This game has a divisive reputation among Tales fans, to say the least, so I did my best to come into Zestiria with an open mind, but I can't say I came away with a positive impression.

I was mainly interested in playing this as a companion to Tales of Berseria, Zestiria's prequel. Berseria's ending is bittersweet, leaving open the hope that someone can fix the world's fate in the future, i.e. the plot of Zestiria. If you want to follow up on these unresolved threads, it seems reasonable to play these games in chronological order.

Unfortunately, after Berseria, the themes of this game left a bad taste in my mouth. Berseria does a lot to humanize demons, treating generic fantasy enemies as people with inner lives. Zestiria plays the same fantasy tropes straight: while it might seem happier that Sorey can "purify" hellions rather than killing them (usually...), the hellions we see are either mindless monsters or innately wicked. It seems like none of the lessons from Velvet's time really stuck around in this world.

Furthermore, Artorius, Berseria's Shepherd, is... well... a fascist. He's obsessed with moral purity, blind obedience to a chosen hero, submission of the individual to the many, and the triumph of "reason" over emotion. His ideal society is one purged of social undesirables. And the Abbey is always depicted in stark shades of white. Berseria makes you root for its villain protagonists by saying "Hey, have you noticed that the hero's journey has some fascist subtext?" And granted, it's a critique of an entire genre, not just Zestiria. But after Artorius, I found it difficult to turn that interpretation off and invest myself in Sorey's journey at face value, as Zestiria's party try to keep Sorey from being tainted by negative emotions so he can stay pure, as he faces conflicts like "the ungrateful populace not immediately accepting his awesome powers and chosen one status". Those hero tropes (the ones that other game said were fascist) are played completely straight. It ends up coming off like Zestiria only exists so that Berseria can subvert it.

But I don't know that I would recommend playing Zestiria first, either. The beautiful environments and fun dungeon designs are plagued by clunky battle mechanics, sluggish AI, and perpetual camera issues. The cast are about as zesty as cornflakes--I cared about Edna and Zaveid by virtue of their connection to Eizen, but that's about it. Arguably this is as close as it comes to a Tales game with a canon gay relationship, and that still didn't save it. The plot is essentially Stranger in a Strange Land, if, when the protagonist arrived to enlighten humanity, the Martians all showed up like "Hey, you shouldn't give psychic powers to Alisha, you should give them to Rose. We all like Rose much better than Alisha. And she's smarter, too!" He couldn't even be bothered to die at the end.