Tales of Berseria (Ps3 and Ps4)

I'm trying to piece Berseria's plot together. So there's witches, and that's what Magilou is.

And then there's a bunch of white-mage-looking churchy people, and they're called the Abbey.

Is there any possibility of the churchy people being bigoted and hateful toward the witches?

There is not, the reason is spoilery

Spoiler:

scratch one fanfic idea off the list

Eleanor, Velvet, and Laphicet's stories, from what I know, seem like things you could work with, Eizen and Rokurou too actually, basically the whole party could fit the kinds of stories I've read of yours, except Magilou (well I mean you could try with her just more of a stretch) You should also look into Oscar and Teresa

But I want Magilou for my despair waifu.

She's pretty aloof she was major spoilers

Spoiler:

if that helps at all

Goddammit Namco. They announced a Collector's Edition at the same time as the release date announcement, I didn't see any articles about how limited it would be until today and it's already sold out everywhere because they were limited to 10k units in North America.

Edit: Yeah, failures all around. PlayStation Trophies and Gematsu didn't post about it until today, and on the 7th Siliconera just said that a CE was announced so I thought nothing of it, they didn't mention anything about the fact that it's limited to 10,000 units. I literally had no way of knowing that it would be so limited until today.

Considering that the CE is even going to include a prequel novel and such, I feel like I won't be getting the full package.

I considered buying the CE, but $200 is a little too much for me.

Not getting the CE this time. Hopefully I won't regret it, haha.

Gotta agree $200 is too steep, (though it looks worth it) T_T....The Persona 5 CE is also more affordable and comes out very close to Berseria. I am going to miss the prequel story, charas, and keychains, but oh well. Doesn't help KH2.8 comes out the same day so many money will be spent for January in general...

Managed to pre-order the CE at a local GameStop, was about to panic if I couldn't get it lol.

Not interested in Berseria I won't get it.I'II wait for the 17th Tales game

collectors edition pre-ordered

ironcially i skipped the last two collectors due to money shortage XD

Looks awesome!

Harbinger wrote:

Looks awesome!

Warning, a bit spoilerish I'm afraid.

Amazing trailer though.

They really meshed in the spoilers in there LOL It's a nice trailer, and especially nice to finally have a dub trailer! I am liking the voices, I've heard people saying some nuance was lost by the localization team, especially with Magilou, but I'm hoping the final product will be a majority good piece. I'm super excited!

The spoilers aren't very spoilery unless you actually know any plot details already, then they are immensely spoilery LOL

Just now finding that trailer... yeesh, anime incomprehensibility 101. But that's hardly unheard of with this series.

So I don't know how the plot's gonna turn out, but I dig the intro to the game despite the initially slow pace (I know it's so that the plot has impact.) Dub is stellar as usual, Magilou is definitely better in English than Japanese, the opening has good ol' FLOW's singing intact, good stuff.

The demo was really, really bad. A lot of the dialog was jargon-heavy and there was a long skit right away that will set off some Tumblr feminists like a wildfire. Having a full party also makes it super chaotic when trying to experiment with the Souls and Break Soul mechanic, I just didn't grasp it compared to Zestiria's implementation...The actual game has this eureka moment once you get the Break Soul ability, it's kinda like Resonance of Fate's medals: in this case, killing, stunning or afflicting ailments increases your maximum potential Souls/combo count up to 5 and restores spent Souls mid-combo, and you can use Souls permanently to perform powerful Break Souls to heal yourself, gain buffs and perform big damage combo enders, a much easier to understand and less do-or-die alternative to Armitization.

Zestiria felt like too much of the SG management was out of your hands, though I'm sure there are equipment builds to maximize SG restoral. With battle tactics becoming key items you unlock over time, titles straight up telling you how to get them, and the equipment skill grid removed and mastery system being greatly simplified, Berseria is a fuckton more intuitive. Making the game all free run-based with in-battle camera movement is a no brainer, this actually feels like a new generation of Tales games.

Don't get me wrong, I like Zestiria for what it is and its sense of adventure, but it's one of the clunkiest Tales games even with the always-free run battle tactic.

Jargon-heaviness in a demo set umpteen-hours into an RPG of any kind makes more sense to me than a jargon-heavy trailer; the first is inevitable, the second was a trailer arranger's choice. Though I suppose the alternative is more resolve-related smack talk.

