Yeah, I see a lot of praise for those 3 things. What worries me to death is this, from a decent review on GameFAQS:
I honestly still don't know if I want to give this a chance.
As a member of the Xillia Suicide Squad I can manage those complaints. Tales Games are a very different RPG fix for me than most.
I couldn't even finish Xillia. It matters to me that there be a colorful world with interesting fields and towns. If you don't want to create interesting areas then use a goddamn overworld instead of repetitive maps.
What I still really want to hear more about is the music and the shop/gear systems.
Anyone gotten this yet? From what I've seen this one seems to be surprisingly good, weirdly lots of unexpected praise for the characters and even some for the story. Not sure about the gameplay systems but I don't think I've seen anything alike to when Zestiria and Xillia hit where certain systems didn't hit off.
Pity bump since I'm also curious
Sadly I haven't gotten it yet. My funds are tight right now so I need paychecks to come in again. As soon as I do have money though I'm going to get it.
They just announced the west release January 24. Guess that's when we get more impressions.
On a side note I finally finally got Tales of Symphonia. I wanted to get the PC release before but the release of that was kind of lacking but seems they patched it + steam sale. Looking forward to it my first Tales game in two years since I platted Graces which burned me out hard on Tales games. Well not entirely true had the itch for a while but impression on anything since Xillia has been lukewarm so I wasn't feeling it.
They just announced the west release January 24. Guess that's when we get more impressions.
On a side note I finally finally got Tales of Symphonia. I wanted to get the PC release before but the release of that was kind of lacking but seems they patched it + steam sale. Looking forward to it my first Tales game in two years since I platted Graces which burned me out hard on Tales games. Well not entirely true had the itch for a while but impression on anything since Xillia has been lukewarm so I wasn't feeling it.
January 24 is a pretty fast localization; that's pretty cool.
I'll be interested in your impressions on Symphonia. I still stand by my feelings that Symphonia has the best-designed game mechanics (titles, EX gems, crafting). It strikes a good middle ground whereas Graces went wayyyy overboard for no good reason and Xillia stripped it back down to dumb levels. Though I do like the weapon skill system in Vesperia and the grimoires are interesting in Graces too.
But on the other hand Symphonia has not aged well in terms of camera and character models. It was hard for me to replay the last time.
Oh and I didn't mind platinum on Graces too much, but thank god it didn't require 100% titles or unlocking the 16th eleth mixer slot. That would have been awful. Whereas the platinum in Vesperia that I got required doing EVERYTHING. Every single item, title, skill, you name it.
January 24 is a pretty fast localization; that's pretty cool.
I'll be interested in your impressions on Symphonia. I still stand by my feelings that Symphonia has the best-designed game mechanics (titles, EX gems, crafting). It strikes a good middle ground whereas Graces went wayyyy overboard for no good reason and Xillia stripped it back down to dumb levels. Though I do like the weapon skill system in Vesperia and the grimoires are interesting in Graces too.
But on the other hand Symphonia has not aged well in terms of camera and character models. It was hard for me to replay the last time.
Oh and I didn't mind platinum on Graces too much, but thank god it didn't require 100% titles or unlocking the 16th eleth mixer slot. That would have been awful. Whereas the platinum in Vesperia that I got required doing EVERYTHING. Every single item, title, skill, you name it.
Yeah looking forward to my time with it. Also really feeling the vibes of the Symphonia opening(Starry Heavens) not necessarily because I love the opening but something about listening to it makes me feel pretty nostalgic. I think the nicest thing though about me playing it on PC I won't feel the pressure to plat in, in case I'm going to fully fall in love with the game :P I can't handle it after the Yakuza 5 plat.
As for platting Graces yeah I remember that I kind of didn't like maxing the eleth mixer(I think I remember farming that forest thing before you meet sophie when you return to it later the first time a whole bunch cause you could do it semi automatically). But that's not why I burned out it was more me playing Vesperia and Graces very close to each other.
