Yoshitaka Hirota wrote most of Shadow Hearts' music. Kikuta only did the soundtrack for Koudelka.
..but yeah, that kind of music in a Tales of game would be a big shake-up, in a good way.
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Tales of Berseria Import Thread
- Thread starter Rpgmonkey
- Start date
Yoshitaka Hirota wrote most of Shadow Hearts' music. Kikuta only did the soundtrack for Koudelka.
..but yeah, that kind of music in a Tales of game would be a big shake-up, in a good way.
As I wrote he wasn't there since thus my surprise to see him again (Symphonia 2 was 8 years ago), and if he's really solely responsible for all those skits I'd say he did fine.
10 hours in and dull fields (plus backtracking through them - at least you can warp using a consumable item) and annoying inventory system, I'm liking Berseria a lot. Really curious to see where the story goes.
As for the equipment system, while better than Zestiria, it still doesn't solve the problem of not being able to equip the newest and strongest items, if you want to have as many master abilities as possible mastered.
Plus the whole equipment dismantling/upgrading system feels like a chore, especially with random skills.
I really don't understand the idea behind equipment drops with random stats in linear jrpgs. Are there people who find this fun?
I think that stuff like this should stay in loot games like Diablo or mmos like PSO2, where it belongs.
As for the equipment system, while better than Zestiria, it still doesn't solve the problem of not being able to equip the newest and strongest items, if you want to have as many master abilities as possible mastered.
Plus the whole equipment dismantling/upgrading system feels like a chore, especially with random skills.
I really don't understand the idea behind equipment drops with random stats in linear jrpgs. Are there people who find this fun?
I think that stuff like this should stay in loot games like Diablo or mmos like PSO2, where it belongs.
Hentailover
Member
Holy shit, I am sorry to everyone who compared
Artorius' Hi Ougi to Yuri... turns out it even has the exact same name 
Wrapping up my transcription of the staff roll
Some observations:
- The BN Studios section is for the first time completely in-house (in the past it included subcontracted but on-site employees and only referred supporting companies). This makes it easier to see what e.g. tri-Crescendo (who are on-site) handled (and tri-Crescendo appears to stay as system programmers for the Tales series). In general the credit sections are nicely specified now.
- Staff seems stable now, first time since the Tales Studio dissolution. Conversely this makes it very unlikely there is a second Tales team in the making.
- Notable absences at this point are former "Team Symphonia" staff like Takashi Hasegawa (no longer doing scenarios?), Hidenori Yamauchi (was thanked in Z) and Kenji Anabuki (last seen as director of X2) who all still appear to be working at BN Studios.
- It appears even script writing is outsourced now? In general amount of outsourcing remains high.
- Surprising returnees in Osamu Hisano (battle programmer for S and A, completing his move of Tales battle to pure 3D so to say) and Masaki Hiramatsu (scenario for R and S2, did the new skits in this (which I'd say is the biggest improvement B is bringing to the table) as well as scenario together with Yuuta Hase and Naoki Yamamoto).
Overall this was a pretty boring staff roll to transcribe
Some observations:
- The BN Studios section is for the first time completely in-house (in the past it included subcontracted but on-site employees and only referred supporting companies). This makes it easier to see what e.g. tri-Crescendo (who are on-site) handled (and tri-Crescendo appears to stay as system programmers for the Tales series). In general the credit sections are nicely specified now.
- Staff seems stable now, first time since the Tales Studio dissolution. Conversely this makes it very unlikely there is a second Tales team in the making.
- Notable absences at this point are former "Team Symphonia" staff like Takashi Hasegawa (no longer doing scenarios?), Hidenori Yamauchi (was thanked in Z) and Kenji Anabuki (last seen as director of X2) who all still appear to be working at BN Studios.
- It appears even script writing is outsourced now? In general amount of outsourcing remains high.
- Surprising returnees in Osamu Hisano (battle programmer for S and A, completing his move of Tales battle to pure 3D so to say) and Masaki Hiramatsu (scenario for R and S2, did the new skits in this (which I'd say is the biggest improvement B is bringing to the table) as well as scenario together with Yuuta Hase and Naoki Yamamoto).
Overall this was a pretty boring staff roll to transcribe
Thanks a lot for your staff info as always.
So... no second team means we won't see a new Tales very soon, right? Like 2018 domestic release wise.