I am about to finish Zestiria for the first time just in time for Bersey (

Spoiler:

), played it in stops and starts that were at least just as much real life's fault as the game's. But I never felt inspired to really grasp the particulars either.  The game doesn't tell you how much damage you're actually doing which makes the weakness/resistance system felt less rewarding (its all damage, right?) and the skill tree never seemed valuable enough to ignore sheer stats for, which is the conclusion some equipment spelunkers came to as well for the run at least. While the more obvious perks, like equipment with different stat emphases, mixing martial and seraphic artes mid-combo, or getting faster casting times for using a spell later in a combo, which probably isn't even new to anyone but me having not played Graces, are all in Berseria.

The problem, and benefit, of the equipment grid is that it was min-maxing without the min. You could get some really bonuses or resistances for completing a row or column (G-union or E-union respectively,) but you would get some CRAZY shit for stacking the same skill on a character up to 16 times. Look at this:

Spoiler:

It was an interesting system, but because of how equipment fusing worked and you were at the whims of RNG from enemy drops and even store inventory, it felt like one designed for MMO players or a Monster Hunter-style game rather than for a single-player RPG. (I know you could use Normins to force areas to drop equipment with a certain skill bias, but that's still RNG.)


Either way, I get it. Zestiria was a BIG experiment, and I think Berseria is a perfect response, resolving a surprisingly high number of issues without going back to a pre-Zestiria battle system right away. Like you, I need to finish Zestiria still because other things have constantly sidetracked me, but Berseria is making me feel less compelled to do so because it does everything I wanted.

Now that the game's been out, what is the purpose of the girl with the bluejay dress and the Kohaku shoes? Is she a villain? Is she a playable character?

Spoiler:

? [Early game spoiler tagged by Taiyz.]

I was kinda wondering about her.

You need to stop spoiling things with your questions.

Anyway, you're talking about Seres? I kinda need to sum up the entire prologue:

Spoiler:

So yeah, she's taken.

I'm at the final dungeon now in Berseria, I've been waiting to get there to come to this part of the forums to discuss without getting myself spoiled with my curiosity of spoiler tags but....no one else has posted yet LOL

This game is PHENOMENAL, its so classic, with some nice new tweaks, its not perfect, but it is SUCH a breath of fresh air after the Xillias and Zestiria (which was its own thing, I appreciate them trying new things, a lot of it fell flat with me but there it is). Berseria is solid, its characters, its story, its gameplay, its pacing, all so, so solid! It has the content to back it up, and nothing about it feels particularly bare-bones, rushed, or unpolished (aside from sidequest dialogue typo mishaps!)

In terms of how it fits in with my feelings of other Tales, its entered my top 5 firmly, with time and the wearing off of newness, the Xillias dropped to the very bottom, and Zestiria is in a limbo, but this game got me feeling some kind of ways! I'd say the only Tales games I like more/struck more of a chord with me are Legendia, Hearts, and Vesperia. This has beaten out Graces (narrowly) and Innocence R for me. It finally feels like a natural progression of the series, with characters of whom I honestly cannot choose an absolute favourite, because they are great. (Though Eleanor is a very similar character to me in so many ways, and Velvet was absolutely amazing, Eizen on the other hand may be the character I was least interested in but even then he is still well-written)

If I had a main criticism about this game, it would be the soundtrack. Sad moments were well written but I never felt like the generic sad track ever went well, in fact, it pulled me out of the scene and stopped me from crying. There was also the field music looping really, really badly with a huge silent gap. Notably good music, though, was Velvet's theme and its variations, and the way Magilou's theme was used. They established meanings attached to them and were played appropriately and paced well with what was happening and what characters were thinking.

All around, this has been a REALLY fun experience so far, I have not had this much fun, and been so engrossed, in a JRPG for a very long time. It got me both nostalgic and exhilarated with the new. It meshes together well as a package. This game has me extremely excited for the direction of the series, where I was doubtful I'd ever enjoy a Tales game the same way after Zestiria (and the marketing of this game making it seem very run-of-the-mill to me).

I could go on and on, I loved the weapons system (though I wish there was a more tangible way of understanding what goes into gaining the points in battle for skill learning), I loved battles, I loved the story (writing, pacing, characters, all of it!), I loved the addition of so many other things to do with your time in the game that are actually enjoyable(Code Red Demons, Wandering Enemies, so many mini-games, the Sector 4 Zones). If anything I feel like it could have used one more act before the final one, it felt done too soon! (and I feel like the characters get very little time interacting after all secrets revealed, I'd love to see more of them together once its all out there, but I'm not done all post-entering final dungeon sidequests yet!)

I would love to hear others' impression of the game! I'm still a bit starry-eyed because I'm still getting through the last stretch, but I don't have the qualms I had with Xillia/2 and Zestiria that I had even while I was playing them. This really is such a breath of fresh air.