Tales of Berseria has been recently released for both the Playstation 4 and PC (steam) thanks to Bandai Namco’s efforts. This title plays out as a your typical Japanese role-playing game where you enter into darker times within this beautifully-created anime world. But will these “tales†lead to a fulfilling experience? Let’s explore….
You take control of the main character named Velvet Crowe who has been living happily in a village when all of a sudden during the event called the Scarlet Night, there has been a magical outbreak that eventually turned her into a demon. Consequently, her world has fallen apart as she loses her family and becomes locked up in a citadel. Later on, she manages to get out with the objective to go after the individual responsible for all this.
Looking at the gameplay behind Tales of Berseria, the battle system involves allowing your party of characters to initially roam free in certain open areas. Meanwhile, you may come across enemies which you can attack, defend against, or run away from. Each of the six characters within your party has their own set of special moves. Since you can switch between them anytime during battles, you get quite the diversity with the different attack styles from the warriors to the spell-casters.
One thing to note is that the number of times you can pull off these mentioned actions are dependant upon the amount of souls. If you use them all up, then your progress will be adversely affected. Luckily, these souls do regenerate so you’ll need to use them wisely. Being effective at managing them will also mean being able to pull of Break Souls which can lead to even heavier and more powerful attacks at enemies.
Control-wise, Tales of Berseria plays out very well. Four of the action commands can be configured to your heart’s content to your controller. There are 16 different customization slots that you can use as well. It is easy to pick and play, though not right away since you’ll want to spend just a little time customizing. Since Tales of Berseria has a fast-paced gameplay element, you will want to be able to get up and moving about immediately.
Tales of Berseria does offer plenty of memorable and exciting moments. Some of the mini-games within are pretty decent. Additionally, Tales of Berseria does make effort in keeping things light-hearted especially with some of the costumes that can consist of goofy-looking mascots. But there are also other aspects of the game that can seem monotonous. In particular, the dungeon layouts themselves are uninspired and lack some challenges. Furthermore, while crafting items are straight forward, it makes the whole experience of building equipment missing the layer of excitement. Still, the story and character development is unique and deep enough for you to want to push further in the game.
As for the presentation, Tales of Berseria does have a lot of good points. The music fit appropriately with the game’s environment and does even have some catchy tunes behind it. Backgrounds and character designs are impressive with the implementation of its anime style. Further to that, animations are running smooth with the subtle details from the facial expressions reflecting the attention of detail here. Nonetheless, upon closer examination, the textures do look kind of rough while some parts of the environment appear pretty ordinary.
Tales of Berseria has quite the involved storyline, action-oriented battle system, and overall acceptable audio and visuals. Although there could be some little polish here and there, fans of the JRPGs will have a great time with this be it on the PS4 or PC.