That's the most likely possibility yes.
Another completely different team could already be working on the first PS4 exclusive entry but yeah... seeing how Bamco usually handles its IP it's not happening.
Some Nobody
Junior Member
By domestic you mean Japan-only? 'Cause yeah I can totally see that. I wouldn't mind them taking even longer but realistically Bandai-Namco is only going to pour a certain amount of cash into this so I'm not sure how much time would help them.
18 hours in and I'm still enjoying the game. I even got used to the equipment shuffling, but the fields/dungeons keep being terribly boring. Even worse, later in the game they got bigger, so enjoy an hour in those mostly empty same-y corridors with enemies only in big open spots between them (bad guys stop chasing you when you go into regular paths).
Looking at my current levels (~27), I'm really curious how long the game is. Anyone watching the streams etc. can confirm?
Looking at my current levels (~27), I'm really curious how long the game is. Anyone watching the streams etc. can confirm?
flatearthpandas
Member
Really on the fence about grabbing this. The demo was fun but this talk of equipment shuffling is worrying me after how annoying Zestiria was with equipment
Seems it's more like Vesperia than Zestiria when it comes to equipment, though there is some of both (and some of Graces too I guess, though thanksfully not that much).
It's not like in Zestiria where you have to fuse the same equipment to get new skills or something. If you have many of the same equipment, decompose the one you don't need and then use the raw material to upgrade the equipment you want. It's really not as overwhelming as in Zestiria.
This look actuality a pretty good upgrade system !
The one I watched off and on to get to see the staff roll took around 60 hours and had a team around level 70 when facing the last boss, but was clearly taking it slowly doing plenty side quests.
Elven_Star
Member
Same here. I haven't played Hearts R yet. How's that one?
If you're waiting for a good story in a Tales game, it's going to be a long wait.
I mean, Tales of the Abyss was kinda great, Symphonia was classic but it was good. I even liked Tales of Legendia a lot because it was so different than the other games in the serie!
If you think Symphonia's story was good you should play it again :lol.
Neither was Abyss either.
Thanks for transcribing the staff roll! This is interesting, as always.
Speaking of Naoki Yamamoto... I correctly predicted he'd fall back on one of his favorite tropes. No unprompted spoilers, though, so I'll just say that I hope they bring in a new main scenario writer for the next game. I'm really tired of this guy's style of storytelling. Still hate what he did with the Xillia world and lore in Xillia 2.
He really does make me think of Zack Snyder. Or that one Hollywood director that was obsessed with having a robot spider in all of his films.
Thickstone
Member
I'm not even asking for a good story but rather a well-paced one.
These games tend to get soooooooo boring and the last third is always a pure torture to me (they usually try to pad the games with shitty fetch quests. Zestiria was the worst in this respect, I seriously couldn't believe it when the game asked me to find all these scattered...whatever they were)
These games tend to get soooooooo boring and the last third is always a pure torture to me (they usually try to pad the games with shitty fetch quests. Zestiria was the worst in this respect, I seriously couldn't believe it when the game asked me to find all these scattered...whatever they were)
22+ hours in and the fields remain my main gripe. Plus there are sidequests (so far one, multi step one), which make you go back to the end of previously visited areas - the first one was an old dungeon without a warp to the last floor...
Aside from that, I'm still curious to see where the story goes, but I wish it had less exploration-related fat. At least I can now buy items to warp between towns on a continent (which doesn't work if there are cutscenes planned for the trip, but that was to be expected) and maybe 3 10% speed upgrades from bosses.
Can't wait to get the hoverboard from the demo.
Aside from that, I'm still curious to see where the story goes, but I wish it had less exploration-related fat. At least I can now buy items to warp between towns on a continent (which doesn't work if there are cutscenes planned for the trip, but that was to be expected) and maybe 3 10% speed upgrades from bosses.
Can't wait to get the hoverboard from the demo.
About 4-5 hours in now and this game is pretty bad. Outside of the art, 60fps and great fast loading there's almost nothing positive going for it. It's just a really boring game. Same problem Xillia had but even worse so far.
Not only is there no sense of going on an adventure/exploration because every location is completely lifeless and uninteresting, but there's a bunch of backtracking between boring fields already, and the characters...man, the characters....
