Tales of Berseria is an absolute dumpster fire on all levels that is so impressively bad, I'm suprised I finished
It's cons are so long that you could write a novel on it:
-Voice Acting: This cast was the most abhorrently and intolerable English voice acting in a video game, it puts even the worst of anime dubs to shame. Bienfu, Laphicet, Velvet, Magillou, and Zaveid are impossible to listen to and take even somewhat seriously. It sounds like they're doing the intentionally worst job they could.
-Characters: The characters and their one note tropes are all awful, especially when you play as the Tsundere Velvet. Playing a character that is as boring and full of monotonous mumbo jumbo as her for ~60 hours makes for an all encompassing bad time. Your main party is filled with some extremely tropey characters that have zero redeemable qualities, especially becasue they all turn to comic relief throughout the story yet none are funny and definitely not endearing.
-Environment: This game reeks of low budget JRPG with visible skybox boundaries and extremely low res copy-paste zones. Running from area to area and seeing the same drab of barren wasteland with repeated textures is a kick to the groin. You're not rewarded for progress in the game or grinding because every single damn area feels the same. There's no area that feels or looks anything special, which is impressive because even FFVII managed to do that 20 years before this game came out. From start to finish the game just looks like a drag. The towns feel like lifeless low budget trash with the basic NPC's filling the areas and recycled building assets all over. I'm not asking the game to be hyper-interesting in every nook and cranny but man does it feel like a chore to explore. Also there are too many enemies EVERYWHERE which makes running around the areas even more mind numbing. Because of the nature of non random encounter JRPG's, I like to fight every enemy in my path so that I can stay at a proper level, however in Berseria I realized too late that this was a miserable idea. There are tons and tons of enemies per zone that are have uninspired designs and require the same strategy to beat (see the "gameplay section".)
-Gameplay: Berseria's gameplay loop is legitimately the worst in a video game that I've ever played. From hour one to hour fourty, my gameplay loop literally did not change. I'd run into an enemy, literally slap my hands on the arrow keys, and would be victorious. There is legitimately no reward to learning the combat, if that can even be done, because you can just as easily run through the game by mashing any "combo" you want. I got to hour fourty five-fifty before realizing the game had an auto battling system, which I'm thankful for because otherwise I wouldn't have finished the game and got to catch up on some TV I'd been wanting to watch.
Story: I lost interest in the story after the intiial sequence because I soon realized it was generic JRPG good versus bad with some extremely unecessary filler arcs and convoluted lore thrown inside. Seriously, there was absolutely nothing captivating about the story or the character motivations to complete their journey.
Tales of Berseria, as someone who played it as a new person to the series, is one of the worst gaming experiences I've ever had and erased any thought I had about playing the other Tales games.
It's cons are so long that you could write a novel on it:
-Voice Acting: This cast was the most abhorrently and intolerable English voice acting in a video game, it puts even the worst of anime dubs to shame. Bienfu, Laphicet, Velvet, Magillou, and Zaveid are impossible to listen to and take even somewhat seriously. It sounds like they're doing the intentionally worst job they could.
-Characters: The characters and their one note tropes are all awful, especially when you play as the Tsundere Velvet. Playing a character that is as boring and full of monotonous mumbo jumbo as her for ~60 hours makes for an all encompassing bad time. Your main party is filled with some extremely tropey characters that have zero redeemable qualities, especially becasue they all turn to comic relief throughout the story yet none are funny and definitely not endearing.
-Environment: This game reeks of low budget JRPG with visible skybox boundaries and extremely low res copy-paste zones. Running from area to area and seeing the same drab of barren wasteland with repeated textures is a kick to the groin. You're not rewarded for progress in the game or grinding because every single damn area feels the same. There's no area that feels or looks anything special, which is impressive because even FFVII managed to do that 20 years before this game came out. From start to finish the game just looks like a drag. The towns feel like lifeless low budget trash with the basic NPC's filling the areas and recycled building assets all over. I'm not asking the game to be hyper-interesting in every nook and cranny but man does it feel like a chore to explore. Also there are too many enemies EVERYWHERE which makes running around the areas even more mind numbing. Because of the nature of non random encounter JRPG's, I like to fight every enemy in my path so that I can stay at a proper level, however in Berseria I realized too late that this was a miserable idea. There are tons and tons of enemies per zone that are have uninspired designs and require the same strategy to beat (see the "gameplay section".)
-Gameplay: Berseria's gameplay loop is legitimately the worst in a video game that I've ever played. From hour one to hour fourty, my gameplay loop literally did not change. I'd run into an enemy, literally slap my hands on the arrow keys, and would be victorious. There is legitimately no reward to learning the combat, if that can even be done, because you can just as easily run through the game by mashing any "combo" you want. I got to hour fourty five-fifty before realizing the game had an auto battling system, which I'm thankful for because otherwise I wouldn't have finished the game and got to catch up on some TV I'd been wanting to watch.
Story: I lost interest in the story after the intiial sequence because I soon realized it was generic JRPG good versus bad with some extremely unecessary filler arcs and convoluted lore thrown inside. Seriously, there was absolutely nothing captivating about the story or the character motivations to complete their journey.
Tales of Berseria, as someone who played it as a new person to the series, is one of the worst gaming experiences I've ever had and erased any thought I had about playing the other Tales games.