As for the Vesperia plat makes me remember doing that Rita auto cp farm thing on the boar boss rubberbanding my dualshock in a certain way(although that might have been for the traveling trophy) I think and just keeping the TV on for a while.
Yeah looking forward to my time with it. Also really feeling the vibes of the Symphonia opening(Starry Heavens) not necessarily because I love the opening but something about listening to it makes me feel pretty nostalgic. I think the nicest thing though about me playing it on PC I won't feel the pressure to plat in, in case I'm going to fully fall in love with the game :P I can't handle it after the Yakuza 5 plat.
As for platting Graces yeah I remember that I kind of didn't like maxing the eleth mixer(I think I remember farming that forest thing before you meet sophie when you return to it later the first time a whole bunch cause you could do it semi automatically). But that's not why I burned out it was more me playing Vesperia and Graces very close to each other.
As for the Vesperia plat makes me remember doing that Rita auto cp farm thing on the boar boss rubberbanding my dualshock in a certain way(although that might have been for the traveling trophy) I think and just keeping the TV on for a while.
Oh, they kept the Japanese opening? That's cool. I got Symphonia when it launched for GCN and the trailers for the game that used that song actually were what got me interested in JPop which also led to my discovery of all types of Japanese music. This was way before I knew any Japanese. So really Starry Heavens, and Day After Tomorrow in general, is now a super nostalgic soft spot to me. But the Western release changed the song to some generic-ass stupid metal song.
And yeah maxing the eleth was the one truly grindy thing in Graces. In Vesperia I think I did grind Brutal briefly but I didn't really like that method for whatever reason. Overall I didn't have much trouble in either of them for trophies because I bought the Japanese Enterbrain guides for them, which are super high quality. I wish they made strategy guides in the west that came even remotely close to that level of quality.
Just in case anyone was waiting (I think someone mentioned me a while back) I did buy Berseria (AFTER waiting for reviews, Zestiria really soured me on Tales for a while) and dipped in a few hours but I don't have the time anymore to play games regularly so no in-depth impressions. It seems good though.
Just in case anyone was waiting (I think someone mentioned me a while back) I did buy Berseria (AFTER waiting for reviews, Zestiria really soured me on Tales for a while) and dipped in a few hours but I don't have the time anymore to play games regularly so no in-depth impressions. It seems good though.
Have no clue how Zestiria got good reviews. Never been so actively annoyed by a Tales game, and that includes Legendia.
I say this as someone who has never played a single game in the series.
God damnit this series has some of the best music!!!
Go Shiina's work in Legendia is godly. I mean, every track in Legendia on my big ass playlist has proven to be 'amazing' to me. Like what the hell.
I'm a huge fan of Motoi Sakuraba myself.
I'm a huge fan of Motoi Sakuraba myself.
Sakuraba is excellent too. I think I like Shiina more.
oh shit the God Eater guy did a Tales game too?
that's rad. I thought he was just a little gem that the God Eater crew found somewhere
Set Art by Daily Rowlet
Had to fight a little with the PC version before it became a decent playing experience. Despite the new official patches I still had to fall back on the more extensive fan patch and it's still not the ideal experience with occasional stutter, etc.
Found the chance to put enough time in to make it until the desert town. Have to say yeah it felt really clunky for most of it especially coming off of Persona 5 which is just smooth as hell even by modern RPG standards. That said the whole game so far sucked me in just by being super charming.
What surprised me is how fast and somewhat awkward the plots moves forward. There isn't really a lot of time spend on introducing things, they just happen or info is just thrown around without context.
I kind of liked that although I got confused at several points, like them mentioning the dwarven vows and it's only a quite a bit later when you learn what that was about.
Berseria has so far been pretty fun for the new tales series
While most of people were discussing if either REVIII was good or bad, this one has been trying to enter in the group that Symphonia and Vesperia hangs with.