I've never seen a Tales cast this bad in the history of Tales games. Even ToS2 wasn't this bad (the talking panther was better than any of the three main party characters in Berseria so far). The main cast is this somber lifeless group, there is no fun at all, which does.not.work with Tales. The skits are boring, instead of playful, the cutscenes are boring, the antagonists are emotionless one-note characters. The only energetic character is witch girl and instead of being fun energy she's just incredibly annoying.
I feel like they wanted to make this dark & serious Tales, the opposite of a normal Tales, but they just completely missed the mark by removing all the fun. There's no charm and the cast is growing on you because it's all so emotionless. I mean so far
they don't even have victory quote skits really, which are like a major series staple. Maybe they'll mumble a line after battle in 3 seconds and that's it. Then again victory quotes are FUN skits between FUN casts and since there's no fun here I guess they felt victory quote skits would be out of place.
It's crazy, the whole game feels dead, bland and boring. Lifeless fields, lifeless towns, lifeless cast. Even the battle system feels incredibly boring/bland and the only Tales-ish flash is in Soul Break attacks. Combat system feels pretty shallow. So far it's my least favorite Tales battle system, even less fun than Legendia's grappling so far. Hopefully it'll get better as more of the cast joins. I don't really care for the dagger-ish quick low-impact jab combat style of the first two playable characters.
So far it's definitely the second worst game in the entire 20+ game lineup after ToS2. Gonna give it like 5 more hours to fix these issues or it'll be the third Tales game I shelve after ToS2 and Xillia.
Everyone figured they had to make a better game than Zesteria since they'd learn from that and make improvements. But this game is so much worse than Zesteria in story, characters, exploration, music and battle system so far. The only improvements are 60fps, quick loading and getting rid of the dumb skill system. But at least in Zesteria I was interested in the cast and exploring the world map and I looked forward to the skits. Thank god you can press O to FF through the skits since they're so boring here.
Not only is there no sense of going on an adventure/exploration because every location is completely lifeless and uninteresting, but there's a bunch of backtracking between boring fields already, and the characters...man, the characters....
I've never seen a Tales cast this bad in the history of Tales games. Even ToS2 wasn't this bad (the talking panther was better than any of the three main party characters in Berseria so far). The main cast is this somber lifeless group, there is no fun at all, which does.not.work with Tales. The skits are boring, instead of playful, the cutscenes are boring, the antagonists are emotionless one-note characters. The only energetic character is witch girl and instead of being fun energy she's just incredibly annoying.
I feel like they wanted to make this dark & serious Tales, the opposite of a normal Tales, but they just completely missed the mark by removing all the fun. There's no charm and the cast is growing on you because it's all so emotionless. I mean so far
they don't even have victory quote skits really, which are like a major series staple. Maybe they'll mumble a line after battle in 3 seconds and that's it. Then again victory quotes are FUN skits between FUN casts and since there's no fun here I guess they felt victory quote skits would be out of place.
It's crazy, the whole game feels dead, bland and boring. Lifeless fields, lifeless towns, lifeless cast. Even the battle system feels incredibly boring/bland and the only Tales-ish flash is in Soul Break attacks. Combat system feels pretty shallow. So far it's my least favorite Tales battle system, even less fun than Legendia's grappling so far. Hopefully it'll get better as more of the cast joins. I don't really care for the dagger-ish quick low-impact jab combat style of the first two playable characters.
So far it's definitely the second worst game in the entire 20+ game lineup after ToS2. Gonna give it like 5 more hours to fix these issues or it'll be the third Tales game I shelve after ToS2 and Xillia.
Everyone figured they had to make a better game than Zesteria since they'd learn from that and make improvements. But this game is so much worse than Zesteria in story, characters, exploration, music and battle system so far. The only improvements are 60fps, quick loading and getting rid of the dumb skill system. But at least in Zesteria I was interested in the cast and exploring the world map and I looked forward to the skits. Thank god you can press O to FF through the skits since they're so boring here.
Couple hours in now and I'm liking it so far.
At least in these early stages the combat works pretty well. What I hated about the combat in Xillia/Xillia 2/Zestiria is that they had one or two features they really wanted you to use and it just made the experience noticeably worse if you didn't use it as much as they wanted you to use it. It seems like they finally backed off here and went back to how they used to make Tales games: a bunch of individual features that are supposed to work in conjunction with all the other ones to create a relatively smooth gameplay loop, with more freedom to decide how frequently you want to use something. Also the AI seems to be more competent, they've died less than I have anyway...
