a mean lesbian and a closeted youth group lesbian and a quirky trans girl and the cute little kid they all see as a little brother! And the mean lesbian herself, Velvet freakin’ Crowe, is such a great, great protagonist. She and this game’s villain are perfect opposite extremes of what this whole game is about: what is the point of hurting?

This isn’t the first text to tackle this subject matter, of course, we all know what the point of hurting is! It means we’re human! It means we’re alive! It is a quintessential part of the human experience to be met with pain, the hard part is processing it. The antagonist of this game (light spoilers) wants to rid the world of pain; it should be something that no one should experience, as it is only borne from faults that mankind are saddled with. Velvet wants revenge for her pain, it drives an all-consuming (pun intended, as the connection is made obvious in subtext) rage that she plans to use to remove anything in her path. Velvet’s costume, at first glance, seems a bit much; a very revealing mess of tattered clothing that someone might wear to a nightclub’s goth-themed event. Though, I think it serves a purpose. Velvet is also a daemon (sic), a blight on the world, seen as ugly and broken by the church that runs the entire world. Her outfit is just a reflection of how the enemy sees her, and any objectification made towards her revealing outfit just helps the metaphor that not only is the church disgusted by her, but they also see her as a tool.

Her arc is spectacular, and, like most JRPGs, the solution is friends. As a writer, though, I’ve grown less sensitive to the same kinda of stories, especially in games, and to me, what’s important is not whether your message is new, or even if the story beats aren’t familiar, it’s how you write characters and how you take them to where they need to be taken to. The path that Velvet goes on to see her friends clearly as they are is so great and so fulfilling, and so clear and beautiful, and in tandem, Laphicet’s arc and growth is so good. Ugh! I cried folks, I really did. This entire story had me in chains the whole time, and the ending was truly something else, and still has me thinking about it with a massive amount of emotion. I don’t think I’ll ever forget about Velvet Crowe. She’s up there with Guts and Maka Albarn as characters I will cherish forever.

“Your despair… how is it gone?”

Now, the video game part of this game was, well, less spectacular than the story, relatively. The combat in this game is maybe my favorite of the ‘Tales’ games I’ve played. It replaces mana points with a stamina meter made up of five points that get spent during your moves. It, for me, led to a much fluid style of play. High-hit combos are pretty easy, but still fun to land, the system was never too convoluted to the point where I found myself struggling to execute something, or was ignoring entire mechanics because I felt there was no need. The thing was, there were moments where I felt like I could just kind of brute-force a lot of situations. While I think this could be chalked up to the game being well-balanced to the point where, without me ever needing to grind, and I was the level I should’ve been throughout the entire game, I did feel like there wasn’t a whole lot of struggle, or strategizing. I just mapped artes to my buttons well, used the mystic artes when I could, and made it through pretty unscathed.

The struggle in this game, really, is dungeon design. When it’s not boring, it’s annoying, and the fucking two-hour-long final dungeon was plenty more enough for me! The dungeon “puzzles” basically come down to you walking from end-to-end hitting the right switches. I feel like, at least in exploration-rewarding JRPGs with encounters like this, the fun of dungeons can just be figuring out where to go. The final dungeon being this big fucking thing that was so annoying to navigate because of how the in-game map presents itself just drove me crazy, I cannot stress this enough. I detest the idea that the final boss needs this kind of carpet laid out for them, that you need to go through one final challenge leading up to the final battle. Buddy, the entire game was the lead up! Having already stayed up a couple of hours extra to finish the job, only to go to the location where I expected to fight the final boss and see a teleporter that took me to this huge complex with orbs and switches and bridges and doors and switches and warps and the most annoying monsters ever!!! It was a long night.

Though, the dungeons were my only gripe, and the very last one was the only one that was long enough to be a drag, to be fair. This is definitely my favorite tale that the ‘Tales’ series has ever told, though the video game itself didn’t exactly stand out next to other installments that I’ve completed.

This game is great in two areas, good in a couple others and ranges from bad to serviceable for everything else. The two areas I find to be great are the characters and the story. From their designs, to their history, to their banter, to their dynamics between one another, the characters in this game are truly a joy to watch interact and slowly change each other over the course of the game. The overarching story is also rather good with an antagonist that I feel is rather sympathetic.