I'm a few hours in, and I feel like the combat/gameplay hasn't fully opened up yet (barely learned about crafting semi-recently for example), but so far I think it's definitely better than any of the recent games. I still wish environments had more to do in them, maybe at LEAST a few puzzles in dungeons too… but at least they do try to make areas and towns feel more alive. Haven't come across a single side-quest yet either which is concerning and puzzling but again, maybe it's because I'm early in the game.
I will say though, I read several previews and such and none of them mentioned how utterly obvious it is that this is a spiritual successor to Tales of Graces. The combat system is by far the closest to Graces, the crafting system is closest to graces (though it takes cues from Vesperia as well), and just the overall UI reminds me the most of Graces too. I just hope that moving forward the towns/areas grow more unique and memorable.
I'm afraid this game takes a while to become open world enough.
I'm a few hours in, and I feel like the combat/gameplay hasn't fully opened up yet (barely learned about crafting semi-recently for example), but so far I think it's definitely better than any of the recent games. ]
Interesting. I've given up on the game just because I find the combat so boring. Even on harder difficulties, I was playing the same way–with the same success--twelve hours into the game as I was in the first few battles.
Still think the gold standard for me is Graces (!, since it's not a real favorite of mine overall and also because you seem to find it very similar) with Symphonia/Xillia/Abyss all similarly pleasant but uncomplicated afterwards.
Two in a row now that I couldn't get into at all.
I haven't made it to the end of a Tales game from Xillia onward. Just so boring. This one so far is holding my interest. I just now unlocked mystic artes and some more combat options so I'm still hoping for it to get a bit deeper, but combat is still REALLY similar to Graces. I want to say almost identical. I mean you don't restore all your HP after battle but you almost might as well because tons of different things give you HP regen. I'm playing on Moderate difficulty (the step in between Normal and Hard) and so far I haven't lost a single battle, even when I found some super strong Bat Baron or something in a cave that took like 10 minutes to kill. But I was also just introduced to the concept of what I assume is this game's equivalent of Giganto Monsters, so I'm excited about that.
Nice to hear I won't get to Berseria until summer probably but it's super cool to have a Tales game to look forward to.
I tried with Symphonia but honestly despite all the charm it does take effort to play having aged quite a bit. I hope someday I'll find the right mood for it.
Keep us updated. Tales is probably my favorite comfort food JRPG despite not playing anything since Graces rly. But it's always in the back of my mind.
Best way to enjoy Symphonia is with a buddy, imo.
I don't even like the game but it still a pretty good time with one of my pals around
Set Art by Daily Rowlet
I haven't made it to the end of a Tales game from Xillia onward. Just so boring. This one so far is holding my interest. I just now unlocked mystic artes and some more combat options so I'm still hoping for it to get a bit deeper, but combat is still REALLY similar to Graces. I want to say almost identical. I mean you don't restore all your HP after battle but you almost might as well because tons of different things give you HP regen. I'm playing on Moderate difficulty (the step in between Normal and Hard) and so far I haven't lost a single battle, even when I found some super strong Bat Baron or something in a cave that took like 10 minutes to kill. But I was also just introduced to the concept of what I assume is this game's equivalent of Giganto Monsters, so I'm excited about that.
All my fights were pretty much "spam attacks (doesn't really matter which ones) until I have four or five SG, do the magic-arm thing and those combos, repeat," with the one exception being "if one of those boss-types, occasionally use life bottle." Hadn't even come that close to losing a battle, including some that were probably supposed to be over my head.
But I hope it keeps going well for you. I was really wanting a Tales game that held my interest like Xillia (and yep, I'm still sticking to my guns on that one).
Early-game Graces was the same, probably even worse with the spammability because there were literally no consequences for spamming attacks or for doing poorly in battle (ending with low HP). Since going "magic-arm" deletes a SG from you (and apparently GIVES one to the enemies), you can't just spam it or you run out of combo. Also when enemies start stunning you often and such it gets pretty nasty, since getting stunned also removes an SG. If you're fighting like 5+ enemies then yeah you can start killing them and refilling the gauge but I think that's why sometimes you encounter so many enemies at once compared to past games. And that doesn't work on bosses since there's no easy way to gain extra meter.