I think the fields are ok, better than Xillia/Xillia 2/Zestiria. They aren't super-exciting to travel through, but I'm not that into open world/large fields to begin with and I can't remember the last Japanese game I've played where I thought getting from place to place was a pleasurable, interesting experience, even Xenoblade X and what I played of Final Fantasy XV didn't really click with me. Outside of GTA and The Witcher 3 it's a style of design that's never really stood out to me and I'd rather have world maps or something.
The environmental art, even in some of the fields, is actually pretty good, probably the best the series has seen in years. It's held back by dated/limited tech though, if/when they drop the PS3 and maybe switch to a different engine they can probably get some really great results.
The music doesn't really stand out at all. Nothing offensive to the ears has come up so far, just that I barely notice it exists lol.
Edit: Damn, lol.
At least in these early stages the combat works pretty well. What I hated about the combat in Xillia/Xillia 2/Zestiria is that they had one or two features they really wanted you to use and it just made the experience noticeably worse if you didn't use it as much as they wanted you to use it. It seems like they finally backed off here and went back to how they used to make Tales games: a bunch of individual features that are supposed to work in conjunction with all the other ones to create a relatively smooth gameplay loop, with more freedom to decide how frequently you want to use something. Also the AI seems to be more competent, they've died less than I have anyway...
I think the fields are ok, better than Xillia/Xillia 2/Zestiria. They aren't super-exciting to travel through, but I'm not that into open world/large fields to begin with and I can't remember the last Japanese game I've played where I thought getting from place to place was a pleasurable, interesting experience, even Xenoblade X and what I played of Final Fantasy XV didn't really click with me. Outside of GTA and The Witcher 3 it's a style of design that's never really stood out to me and I'd rather have world maps or something.
The environmental art, even in some of the fields, is actually pretty good, probably the best the series has seen in years. It's held back by dated/limited tech though, if/when they drop the PS3 and maybe switch to a different engine they can probably get some really great results.
The music doesn't really stand out at all. Nothing offensive to the ears has come up so far, just that I barely notice it exists lol.
Edit: Damn, lol.
It seems the opposite to me. Once the game introduces soul break, it basically tells you with every character that you're just supposed to try to group the enemies together, hit R2 then do your strongest attack string and then hit R2 again to 2x the damage, then do your strongest attack string then hit R2 again to do 3x the damage, etc... as long as you have crystals and are killing the enemies replenishing them.
If you aren't doing that one very linear system, then yeah you can run around and take a swing at the enemy with any normal move or combo strong you want, but you're not going to be doing much damage.
I think the Graces/Zesteria system is much better where you're constantly combo-ing, switching up moves based on directional inputs and dodging circle-strafing enemy attacks to replenish your attacks mid-combo. It's a lot more exciting and closer to character action games. Berseria feels more like a PS2 generic action game combat to me. Not quite mindless musou, but not exciting or deep either. It's making me really dislike free run.
Hentailover
Member
I'm more interested in whether Jack Daniels is going to sue Bandai Namco XD
InternHertz
Member
33 hours in, I've seen a few Zestiria-to-be fields/dungeons and I've been having fun putting two and two together. Nice to see the difference 300-400 years make
Playing for about an hour still and I'm going to sleep after that.
Tomorrow also a marathon day.
Playing for about an hour still and I'm going to sleep after that.
Tomorrow also a marathon day.
All ougi in game. Big spoiler of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kL66EDZCFc
Consider how Zestiria was, I wonder if this game will have a happy end for all characters...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kL66EDZCFc
Consider how Zestiria was, I wonder if this game will have a happy end for all characters...
LambdaTeos
Member
it´s incomplete, there are some mystic artes missing
i think i'll wait for the omegaevolution version, that dude makes awesome videos.
it's sad that every JRPG release, we hope something like this.
the fans are there, but it seems nobody believe in developers anymore.
Antilurker77
Member
Since there's no linking/fuse gimmick this time around do characters actually have decently sized arte pools?
I haven't finished Zestiria, but may I ask what is wrong with Xillia and Graces?
I'd like to compare others view with mine about the story/characters
Brawly Likes to Brawl
Member
In Tales' case, the last group of entries had a pretty bad director that was a bit of a drag on output. Thankfully the impressions seem to have improved by a lot with Berseria.
