This is it, my first taste of the legendary "Tales" games. Its a series I've heard so much good about, and an entry where the main character had my curiosity, so when the dice called it out, I jumped in eagerly. But as I finish up, I look back and, well, if you know the phrase "more then the sum of it's parts" then you are looking at a game that feels like the absolute reverse of that. It has all the pieces, but somehow is less then what it should be.
Story: It's been 3 long years since that fateful night when Velvet Crowe's life changed for the second time, although both had been tragic and as a direct result of something known as the Scarlet Night. On such nights, the sky turns red and turns some unfortunate souls into beings known as deamons: literal monsters who's maliciousness towards their once fellow man knows know bounds. The first night had been tragic as she lost her sister and the niece who had not yet even been born. But her borther-in-law, a skilled exorcist named Artorius, had protected her and her remaining brother Laphicet. It wasn't a perfect life, but they remained family and strong together... until the second time when tragedy mixed with betrayal.
For on that night, Velvet witnessed Artorius sacrificing her remaining brother in a ritual that not only ended his life, but changed hers forever, stripping her of her humanity and turning her into a therion: a deamon who eats other deamons. He then promptly imprisoned her in the deepest cell of a fortress where she sat waiting, forever hungry and kept alive by the deamons tossed into her cell for her to eat. His fellow exorcists were able to collect these demons due to a new technique they now had to control entities of magic called malaks. These (usually) human-like beings could be used to cast all the firepower they needed to suppress even the most powerful beasts. Still, this wasn't enough for her. Velvet wanted nothing more then to get out of this cell, find the man who put her there, who sacrificed Laphicet, and to avenge her him with his life. She would kill Artorius.
And then she finally got the chance: for Artorius is human and however well he was running things he was going to eventually make a mistake. His was losing control of his own malak named Seres. For reasons of her own, she made her way to Velvet's cell and freed her, allowing her to run a jailbreak to escape the fortress and begin her quest and really beginning the game.
She isn't alone on her quest however, since before even getting away, she already finds herself with two allies who will travel with you through the rest of the game: a deamon swordsman named Rokurou and s selfish as hell witch named Magilou, each joining her for their own reasons... which is a running theme of this story. You will find everyone who joins this merry band of misfits does so for completely selfish reasons: some of whom you will like, others you will find absolutely obnoxious. And the moment to moment interactions between them all is what's going to hold this game's writing together, because the story behind it is basically just going to hit the standard JRPG elements of "your quest will save the world" even if almost no one in your party legitimately cares about that, including Velvet herself. Seriously in that way the story itself really never evolves. It starts as a quest for revenge and it ends as the same one where the only change is how much Velvet and co learn is riding on if they win or lose their fight... again, not that it matters to just about any of them (there is one exception in party, but I will leave the game to reveal that).
Nor are you going to find this game offer a lot to excite on the various story beats as you play yourself. I really hate to put it this way, but the first half of the game is basically establishing the power-levels Velvet will need to reach her goal of revenge (or how far she will need to bring Artorius down to have a chance) and then showing just how much trauma and chaos it will cause on the way for literally everyone else she runs into.... as well as a few key trauma dumps along the way. For a game as long as this (it took me a little over 80 hours to finish it), it just doesn't push much in the main plot at all but still manages to leave you understanding just how awful everyone on every side really is with few exceptions.
Still what's here serves well to keep the game moving and overall it does some pretty good world-building, as you explore the globe, seeing the various sites and learning about just what makes this world tick and how much has happened in the three years Velvet was incarcerated. The skill and subtlety to that is something most game devs wish they could pull off.
6/10
Graphics: Like many JRPGs of the era, Tales of Berseria wears it's style on it's sleeve, weaving anime-cutscenes with a stylized 3D world, blending them together with an expert hand. It will start your journey with one of these cutscenes as you relive the first real tragic night of Velvet's life with her, remembering the day her sister died, only to cut to a CGI one of her in her cell fighting, killing, and eating a werewolf and swearing to her desire to kill the man who put her there.
It all looks very good to be honest: that first cutscene is of high quality, looking pretty much like you might expect an anime TV show to, using the shading and color of the world to set the ominous tone of what is to come, followed by our leading lady's dark and brooding cell where if they had chained Velvet to a wall, you honestly would not be surprised. This attention to detail never stops either as each location has it's own flavor, from the "forever autum" look of her hometown to the dreary inner workings of the fortress she starts her real journey escaping to even the winter wonderlands and tropical villages she will find herself at before the journey is over. This game understands you are playing a globe-trotting adventure and makes full use of the fantasy world and time you will be exploring. In a word, it is absolutely beautiful.