But yeah I've only used a Life Bottle on one fight so far, on moderate. Came close to having to use one on a Dangerous Encounter though (where multiple field enemies engage you at once). They get seriously stronger, hyper-aggressive, and summon allies.
Last night, Foolio had the perfect description for Tales: Dawn of the new world. It wasn't pg-13 so I'll sum it up using his words:
"That is not even a Tales game…"
Great stream, Berseria looks appealing.
Haha thanks Tamiel. The more I progress and different elements get added, the more I'm satisfied with the combat. I just wish it wasn't introduced so slowly. Like the ability to tag in non-combat party members mid-combo seems really fun and tactically useful, but I don't have enough gauge to make it practical yet anyway. I also find the story/characters interesting so I have that motivation to continue.
There are two things I'm more and more turned off by though. First is the shop/gear system. I highly dislike the direction taken of making gear just random chest/enemy loot with random stat modifiers attached. It devalues gear so much. Nothing feels unique or exciting, it's just "oh hey I found my 17th piece of this armor and I have no motivation to even go in the menu and check its random stats." It makes me have no desire to hunt out better equipment, use the shop, or try to optimize my gear. Enhancing gear is alright but again I can't be bothered with all these stat modifiers. Having a unified shop that "levels up" with money spent was already annoying but they managed to make it so much worse. How about just the ability to craft new, stronger, unique gear based off materials and drops? That would be nice. So yeah basically I have almost no interest in that, and even the incentive of mastering skills off gear barely motivates me to periodically swap my equipment. I have heard there are skills that actually add souls to your meter in battle and such and that'd be super useful but at this rate I'm not sure I'll ever actually get there.
The other thing that turns me off, and I kind of expected it after reading some reviews a while back but I was hoping wouldn't be so bad, is the whole continuation of the trend of having sprawling areas with nothing in them. There are some very pretty areas on the map but it just gets so freaking boring to traverse them, especially with hordes of enemies lining ever section. There's just so little tangible reward for exploring and bigger does not always mean better. Sometimes it's pretty cool to convey a sense of scale, but not usually. Areas and dungeons in older games (Symphonia, Vesperia, Graces) somehow felt more engaging, interesting, and unique despite being much smaller. They usually had fairly narrow paths but were more maze-like (and puzzle-like) in nature, without the use of endless corridors. So yeah traversing the map in Berseria is more often than not a serious snorefest.
I was falling asleep to you comboing creeps until my girlfriend told me to shut it down. Jajaja, looking at your comments there were some things I wanted to add to last night about them.
First the map. Like you said bigger does not mean better. I found it strange that they would not give you a sort of mount, Symphonia even had two types. I am not sure how many hours into the game you are, but it did seem a bit lackluster to have to walk at the pace you were going. I even remember Symphonia had an item that allowed you to double your run speed in dungeons.
Onto the other topic: gear. As I heard you say: WHY WOULD I WANT THE SAME STUPID GEAR 7 DIFFERENT TIMES! besides laughing it brought a concern on which would be the best way to implement equipment. Usually in RPGs as you progress from town to town, the further you go the better the overall stats. Some even let you obtain better gear by fusing or doing crafting. However, there is an underlying problem to such a linear approach.
Call me crazy, but I was trying to re-define the way equipment worked in such games. What if: the equipment you get does not affect your stats, those are directly influenced by leveling and the progression tree you choose for your character (strike type, technical type to reference Symphonia). Equipment should serve as added attributes outside your character base stats.
For instance, I said a similar example to Legend of Zelda questing, what about weapons and equipment that give you insane attributes at the cost of the way you play. Extreme example: 300% damage output, but life drain per second. This could be very easily combined with lore, enriching the world.
I'll just list examples because I am not too verbose or smart.