For the rest of the game, its hard to say. The two areas I think are good are the music and the skits, they add a lot to the experience and help make certain scenes and characters quite memorable. The areas I find serviceable are the world (rather average, maybe slightly above), the art/visuals, and the combat (although this last one hinges on bad for me). Lastly, I find the enemies, exploration, and reuse of assets/enemies to be a serious blunder and are quite bad. Tales of Arise does this better although that game still has some similar issues. The only area of this game that I consider a mixed bag are the side quests. They are typically boring to do but often lead to interesting character development that helps understand more about the side characters and main party.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with this game. If you can stomach the boring/repetitive combat, enemy variety, and exploration, and are looking for engaging characters and a well executed revenge story, check this game out. Otherwise, you can probably skip this one. (Honestly this game would have been better suited as a book or series of books/manga. It is basically just wasting your time with everything other than the narrative).

By far my favourite tales games (I haven't played tales of arise yet but I will update this once I have.) I nearly quit the tales of franchise after Zestiria (By far my least favorite tales of game) but I decided to play this afterwards, and it was amazing. The story is great and you should experience it for yourself but what I want to talk about is my favorite combat system in the tales of franchise.

In battle there is an entire economy going on. You have a limited number icons above your health bar, this goes from 1-5, the enemy has one as well. The number you have dictates the amount of moves you can perform in a combo. Now here's the kicker, you can steal them from your enemies by dealing status effects to them and they can do the same to you. Wait there's more. You and your enemy can give them back to the opponent in return for a an ability called a breaksoul! This immediately creates a very dynamic system where you balance having these icons and using them while also giving your opponents the chance to use them as well. But wait there's more! As the characters level up they'll learn higher level abilities which require you to collect higher combos like 8 before you can perform them. Wait didn't you say you can have a maximum combo of 5 which is limited by these icons? Yes I did, what I didn't say is that using the break souls allows you to restart the combo so you can land 5 hits, then use the break soul and land 4 more then you can pull off this higher level ability. It's so brilliantly designed it even makes regular encounters fun! Something none of the other games in this franchise has done for me.

That being said this game does have its flaws. It carried over the very questionable decision of not being able to heal characters when they're afflicted by a status effect from tales of Zestiria. This was probably done to incentivize removing said status effects as soon as possible but it removes the interesting strategy earlier games had where you had to decide whether to remove a status effect and try and survive another few seconds with very little health before you can use an item again or heal up and try to survive with a lot of health but with a status effect.

The largest flaw is the difficulty. No not that it's too hard and that you need to grind for hours before matching the boss's level like every other JRPG or entry into the tales of franchise. This game is far too easy. I think they realized when developing this game that people were getting tired of grinding for an hour before being strong enough to face the next boss so they turned the difficulty down but they failed to account for the fact that this battle system is so fun that not only will players fight most if not all enemies along the way and take on challenges that will level them up further. One of my favourite mechanics for example allows you to combine two encounters as one and you get a challenging random ecounter with way more enemies and subsequently way more exp. This easiness lead to me facing avoiding nearly enemy in the final dungeon, not because I didn't enjoy generic encounters, but because I wanted to avoid getting stronger so the final boss was actually challenge. I succeeded but the mere fact I had to show up 10 levels under level before a BOSS became challenging is speaking volumes about the difficulty.

I bought this game in 2018 and just beat it. For the most part I really enjoyed this game. The main cast is all hits and their group dynamics carry the game. The main plot is incredible and skits are fun. My only real problems are the middle section of the game being a boring globetrotting fetch quest and I didn't really vibe with the combat besides Velvet (kinda feels like the game was designed around only playing as her). Another thing I had trouble with is how all 6 party members unlock like 30 different moves and I couldn't figure out what weaves well into what. I'm not sure if I missed something obvious or if I had to look up YouTube videos. Overall I enjoyed this game and would recommend it to anyone interested in JRPGs

I think the worst thing this game suffers from is just how anime it looks. WHich is why I gave it meh visuals and sound. I don't feel like i remember berseria because of its overall aesthetic, and I think thats probably what might deter me from other tales games. What I DO remember from berseria is how much I actually like the characters and how sick Velvet Crowe as a name and design is. I want to continue playing this game because I have a LOT of fun watching these characters interact with each other and I am curious how the story unfolds. I think playing it is engaging enough and nothing about the gameplay is particularly unappealling. I do want to eventually play more of this game

Me lo vendieron una historia como Berserk y al ver el barco en el trailer temblaba de miedo.

Bromas a parte si que veo la semejanza de Velvet y Guts, dos personajes que a simple vista son super "edgys" en busca de venganza pero en realidad ocultan un lado tierno y que por culpa de las circunstancias que les han marcado las ocultan.

En definitiva Velvet es un amor y una onee-chan estupenda, el resto de cast son simpáticos y te hacen muy amena la historia.