Platforms: PS4 (reviewed), PC
Developer: Bandai Namco Entertainment
MSRP: $49.99
Introduction:
The Tales franchise is one of those JRPGs that has managed to endure across multiple generations of console platforms. It started all the way back in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia, continuing intermittently through the 2000’s, with its golden years happening from 2002-2009 when ten different Tales games were released. The franchise has slowed considerably since then, with the current generation of consoles seeing only two games, 2015’s Zestiria and now this year’s Tales of Berseria.
Berseria tells the story (not falling for that pun) of Velvet, an ordinary villager that resides in a quiet town with her little brother Laphicet and her brother-in-law, Artorius. As a child, her world was torn asunder by the Daemonblight, a disease that affects humans by turning them into mindless monsters called Daemons. Years later, her life takes yet another drastic turn, leading her to be imprisoned for three years, but once she emerges, Velvet sets out on a quest for revenge against those who have wronged her.
Suffice it to say; Tales of Berseria has a fantastic narrative set-up and one that is legitimately different from the typical “we can do it because we’re friends” cliche that you are generally accustomed to. Sure, the idea of a disease turning people into monsters is nothing new, but it’s the quest for revenge and the darker undertones that you don’t usually see from the genre that is different here.
That said, there’s an old saying about games that no matter how good your story is, it won’t matter if the game is no fun to play. So with that said, let’s take a look at Tales of Berseria.
Yes, the narrative set-up is pretty fantastic. But there’s a lot of terminologies to keep up with, and the game expects you to be on its level at all times.
I can’t help but feel that Tales of Berseria was designed specifically for fans of the series, which is fine, it’s just not terribly welcoming for newcomers. My last experience with a Tales game was all the way back in 2005 with Tales of the Abyss, so I’ve been out of the loop for a while. Berseria shares the same world as 2015’s Tales of Zestiria and is said to be a prequel of sorts, so if you are a fan of Zestiria, chances are you’re going to pick up on everything in Berseria.
I found myself juggling names of locations, monsters, organizations, and characters and their relationships to one another at a constant rate. I was glad that the game had an encyclopedia of all this stuff in its pause menu because otherwise, I’d have been completely lost. Berseria doesn’t hesitate to charge forward with its story in spite of all of these details, but it’s odd then that the story simultaneously drags itself out, yet still manages to impose a distinct level of ambiguity on the player’s understanding of the world.
Tales of Berseria does not work well within its own limits.
Tales of Berseria is clearly working within some limitations, and that’s fine, every game does. It’s just that Berseria doesn’t do a good enough job of masking or working with them. The environments, in particular, feel especially bare as geometry and terrain consist of little more than a few rolling hills and texture work to get by. There’s a lot of space in many locales, but it just feels empty rather than vast in many instances, particularly in ports, cities, and caves.
The developers do their best to gamify things by adding a ton of nooks and crannies to discover treasure chests, sparkly pickups, and the like, but a lot of assets feel reused in a way that makes many of the game’s locations blend in with one another.
Some might argue that these design choices harken back to classic JRPGs, and they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, it’s just that ultimately, the level design feels incredibly antiquated, like something out of the PS2 era. Still, this should suit fans of classic niche JRPGs.
Combat in Tales of Berseria feels like a collection of parts that sound like a good idea but don’t quite come together.
Berseria’s combat takes a lot of getting used to, and just as much as the narrative has its share of terminology, so too does its combat, if not tenfold. Instead of the increasingly distant turn-based systems of many classic JRPGs, Tales of Berseria employs a variation of something it calls the Linear Motion Battle System (LMBS), called the "Liberation-LMBS." Battles take place in a circle that the player can move freely around in, with the boundaries of the circle serving as the escape route. Different attacks and Artes are tied to each of the face buttons, and players string together combos with different button presses, creating different effects. Sounds cool right?
It is….once you finally get your feet under you. And even then, for a system that advertises “liberation” as a key factor, I found that the system made me a passive observer to the action more often than I would have liked. As action ramps up, and it can with sometimes as many as 6-7 enemies on the field simultaneously, things can get quite chaotic. Sometimes so, to the point that I found myself button mashing my way through encounters just to even the odds, which I don’t think was the developer's intention. In other words, it’s easy to trap yourself into one way of doing things, and it’s a hard habit to break.
Verdict:
Tales of Berseria is a decent JRPG, but ultimately it feels like a game you play while you wait for something bigger to come along. It tries to venture into new ground with its narrative set-up, and to be fair, Berseria’s tale of revenge is far easier to digest than a heap of happy-go-lucky being crammed down your throat.
I also find it difficult to nail down that one thing that makes Tales of Berseria stand out. It’s skill mastery, dungeon traversal, and cooking mechanics have been done by bigger and better games, and feel like they check a box rather than add something meaningful to the game’s loop. Its pirate theme echoes Skies of Arcadia on the water but doesn’t develop it enough to make it a big part of the experience, and frankly the same can be said for a lot of what Berseria does.
There are a lot of good parts here, but none of them are developed enough to hook you into sticking with Tales of Berseria for the long haul.