However, that is not to say it is perfect. This is a 10 year old title, and while attention was paid to the detail it offers, the tech at the time put a limit to how much it could do. It aged like fine wine, but it still aged, so those of you who need to newest highest detail a game can offer are going to need a little bit to wait into this one.
8/10
Sound: The anime aesthetic that permeates the visual side of this game will also do so for the audio, starting with the opening track it will greet you with. Before you even hit start the game will pull a little classic instrumentation to bookcase some metal rifts as the title theme blares across key cutscenes like a show might... but don't expect metal to be what you hear and remember most. This is a game taking place in a fantasy world with old-world levels of technology and you can expect a lot of the music to reflect that. A lot of string guitars casually plucking away at calmer moments, harkening to a calm day in the fields, or flute work for the almost mystical wonder of a forest scene. These moments simply sound beautiful.
But when it comes time for the fight, the music will pick up the tone, mixing in more intense themes from the orchestra, adding to the energetic feel of the moment and indulging in a little bit of electic guitar when it's all over and you see just how you did. They are never afraid to use the full range of what's available, but the game usually leans more towards orchestra then rock, even when mixing. But the result really does sound good enough I could see some people wanting to hear this outside the game.
Sound effects, on the other hand are going to be a lot more standard and generic. Do not get me wrong, everything is given the sounds it should have, and nothing is left out, but when you are playing nothing really stands out either. We've been at a point for a good long while where most games are using realistic enough sound effects that unless something stands out exceptionally strongly, there just isn't much to say there.
But voice acting is another story and this game runs the gamut here with everything from perfect natural feeling characters like the cold and relentless Velvet or Eizen, the happy-go-lucky, yet ready to be serious when it counts Rokurou, or even the overly dramatic Magilou. Most of the actors brought their A game. But that does not make everyone likeable and you will clearly have your favorites before you are done playing. Still most of the characters are believable and you get the feeling that the ones who are not are clearly either putting on an act (Hello, Magilou) or the attempt at comic relief (Hello, Bienfu). Overall a very good job done here.
9/10
Gameplay: This is unfortunately a weaker point offered by this title. Tales of Berseria is at it's core an action RPG title played from a third person camera, but one that takes a very classic style. To this end you will spend most of your time exploring the world to find towns, dungeons and other interesting locations as the story requires/allows, basically fighting your way through Velvet's quest for revenge. But for as basic as this sounds it actually offers a lot of content, if in a fairly linear form, as the game will offer you a LOT of places to visit before your time with it is up.
Most of the time, you will find your way to towns based on what the story needs you to do, and what you do there will often be just as dependent. For example, when you escape the prison you were held in at the beginning of the game, you will run aground on the ship you stole requiring you to explore the lands you find yourself in until you can get into the human city to ultimately find a way to either repair your ship or steal a new one. The plot will ultimately decide which happens (as I said this game is very linear) but the chain of events to do so will lead you try your hand at various systems as the game teaches you how they work and ultimately go find and defeat a newly minted deamon who's hiding in a nearby cave, making for a neat tutorial for most of the basics which actually do stand out from many games of the time.
For starters, yes you have stores you can buy and sell equipment at like you might expect, but this time you can also have the store enhance your gear, if you have the required parts. And rather then just sell any you find or don't need, you can dismantle that same hardware for spare parts to do these enhancements. And these will come in handy as every upgrade also comes with bonus effects while the weapon is equipped... just don't get too attached to any given weapon or armor as you can gain a lot of advantages by keeping these selections varied. You see every character in your party has the ability to master any equipment you give them, given enough time in battle with them and once you have done this, this too will give bonus advantages when using it. Add to this random effects you will find on specific copies (no two topaz blades, for example, will necessarily have the same upgrade effects) and you can have a lot of equipment varieties on your hands.
Still, cash is king when not picking up weapons off the ground so you will want to be able to get more of this too, and thankfully I found myself not needing to ever sell a single weapon or piece of armor while playing this game. Outside of earning it in combat, I found plenty of money in the form of sellable items found either laying on the ground or through a unique feature of this game in the form of your scout ship.
This ship will become available relatively early in the game and will take the form of a menu option where you select the ship, tell it where you want it to go, and it will head off to explore that area of the world, coming back usually in about 30 minutes of real-time (yes even when the game is off) with spoils for you to review and sell or use for cooking when you want. There is no penalty to using this and in fact this too levels up, gaining bonuses to it's performance as you send it along. However this is a very passive thing and more useful as a material generator then anything you will be actively worried about.
And that cooking is also something the game will explain early on as you can, provided you have the ingredients and recipe, create a meal that will grant temporary benefits for the party and you may find helpful in a tight spot. I can't honestly say how useful, however, as I basically used it for the tutorial on the mechanic and then never again. I just did not find I needed it.