Or how about weapons and equipment stats are independent of your own. So if you have: HP, Attack, Defense, Magic Defense, Magic Offense and Luck. Your equipment would not improve these stats however: Let's say you have a leather armor, this slightly helps with impact or stabbing. So let's say that while wearing a leather armor the chances that a stab goes through and injures you is 80% (it is a shitty armor). So it works more as how well does it prevent, stop damage.
Then combine a leather armor with a fire sword. This sword gives burning damage to enemies, however there is a 10% that you yourself catch fire while wearing a leather armor.
Now a diamond armor would have a penetration/damage probability way lower, maybe 5-10% you get hurt. However, this can be compensated with the armor making the user heavy, lowering attack speed and movement speed. Could you combine these with a legendary Swift boots that make the weight null?
Anyways, these type of discussions would take more than a post to fully flesh out and see the negative aspects of it. At the end of the day, it all revolves around stats, however, the stats that weapons affect and your own can be separated to enrich gameplay. Just a late night thought.
I heard there's some kind of hoverboard you get eventually to speed up area traversal. Dunno when. And I did already pick up an item (two actually!) that increase my run speed by 10% I think, so what you saw is already a boosted speed. I actually don't know if two of them stack but I think the do. I liked it in Symphonia though; it was the "Personal" EX skill for Lloyd I believe.
As for gear, there are always trade-offs to how you do it, but I don't think randomized gear is good in any context. You can make better gear be dropped from stronger monsters, and even have rare gear, but it has to be intrinsically better, not just "oh you did a Dangerous encounter so take 10 crappy equips instead of 3." Hell I don't even mind having random attributes (I spent a damn while in Xenoblade Chronicles X finding gear with the right bonuses), but that should just be sugar on top of a solid progress of base stats as you take on harder enemies or whatnot. That has been so minimal so far. It seems new areas start containing new gear, but you get the same stuff from crapling mobs as from code red enemies or whatever. And they aren't even necessarily better than whatever I already had. There is also a problem where they want you to enhance gear to unlock more bonuses (as well as strengthen it), but the system of mastering skills from gear means you'll be constantly switching out, so what's the point of upgrading?
I think I mentioned before that I do like your idea of gear that provides trade-offs, and that's not really unheard of even in Tales games where some equipment is weak but has high-level augments, or prevents status ailments, or other stuff like that. But not to the extent you're mentioning. Having progressively better stats on gear does open up more options for people who want to do low-level runs though. Conversely when you have a dumb shop system where the level of gear it offers is solely based on how much money you spend, you can end up exploiting the system and buy ultimate gear at the start of the game. I dunno.
Wow, hard to believe you already had those boosts. Hoverboard sounds decent. Using that EX, but using Genis made the effect much faster.
I was not thinking on randomizing either, each gear should have a uniqueness to them. The added stats improving, but making it gear oriented. I am not sure in how would that work, or how easily broken can it be.
You did, we were talking about Zelda. The idea came from a game called Risk of Rain, where the items do just that. It is a survival and the aspect of different builds could be implemented if you as a player decided to add rules. Like not picking up more than 20 items, no more than 3 of the same one, etc. These are not in-game options. Going back to getting progression, I do believe a reward should be given. The player should find meaning towards getting a particular gear, or collecting something. Like if I have to collect 900 seeds, then whatever I am planting with them should give me something more than: Collect 900 seeds (Done). And I don't think we can only achieve this through exaggerated attributes neither. I think these new sets of stats could be implemented on their own category. But I am a noob to development, so I am sure there are reasons why they do not separate both. Probably testing.
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Try out my first game! All feedback is welcome, enjoy and thanks. Heroine: Kiku
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I just finished Berseria last night. I enjoyed it but agree completely with Foolio about its flaws. The equipment system is an absolute pain due to finding a ton of gear and having to backtrack a significant distance to upgrade it. The world itself, sadly, is fairly dull. There are plenty of monsters to fight and collectables but it feels pretty lifeless. The geoboard (the hover board you get for travel) helps a little to avoid fighting weaker monsters and access new areas.
