Bandai Namco Entertainment has released Tales of Berseria for PS4.
The Tales series has spent the last decade slowly gaining traction in the West. Though not as instantly recognizable or successful as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest for us Americans, there’s reason Tales has fostered its own unique identity in Japan. It’s been a hard hill to climb but recent entries like Tales of Xillia and Tales of Zestiria have attempted a mainstream push to get Tales into players’ hands.
Tales of Berseria is the newest entry of the Tales series and hopes to address the issues found in its predecessor. While it shares the same world with Zesteria, Berseria forges its own path and, despite a few flaws, places the series on a course not destined for stagnation.
What’s immediately attractive about Tales of Berseria is its darker tone. Rather than implementing a group of heroes with an iron will to defeat evil, we’re given a ragtag group of whose motivations are not sunshine and rainbows, let alone rescuing a world from the brink. Players follow Velvet Crowe, an anti-heroine and the first female lead the series has seen. There’s something distinct and enjoyable about having Velvet introduced as a plucky character that would likely be benched in most RPGs to an apathetic killer hell-bent on revenge.
Berseria’s story starts with a severe tone that isn’t afraid to paint a bleak picture of its main character and of the world. It’s refreshing but also engaging because there are few JRPGs willing to toy with the formula of “saving the world.” On her path of revenge, Velvet is looking to upset the status quo as her target is the leader of the Exorcists, an order that is worshipped by the people for bringing peace to the world by killing daemons.
Along the way, Velvet adds several interesting characters to her party that also don’t come off as typical heroes at first. From the daemon Rokurou, the Exorcist Eleanor, the pirate Eizen, and witch Magilou, there’s a wide variety of characters players will meet and fight alongside during the course of Berseria’s 40-hour journey. Though she starts out as a fascinating archetype, Velvet’s thirst for blood doesn’t deepen and develop until late in the game. Her group of companions may not seem to have reason for redemption in the game’s world but as their backstories become known, they paint a fascinating and sometimes bleak picture of the world.
If an RPG lacks an engaging story and a middling cast of characters, it’s hard to invest and relate to over the course of dozens of hours. Because each character is given the necessary time to grow and warm up to the player, you want to spend time with them and help them reach their goals. Thankfully, the twist in tone that Berseria provides is supplemented by great characters, a helping of great and silly dialogue, awesome animated cutscenes, and worthy payoff.
Players will find that despite the sharp turn in narrative, the combat remains quite similar albeit with necessary improvements. Running freely around the battle area is still here but actions are now controlled by the Soul Gauge. This gauge runs out each time a party member performs an Arte or special skill. Once the gauge is empty, enemies can dodge your attacks easier and you aren’t unable to unleash bigger combos. The twist is that enemies also have a Soul Gauge and players will be able to absorb those Soul Crystals to fill up their gauge rather than waiting for it to fill back up over time.
Using the Soul Gauge to link combos and attacks and steal souls from other enemies allows players to strategize to keep momentum in combat. This momentum is further eased by the fact that Artes and abilities can be easily swapped and assigned to the PS4’s face buttons. It may take a few tries to remember what button does what attack but it’s an exciting way to fight, especially when doing massive damage to groups of enemies at a time.
However, the repetition of combat mechanics can be a problem later in the game if you haven’t adjusted the difficulty. Experienced RPG players can likely breeze through later parts of the game as your stats improve and fights give way to button-mashing. Cranking up the difficulty rewards less experience in general but rewards players based on skilled performance. The systems in Berseria can feel a little daunting initially but experimentation and patience pay off in the end.
A handful of minigames also exists to provide fun distractions and rewards for players. Breaking balloons with combat allows players to hone their skills while a small Diner Dash-esque game, races, and more are silly ways to lose some time. Later in the game players can send out a ship (similar to past Assassin’s Creed games) to gain items and unlock areas. Unfortunately, it’s a bit forgetful because the game is delegating to a few static menus rather than full-fledged gameplay.
Another area where Berseria stumbles is in its world design and overall technical prowess. Players will find themselves running into familiar fantasy locations such as jungles, icy lands, and humble villages. But dungeons and exploratory paths are often quite linear and require little snooping around. A few side paths may reward an item to break some of the monotony, but it doesn’t feel like enough, especially when compared to Final Fantasy 15’s massive open world. There are some nice vistas to behold from time to time but the story also forces players to backtrack a great deal. This does make the game feel tedious when you are required to revisit bland areas to advance the plot.
PS4 owners aren’t going to see anything that blows away much of their triple-A library. Berseria looks good but it also runs on a dated engine. In many ways, this still looks like Zestiria except with a 60fps framerate and sharper details. Hopefully the next entry will see an updated engine to truly unlock how these worlds can be represented. Most JRPG fans will love the fact that audio can be switched from Japanese to English at will. The English voice actors do a respectable job and I didn’t mind not always having the Japanese voices narrate my journey.
Tales of Berseria is a fantastic step in bringing one of the longest running JRPG series to a heightened Western prominence. American audiences may be comfortable with The Witcher and Mass Effect and Final Fantasy but the Tales series is more than just a niche experience with Japanese flair. Berseria is a bold direction for how the series tells stories and is simply just an enjoyable game. Those who are already fans are used to overlooking some of the flaws. But none of these problems are glaring enough to distract from the high quality the game keeps aiming for.
Reviewed for PS4