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Tales of Berseria Import Thread
- Thread starter Rpgmonkey
- Start date
jack_package_200
Banned
I would love to have an explanation as well.
I just finished the game actually, so I'll provide my opinion on it.
Berseria brings the series back to form, if you ask me. I won't say much about the combat since I'm not the biggest technical guru on it, but I personally found it more fun than Vesperia's. All the characters are pretty enjoyable to play, though I find the whole casting mechanic to be kind of awkward, but I probably just suck.
I liked the story much more than Vesperia's, since it was straight to the point, although some weird roundabouts here and there, but I felt those helped with the character dynamics along the way. Technically, it's still kind of a "save the world" plot but the motivations weren't focused on that at all, which was great. In the end, it was really just about an edgy protagonist wanting to get revenge, who I might add isn't all that edgy once you get to know her more (but she's still edgy).
Berseria's cast pretty much jumped right to the top of my favorites among all the other mothership titles, much more than Vesperia's even. The party being only 6 members probably factored into that, but that led to amazing chemistry and banter among them. Every single member in the party is very likeable. Laphicet's the best kid character so far in the entire series, too; he's crazy adorable (his English VA not so much, sadly). I ended up liking Eizen a lot more than I was expecting to, and the fact that he's related to a certain stoic blond loli in Zestiria doesn't help. I could go on with the other characters. I also liked that they didn't telegraph the whole traitor trope they seem to shove down our throats in every title.
I don't think I bothered with all the sidequests, but I felt there was plenty to do. I still need to do the cameo quest too, actually. I haven't played through Vesperia on PS3, so I can't quite compare.
I guess my biggest issues were the uninspired fields and dungeons, reused assets, and okay music; there were some decent tracks. And also the way some characters turned out because of the crappy series called Zestiria. Makes me wish it never existed sometimes. Also needed more skits, which is probably where Vesperia wins. Loot system was kinda lame and tedious.
That said, a character cast makes or breaks a game for me, and Berseria's was perfect and a lot more fun than Vesperia's. That's enough for me to say it's better than Vesperia. A plot that doesn't make me cringe is just icing on the cake. Now they just need to throw away this crap engine they're on and just improve Vesperia's to today's standards and life would be perfect. Also, 60 FPS.
To begin with, most people only liked Vesperia so much because of Yuri and how different that kind of was compared to many other protags at the time. Otherwise, Vesperia is pretty much a slightly better refined version of Symphonia with a great art style.
Berseria takes Yuri and makes the protagonist Yuri x11, and focuses specifically on her with the other main characters not be offensive at all.
And from what i hear, the locations and environments are not anywhere near as banal or repeating as Xillia or Zestiria, which makes it much better as well.
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Does the story feel more focused than Zestiria?
Shouta
Member
Way more focused than most Tales games.
They changed styles and used a different engine. To be hair to a lot of post-Vesperia games, they have way better animation than that game. The trade-off is that the environmental graphics and the like are not as good.
No more fixed camera.
For me, Vesperia was amazing not only because of Yuri but because of the synergy between the whole crew. For me, Yuri wasn't that much more interesting a character than Judith or Carol. Oh, and that amazing artstyle helped a lot as well of course!
I hope Berseria can offer a support cast that is as good as Vesperia's, that'd be awesome!
I don't know if it's better than Vesperia in the long run, both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I think it holds its own very well for these reasons:
- I think the cast is better and while still a little tropey, I think they tried to give the characters, particularly the younger three who experience the most development (Velvet, Laphicet, and Eleanor), more parts to their character that are explored over the course of the game. Compared to how say, Rita, had a more singular element to her character that the game focuses on and drives a lot of her interactions and development for a large portion of the game. Like I think Velvet could have been a cut-and-dry tsundere-type character as well, but she's actually quite normal (if a little monotone) in most conversations, and I think they did pretty good at contextualizing her behavior over the course of the game and seeing her change (or even retain) the way she interacts with certain characters as you progress through it. Another example is Laphicet where the game kinda breaks his development up into a first phase where he starts to develop emotions and opinions, and a second phase where he takes these emotions and opinions and uses them to figure out what kind of position and impact he wants to have regarding the group and world around him, instead of trying to stretch out one of the two phases out over the entire game. I will say that Magilou may not be to everyone's liking though, for me she was annoying at some point, amusing and interesting in others. Rokurou, Eizen, and Magilou are Yuri-ish characters who are older and have already been through a lot of stuff, and while they have their own goals, are mainly there to give some insight on the world and guide the younger characters.
- While the art style may or may not be up to debate as better or worse, I think Berseria does display a much firmer grasp of 3D presentation. There's a much better understanding of animation, camera movement, dialogue pacing, and cinematography shown in the cutscene direction that makes many cutscenes look much more dynamic and interesting to watch than several of those in Vesperia.
