So this was my game for Julys beat a game longer than 20 hours theme, however as it has taken me 122 hours I never got around to it during July…
Tales of Berseria™
122 hours - 51 of 51 achievements
SuperFluffyRating™ : 7/7
The ‘Tales’ games hold an important place in my gaming history and many hours have been sunk into the series, so it’s no small feat that I think Berseria might actually edge it out for the best Tales game in my heart.
The story takes a far darker turn than anything seen in the previous Tales games, and you play a ragtag group of anti-heroes with very little regard for most of the people they meet up with. The story follows a fairly simple story of revenge, where you play almost the villain type on your quest to kill the nation’s hero. There’s also something deeply satisfying about being able to play as a team of blatant criminals. The cast is fantastic and the writing is strong and you will actually acquire all the party members pretty early on in the game, although this is preferable due to how the equipment mastery system works (see below).
The intro/tutorial segment is the perfect length (some Tales games have ones that drag on too long, looking at you Tales of Z), and the actual story progresses in a reasonable fashion with very little filler, it was altogether enjoyable. The skit system is a general upgrade over Z as they can happen at any time again, ala Symphonia instead of just at Save points and Inns. There are lots of references to Zestiria stren throughout the game, this game taking place 1000s of years in the past compared to Zestiria, and the ending ties itself directly into Zestiria, however playing Tales of Z first is not a must (although it helps you see how much the series has improved!).
The world map is expansive, and similar to how Z plays with no overall world map and just all the dungeons/fields linked up, however with the addition of ports and harbours its easy to have no idea how everything links up as a lot of the traveling to new lands happens in cutscenes so come the end of the game when I was trying to get to particular areas for achievements I have to actually open the map and work out where half of the stuff was.
The combat engine is largely an iteration and upgrade on the Zestiria combat engine with lots more polishing and it plays a lot better. They replaced (thank god) the skills system from Zestiria with what is probably my favorite system, that being, each new piece of a equipment has a new skill you can learn and is instantly accessible once you equip, but if you want to keep the ability you need to ‘learn’ it through earning points in battle (a system that reminds me heavily of the FF IX ability system which I loved).
The soundtrack is weak for a Tales entry, but the soundtrack is still a solid piece of this game, I just don’t think there was ever a song that made me think “I need this in my life more”
All in all I enjoyed this game a lot and look forward to the next Tales games in the future.
Congratulations!
Any particular reason your Steam profile is set to private?
My birthday is coming up and I’m dissuading/preventing people from buying me anything, once it passes I’ll go back to unprivate
A great review!! I haven’t played Berseria or Zestiria yet, though I own Z and heard only good things about B. I tried the first, like, hour of Xilia and was put off of the modern Tales games. (Vesperia is my favorite, with Symphonia being a big nostalgia blanket coming in number 2)
Based off of what you said, I’ll probably aim for playing Berseria sooner rather than later - I just have to find the tight time to snag it. I’ve seen it pop up half price here and there but never at the right money-time. (and, since I own it, I really should be playing Zestiria first…)
I mean, I for one loved all the references to Z in B so I’d recommend doing Z first. That said B is a direct upgrade over everything Z has to offer (which imo would make it terrible to do them backwards) so if you don’t mind not playing Z at all you could skip straight to B.
Aaaaa, in that case I’ll do Z. I DID hear decent things about it, and as long as it improved over Xilia (did it?) I think it’ll be relatively painless.
I thought map design and character development in X was bland, but I didn’t dislike the game. Zestiria just suffers from a terrible equipment system that I genuinely gave up trying to figure out until trying to do the end game dungeons where it was required
Kitty! I had given up on the Tales series after like… the 3-4 last ones.
This makes me want to play one again ^^
What only 120 hours to complete? Sounds rather easy. But sooooon I will have completed Zestiria too -_- Well, I managed to play the game in Chaos Mode on my first run and kept it until the end of Hexen Isle. But I couldnt see myself to farm items another 20 hours just so I can beat Despot Heldalf. So now I am playing on Hard and rofl stomp through Alisha’s story. Should be done in a few hours actually.
Well, Berseria looks interesting and achievements seem to be far more forgiving (with one exception). But I think for the moment I need something else than another large JRPG. Need to play some shorter and faster games first ^^
Welp, congratulations on completion.