As to the story and ending.
! The story did a great job of showing how self-destructive revenge can be. By the end of the game, the heroine is so far beyond redemption it's hard to see how she could have a happy ending.
! And she doesn't. It's a fitting end for her but it is quite depressing watching a montage roll of what her life might have looked like in an alternate reality where she had not experienced tragedy. It's depressing and quite powerful.
I'm still not done, but I think I'm getting closer. Overall my opinions are the same. I'm disappointed in the low number of sidequests (which are mostly just mindless fetch-quests anyway) and the amount of backtracking through big empty areas (the geoboard helps but only so much). The story and characters are still interesting, though I've been getting frustrated lately at how the game has to spell everything out in excruciating detail instead of just letting me learn and infer on my own. Like if an NPC says they saw a dragon in a mandatory conversation, I don't need a cutscene directly after saying "A dragon? We're looking for a dragon! Maybe that's our dragon! Let's go find that dragon!" Like no shit, give it a rest sometimes.
I still really like the combat, and I'd probably say it's actually the hardest Tales game I've played so far in that respect. I don't know if it's because I'm still constantly switching out gear to master the skills and not bothering to particularly upgrade much of it, but even regular enemies on the map sometimes take a long time to beat or give me some trouble, and a lot of Dangerous Encounters are practically as threatening as a boss. Though I will say the difficulty feels inconsistent. Sometimes a boss spams AOE and annoying spells and I have to use tons of life bottles or retry the fight multiple times, but then the next few bosses I just absolutely obliterate. Just like some Code Red hunts are seriously hard but others are a breeze even 10 levels above me. I'm also annoyed that so far the only way to increase my min and max souls in battle seems to be from items that require me to be wearing a combined 25 upgrades on my character.
Can't we all just agree that Velvet is the best?
Can't we all just agree that Velvet is the best?
I'm about ten hours in so barely into the story, but if what I've seen so far stays the same then I can definitely say she is the best protagonist of all the Tales games that I can remember. Overall I love the cast, even the kid character which many games struggle to make barely better than not annoying.
The cast is definently the strong point of the game.
Velvet is fine but in terms of character, Yuri did the whole morally-questionable-protagonist thing a lot better. Velvet is pretty one-note in her motivations and the whole "you can come along I guess just don't get in my way" routine. It's nice to see her slowly change over time but she doesn't really hold a candle to the dynamic of Yuri and Flynn ("I want to do things the right way by reforming the system" vs. "Let's be real, the only way to actually effect change is to get blood on your hands").
Actually the cast of Berseria sometimes bears a lot of similarities to the Vesperia cast or other Tales games. Rokurou constantly reminds me of Raven, Magilou is somewhere between Rita and Pascal, Laphicet is a less annoying Karol, Eizen is basically Malik, and Eleanor is somewhere between Estelle and Cheria.
I think it just me, but the cast reminds me of One Piece.
Rokuro would be Zoro, Laphicet is Chopper, Magilou is Nami….But Velvet is pretty much an Anti-Luffy.
I've actually noticed tons of similarities to One Piece but I don't think the main cast directly correlates to OP characters, though yes Rokurou is totally Zoro (and Shigure is voiced by Zoro's VA in Japanese!). Even beyond the ragtag pirate crew theme though I keep seeing very specific things that make me highly suspect the writers are big One Piece fans. For example at one point they allude to a period in history that is pretty much just the Void Century. Then there's Eizen's inability to swim because magic. And other things that I can't remember off the top of my head.
Too bad I have been missing your streams lately Foolio, too many projects at school. I see that Humble Bundle has a Bandai Namco sale, and Tales of Zestiria is offered at the 15$ plus the other games. Is it worth it? Not that I have an urge to buy new games, but I cannot say no to a good deal.
I think it just me, but the cast reminds me of One Piece.