- The main narrative kinda meanders around a bit and there are some parts I would have liked to see a little more fleshed out, but I think it mostly understands what it's about in terms of its themes and characterization, and how the various events, twists, and turns should tie into them. When I got to the end I didn't feel like the plot went off the rails like Tales has a bad habit of. It's not super original or anything but it's a pretty fun, consistent adventure. Vesperia I felt lost the plot around the last 40% or so when you suddenly have to collect magic spirits to stop the sorta-random final bad guy in his sorta-random sky fortress, and how the story kept going even though most if not all of the main characters saw their character arcs to their conclusions.
- At least from a quantity perspective, the game has a good amount of content. There's plenty of bosses, items, minigames, costumes, attachments, artes, etc.
- Combat-wise I tend to like their weirder/more experimental combat systems than the Symphonia/TP-based stuff so I give it the edge in that area. Someone who still thinks Vesperia (and maybe Xillia/Xillia 2) had better combat than Xillia/Xillia 2/Graces/Zestiria I wouldn't expect to have their position changed by this one.
That said, I think Vesperia has the better art style more overall, it has more thoughtfully-crafted environments (they've improved with Berseria but I think they'd be better off making some of them smaller but denser and more detailed in the next game), it (particularly the PS3 version) is still the golden standard in content for a Tales game, and it has somewhat better music.
Considering that most people are saying the cast is great besides me, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Laphicet > Karol
If that's true, then it will be time for a new avatar!
Edit: Thanks for the impressions and comparison to Vesperia by the way! Vesperia is my second favourite game of all time, so hearing people, especially Tales veterans, say that this game is/might be better than Vesperia gets me incredibly pumped. I like that people say the characters have a lot of development during the game, since that is the reason why Carol is one of my favourite characters.
The Bandai Namco representative at the PS Access Eurogamer Expo livestream said this game was coming "SUPER early" in 2017.
Art style. Vesperia employed a more simplified character model design and world design in favor of brighter colors and more water color art palette, which gave the world a lot of design consistency. The later games like Xillia ditched this brighter simplified art aesthetic for a more basic type of rendering but with far more complex world design and character model density.
The art style suffered but the graphics got better and the world design became more complex. Of course this compromised a lot of the visual style of Tales, because Vesperia and previous games were just fixed camera angle singluar areas broken up with a flat traditional world map.
THe later games tried to give a more 3D perspective on both towns and getting to and from, which with the Tales budget, was not very possible. Towns got less consistent in art style, and the dungeons between towns which previously were filled by the world map became copy and pasted samey areas where you fought monsters.
I don't think an engine change generally had anything to do with it, from what i hear, they have been using the same basic engine since Symphonia, just filled out for the needs of the specific game
Probably February. Juggling this and Persona 5 = death. A blissful time sinking death, but still.
Oh god it better not be February. There's enough JRPGs coming out that month as it is. Persona 5 and Nier Automata will take priority for me if that's the case.
It's gonna be hard in any way: late january will still conflict partially with the stacked month of february, and march suffers the same fate. Early January would be an option, but I wonder if they will manage that. If they release in February, though, all JRPGs (including Berseria) will suffer for it: the amount of JRPGs will mean that first week and month sales will be drop for all, and heavily so for some. I hope they have more sense than that, but they probably don't...
Primethius
Banned
Wow at the impressions saying it's better then Vesperia. I'm super hyped now.
Nice, can you switch in characters from the bench on the fly as well, or can you only switch between the four that are in battle?
GasProblem
Member
Uhoh, no way I can juggle Persona 5 and Berseria :<
Yeah. I expect Berseria will get buried if it releases in February. Early-mid January would probably be best, though mid-late March probably wouldn't be too bad?
You can switch between any character easily in battle
Based on the demo, you can switch instantly between those 4 in that enter battle, while the other 2 are reserved and can be switched in to create combos. However, this costs BP or whatever it's called in this game (Zestiria's gauge for using fusion, etc.), so it's not as good as Xillia's free switch.
I wonder. I feel like the audience that would play Horizon Zero Dawn will have a significant overlap with the audience for Berseria, and I think people would choose Horizon over Berseria if Berseria were to release mid-March. Late March might work, though, but I feel that is the earlier they can after Horizon (instead they should do early January!).
I cleared it in 50 hours or so. Been 50 hours in P5 now and only at the 4th dungeon
You switch out to one of the two reserve members with a Blast Point (BP), I think was the term. Another cool thing is you can switch out any of the other characters you aren't controlling to a reserve member too. So it's pretty convenient for a variety of things.
Horizon and Berseria would not have a significant overlap and I can't imagine why you think they would. Persona 5 and Tales of Berseria would be the overlap, i.e. JRPG fans.
Berseria's coming to PC and I don't have a PS4 so I know what I'm getting.
