REVIEW – The latest Tales game, Berseria, hasn’t received much of attention, as Bandai Namco managed to launch the game in the West on January 24. Now, this day was used for game releases by Capcom (Resident Evil 7), SEGA (Yakuza 0 in the West), AND Square Enix (Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue), pushing Berseria aside for a bit, even though it is a decent game!

In fact, I should say all four games are nice in the quartet, although HD 2.8 FCP (no, I’m not going to write it out in full again!), which acts as a build-up to Kingdom Hearts 3, is a bit of an annoyance. I should also add that 1.5 and 2.5 will both be re-released on the PlayStation 4 as well. Moving on to Tales of Berseria, the JRPG took a little bit of different stance from the other installments in the veteran franchise.

Straight

I should start with possibly the biggest negative factor in the game. It feels a little too linear in the genre and the Tales games series! For a JRPG, it’s pretty much a given that it should have a memorable game world. I’m not saying that the games look bad, don’t get me wrong: it just doesn’t feel like something completely polished, and I’d segue way to the story with this thought. It has clichés. Sure, revenge + important decisions + about 40 hours of gameplay equals fun, but Berseria doesn’t hit as hard as it could with a generic story.

Insulting

Tales of Berseria‘s one of shining points is the banter, the back-and-forth insulting between our team members. It never ends up utterly serious, but it gives the game a good ambiance, so if you have never played any of the previous Tales games, you could also enjoy it. I should also bring up the combat system here, especially because it’s a key element of a JRPG, plus it has slight differences from former Tales titles. You can walk around freely in three dimensions during combat (Liberation-LMBS), but the characters use a shared energy bar for attacks.

If it runs out, your team will have a much higher chance to miss the attacks. It can look quite hilarious, especially if your enemy is like a foot away from you, and it can be a bit of annoyance as well. However, on the other hand, if you let this bar reach the maximum, you can use better combos and special attacks. The bar is putting the player between to ends of the scale: if you keep spamming one attack over and over, it will not be useful after some time, and if you keep waiting to let your big attacks out, you may get murdered before you reach that point. You have to find a healthy mixture between the two ends. If you find it, the game (or at least the battle) pacing picks up significantly, while you also have to consider your strategy as well. The mixture is superb.

Why is it good?

Graphically, it’s alright, as well from the audio perspective. I do need to say that Motoi Sakuraba, who was already composing music for Tales of Phantasia, can’t write anything terrible for music. The narration is also worth a mention: as the plot rolls out in Holy Midgand Empire (if you played Tales of Zestiria, it would be familiar: the two games share the world), Velvet’s and the others’ fate pulls them together harder than ever before, and you might eventually end up liking the characters. Berseria is a Tales game for the most part, but it dared to try something new, and that is my reason why I gave it such a high rating below.

Recommended for purchase

For JRPG fans, I think Tales of Berseria is a must buy. Despite the darker tone in general, the franchise’s trademarks are all present, and you can play this game even if you’re a newcomer to Tales of… series. While we didn’t receive the PS3 version in the West (Japan tends to make a few games available on both PS3 and PS4, as the decade-old console is still performing admirably), we weren’t disappointed in nor the PS4, neither the PC version. As I previously said that Berseria can take about 40-45 hours, even buying it on full price is a worthy buy. If it had a little more detailed story, and maybe less linearity, it could have received a 9, but even as an 7.8/10, Tales of Berseria is one of the surprisingly good games of January.

-V-

Publisher: Bandai Namco

Developer: Bandai Namco

Genre: JRPG

Release date: January 24, 2017 (PlayStation 4, PC)