I really like her too. Composed, talking only when necessary, and not wasting time. Some people say that the loving older sister trope is played out, but as someone with an older sister, who protected me from punks around the neighborhood when I was little, I'd say it's done really well.
7 hours in and liking it a lot so far. Quick impressions:
The new battle control scheme with all 4 face buttons for Artes and L1 for defending get some time to get used to. Batlles are fluid and smooth and like always fun.
Fields are good. A mixture of Xillia and Zestiria fields. They are the best we have seen in Tales in the last years. They have some details like grass and flowers and everywhere are katz spirits, chests or sparkling points to discover. They are not perferct, but a step in the right direction.
Story seems to be lot more interesting than in Zestiria. I think it helps that we have a group of antagonists we fight, which was lacking in Zestiria. Characers are likable so far. Velvet is great. She loves kicking everyones butt.
The new battle control scheme with all 4 face buttons for Artes and L1 for defending get some time to get used to. Batlles are fluid and smooth and like always fun.
Fields are good. A mixture of Xillia and Zestiria fields. They are the best we have seen in Tales in the last years. They have some details like grass and flowers and everywhere are katz spirits, chests or sparkling points to discover. They are not perferct, but a step in the right direction.
Story seems to be lot more interesting than in Zestiria. I think it helps that we have a group of antagonists we fight, which was lacking in Zestiria. Characers are likable so far. Velvet is great. She loves kicking everyones butt.
Graces: ditched the world map, used linear corridors with some branches for chests FFX style but without as much eye candy. Bad story, bad characters and some of the animations in cutscenes suffer (maybe because it was a Wii game?)
Xillia: Rushed, there was stuff like every harbour being the same, boring empty fields where you had to zigzag, which were like big valleys. Many systems were subpar (there were crafting resources but no crafting system) and I didn't really like that after 4-5 hits the boss became inmune to staggering. The last few hours were really rushed, since you go to a completely new place and then... You just go back and never really explore it.
Graces f has an amazing battle system. Xillia has some cool stuff like party switching in battle but it was dragged by bosses being inmune to staggering after 5-6 hits, with no real way to avoid it. And some people complained that Jude was really broken, due to his backtracking teleport.
Someone before posted that it took one streamer 60 hours to clear, so you're probably still far from the end.
Japanese players also really love Lightning. They seem to love these strong emotionless Cloud-esque characters. I hate these types of characters (including Cloud). I like characters like Sorey or Zack, who crack jokes and smile and are people you'd actually want to spend time with in real life. I realized thinking about the cast that part of why I even play Tales games are for the fun charming casts that make me laugh and grow on me. The stories in these games suck and half the games have repetitive battle systems, so it's always been the cast of goofy anime characters going on an adventure together and teasing each other in skits that makes me enjoy Tales games. So a serious somber Tales is a game made not for me at all.
Hoping that Velvet is gonna pull a Tales of Abyss and completely change halfway into a likeable character. The early game is her trying her best to be a Gattsu (since the game is seriously trying to be Tales does Berserk), but failing.
alright, sounds about right
I didn't feel both are bad games but they do have some "bad things"
maybe I just glad they still make JRPG with decent story/characters.
of course I won't rushing to the store without proper reviews from Gaffers
now we need a bunch of good enough director to make good FF and SO series.
is there any JRPG series which still alive nowadays beside Tales, FF and SO?
audio_delay
Neo Member
Persona and SMT.
I'm assuming you mean series that started off on the fc/nes, snes/sfc or PS
There's a ton still around even if you're just talking about old school franchises.
Well ummm, there's kind of Megaten? The only jrpg series that is consistent in releasing quality far above the last 5-8 years of Tales, FF, or SO. Also the Kiseki series, as well. In fact, having caught up on Kiseki this year also lowers my impression of Tales as Falcom does this same anime style full 3d jrpg thing far better than Tales does in basically every aspect (story/characters/battle system/music/towns/maps/quests/fields). Even with some of my issues with Cold Steel I/II, it still puts every Tales post-Graces to shame.
ah yes, sorry I forgot about Trails series and Persona
(while I'm waiting for Cold Steel II release in less than a month)
maybe I just too caught up with "bad RPG nowadays" LOL
I didn't play Persona/SMT series though. it's too hard for me