Cornbread78
Member
Impressions are looking so damn possitive. Now, we just need an NA release date! I just hope it's seperate from Neir and Persona 5.
Toadthemushroom
Member
Do you mean dungeons as in level design? I didn't think Vesperia's level designs were that great anyway - mostly linear routes with a few branching paths here and there, but the layout of towns were mostly memorable and indoor locations had interesting maps.
As others have mentioned, it's the art direction, but it's also the choice of tech used in the trade-off to a free moving camera and larger draw distances.
Vesperia has an automatically programmed camera so the designers can control exactly what, and how much to display on screen at once. What makes Vesperia look rather good is the use of true cel shading (thick black outlines around characters which require twice as many polygons to draw) and a much softer looking image via depth of field, which complements the colour palette nicely.
In a way Vesperia is like a (at the time) modern reimagining of Tales of Symphonia's visual style. Symphonia also had a soft look to it, with heavy use of depth of field and almost-painted textures, and it too used thick black outlines around its character models to achieve a more true cel-shaded look. Tales of the Abyss ditched all of this, probably due to hardware limitations (Symphonia on PS2 is missing the depth of field and cel shaded outlines).
LimitedTimeGamer
Member
so, for those that have played both Zesteria and Berseria, i have questions for you.
Specifically
1. Is there a bonus you get from playing/completing Zesteria?
2. If No, is there any benefit from playing Zesteria first, not including terms like Seraphim or shepard or whatever.
Specifically
1. Is there a bonus you get from playing/completing Zesteria?
2. If No, is there any benefit from playing Zesteria first, not including terms like Seraphim or shepard or whatever.
lucablight
Member
How's the music in this game? I was extremely disappointed Go Shiina didn't return as I thought Zestiria had the best soundtrack in the series.
I finished the game on Saturday and the music is the weakest part. They only reused Zavids theme the rest of the music is just generic. When you see how flashy some of the combat scenes are in this game it's disappointing that NB didn't throw a bit more budget at the music side of the game.
Apparently the anime is good, so this might be the first case the anime adaption of a game is better than the actual game.
StarSketch
Banned
I've been seeing episodic reviews of the anime, and people who haven't played Zestiria are getting pretty confused on terms and such.
I mean it's still good, but I'm not sure how good a recommendation of "don't play the game watch the anime" is here.
It's a shame that the two games that Go Shiina wrote (part of) the OST for are considered to be among the weakest in the series. It's a bummer that Berseria seems to improve on zestiria in all aspects except for the OST which went back to generic Tales quality. Why can't Shiina compose the OST for a good Tales for once? :<
Gungrave
I can imagine a Bamco representative going up to the Tales team and being like: "You have just enough budget and time for either hiring a good composer or making a good game. Choose it wisely."
At any rate, seems like I'll be giving Berseria a try. Will watch the Zestiria anime when it's close to the US release date I guess. Maybe I'll get around to Xillia too but considering how stacked I am with much better RPGs for the foreseeable future I really doubt it.
You mean crazy manly, right?
Dice//
Banned
Honestly, I thought Tales generally does kid characters pretty well (mainly because they're much more competent than actual children of the same age). Even when they're loli, they're not helpless.
...I definitely never came around to Xillia 2's Elle Mel Marta though... just annoying.
To be fair, Sakuraba usually just sucks harder for the Tales games. IIRC he's actually told to dial it back for the games. But I mean just about anything he's done for other games has a markedly different sound.
Cornbread78
Member
Tbf, it's almost like two yotally different experiences with the way they have reordered the story and character introductions. The anine for Zestiria has been excellent abd has definatey been favoring Alisha and putting her in focus much more than the game did. I would say this has to be a direct response to the outrage in Japan over her depoction and usage in thr game. Either way, they have done a great job with it, however, it does not replace the game experience imo.
Nice to hear the Berseria MC is an even Yurier Yuri, but I hope folks don't mean that only in the sense that the MC is a darker, more adult protagonist than what you usually get in JRPGs.
I mean, that's a big plus alone, but Yuri is also charismatic and funny as fuck imo, which is what makes him so great in my eyes.
I mean, that's a big plus alone, but Yuri is also charismatic and funny as fuck imo, which is what makes him so great in my eyes.
Velvet is edgy as fuck and generally makes Yuri look e tame when it comes to 'darkness' and being 'adult'.
What i like about velvet though, is that even though she is so obviously edgy and was clearly designed in that way, she's also portrayed very normally as a person and interacts with people whom she likes in a normal fashion without any melodramatic airs. But those she doesn't like, she will either intentionally ignore or immediately try to kill.
Its also better because we know how she was before shit hits the fan, so we can see her progression from a normal young girl to edgy as fuck but still semi normal, even if somewhat depressed, if that makes any sense whatsoever