And there in lies the issue I had with this game: so much of the extras are really extra and I found I did not need to use them. For example, while I expect a linear RPG to guide you where you need to be (even if it lets you go where you want and even take on side quests) this one never even remotely requires you to do so. In this case, those side quests are tougher demons with a bounty on their head, a bonus option in the game when you beat them, and their locations marked on the map by a big red dot when you are in the same section as they are. I couldn't tell you what kind of extras most of the time however, since I think I took on maybe three of them before I was done: one by accident and one because my favorite character wanted to so I figured "what the hell, why not?" But to call them optional is to make a heavy understatement. Not only did I not need to do any of it, I'm pretty convinced they did little besides add a few minutes to my total time playing.
And this same needlessness goes into the combat system too. Do not get me wrong, the basic system is actually very well made. In essence when you get into battle, you and your party enter a real-time encounter where you will directly control a character (usually Velvet, but you can change this at will). Attacking will generally mean selecting your from 4 predefined attacks you can launch at enemies, chaining them together to try to do as much damage as you can. You have full control over not only what each button does, but when it does it since each phase of the combination gets defined by you: not just what the button does, but what it does if you push it for the first button in the combo, the second, the third, and so on. You have a LOT of control here. However, you don't need it, at least I didn't. Again, outside the tutorial to change it up, I found myself just letting the game take control of this, and mashing the buttons with little regard to what I was actually doing.
However, there were a few features I did need to take advantage of, starting with the basics of dodging and blocking... more the former then the latter. Yes blocking is there and it could be VERY useful, but more because while blocking an enemy you are locked onto them and can literally hop around them for a quick dodge if you can time it right, rendering a directional attack against you pointless. It is also very possible to use the fact that most attacks in combat have a specific area they hit in to just not be there.
But the real stars here are the ultimate artes (what they call magic attacks) which often come with a big animation to show it off, and you will see these often since both characters you don't control will use them when their current behavior says to as well as later bosses. But Velvet has a unique ability where she can also go into Therion mode and this was something I found myself using as often as possible. When you put her into this mode, her health instantly rises (at least if it's not maxed out already) only to slowly drain from here on while you press the attack. She will gain health back as she fights with her deamonic hand as her now primary weapon, essentially eating her enemies alive with it. It's really cool, really effective and arguably one of the best ways to fight in the game.
Still, where this is what most of the gameplay is going to boil down to, I wish it was much more fine tuned. All the cool features are here and there are some really cool things you can do with it, but you are just not pushed to. At least on normal difficulty you can literally just power through the whole game with little to no thought or skill applied... just mash a few buttons, get in close, and trigger Velvet's secret weapon and more often then not, you will win. Occasionally I found myself having to be more strategic about when I dive in to fight, but even if I went down (which I could probably count the fights that happened in on my fingers, and remember this game took me just over 80 hours to complete), my party was good enough to keep going and either finish the fight or resurrect Velvet to let me get back into the battle while doing absolutely nothing. I barely even had to use healing items, and a party death only happened twice in the last level of the game. You can basically ignore everything they offered and just mash buttons, which is why I can't call this a very strong title.
5/10
Bugs: While the game ran damn near perfect I did find an odd quirk if your system can't give it the resources it needs. While most games will reduce the framerate of a game, Tales of Berseria appears to have a fixed one, as the game itself will slowdown instead of losing the smoothness. So if this game plays in slow motion that would be why.
Digital Rights Management: Unfortunately this is a game that has DRM of the most infamous type: this is a game that uses Denuvo antitamper on top of the Steam store itself. This means from time to time you WILL need an internet connection to prove to the game you have not modified it in order to play.
Source: PC Gaming Wiki
Overall: Overall, I can not call this a bad game. It has a solid setup, the moment to moment story keeps you engaged very well, and combat, does what it needs to do when you get into battle. However, I can not call it a good game either. That story overall never really goes anywhere beyond "what is the next step to extract revenge" like we are playing an RPG made back in the early days and that same combat while it keeps things moving does nothing to challenge you out of basically mashing your favorite button on the controller and occasionally hitting the triggers to (assuming you are using a controller) to turn on the juice. It's really the best example I've seen of just enough story backed by good interactions, and just enough gameplay to keep going but little else to it.
I can't really recommend this one, not on that note. It just doesn't do enough.
Score:
System Requirements:
- Intel Core Duo E8400 running at 3.0 Ghz or AMD Phenom II X2 550 running at 3.1 Ghz
- Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX or AMD Radeon HD 4850
- 2 GB RAM
- Windows 7 (64-bit only)
- 15 GB hard drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 5 5600G running at 3.9 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 11
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
Source: Steam
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