Rokuro would be Zoro, Laphicet is Chopper, Magilou is Nami….But Velvet is pretty much an Anti-Luffy.
not just you..i saw zoro similar characteristics in rokurou.
Warning: dissertation incoming.
Well I finally finished the game last night. I have pretty mixed overall feelings. My play time was a bit shy of 50 hours, which includes listening to every single skit/event I found as well as completing every Code Red hunt I could find and sidequest I had access to (which is slim pickings, I'll say that). Overall I found the characters and world interesting, as well as the combat, but really the high points weren't that high whereas I have a lot of issues with the game systems and design. I feel like for 50 hours of play I didn't get as much out of it as I should have. I completed everything I could because I really wanted to give this game a fair chance, but I just wasn't impressed so the odds of me doing another playthrough or any post-game content are very very slim (not that there seems to be a very robust post-game anyway).
The most praise I can give the game is that it has a pretty solid, varied cast, despite there only being 6 actual party members. The team dynamic is overall pretty interesting, and while the story has some eye-roll moments, it remains fairly intriguing throughout. Aside from a little too much developer obsession with food (seriously the skits do not shut up about how to cook a million different things, even going into the finer points of fishing at times), most of the character development you get feels well-written and interesting. That said I really wish we got more than basic background for many of them. When I think back to how Sheena was developed in ToS for example, nothing comes even close to that in Berseria.
I also feel that I should talk about the combat again now that I've finished the game. My initial impressions of it were pretty good, and that held up pretty well throughout the entire game. The actual flow of battle and its mechanics is really quite good, with you still feeling threatened despite being able to unleash crazy combos and there also being a fair amount of possible depth especially with party tagging and different types of chaining. I do have complaints about how human enemies especially can spam AOE attacks that are almost impossible to avoid and do tons of damage even if you block, and also when they repeatedly use Mystic Artes (seriously it gets old and cheap), but that's nothing new to the series. I really like the steady progression of artes and the very very varied combat styles of the different characters. I mostly played as Velvet because for a lot of reasons she gives a significant advantage in combat, but I think in terms of fun Eleanor is by far the coolest character. Her moves are the bomb.
Unfortunately now I get to rant about everything off-putting about the game. Since I just praised the combat, I'll start by talking about how the game does everything possible to hinder your combat progression. Now that the game is over I can say the equipment system is irredeemably bad. I went through the WHOLE game with the same number of min and max souls in battle because for some reason the geniuses decided to lock that type of improvement behind the absurd requirement of wearing gear that has been upgraded a combined total of 25 and 30 times. First of all the game artificially locks you out of upgrading your equipment to more than +3 (and later +6) until way too late in the game. But it's also really really unrealistic to expect you to have the materials to constantly upgrade that much. A few times isn't so difficult, but the materials required (in terms of both rarity and quantity) go up really fast after the first few times (as well as with how good your base gear is), and grinding random pickup spots or gear to dismantle is so unpleasant and boring that it's just a terrible design. And since you get so much gear constantly, with newer and better stuff in each new area, AND they expect you to use and master as much gear as possible to get the permanent boosts from it, it is a highly contradictory and conflicted system.
This is compounded by various other related crap such as the fact that unlocking fundamental combat mechanics like Altered Artes is all hidden behind special items you can obtain. Usually you get them from bosses, rare monsters, or hunt targets. BUT some are locked behind leveling up your shop!! This is insane because there is no reason to spend money at the shop when you can find everything it offers as drops or in chests. Sure you may dabble a bit in upgrading, but I never did that almost at all due to how badly it's designed. As a result I didn't unlock Altered Artes until 75% through the game. My shop was at level 2 for the vast majority of it. I think this also made battles take longer as they expect you to unlock these things and upgrade your gear, so I was always feeling underleveled. But it doesn't stop there. There is a cap to how much gear you can hold, and I hit that cap quite unexpectedly partway through the game. I really did NOT want to spend hours sorting through hundreds of drops to find the optimal stuff, and I was missing out on new, better gear due to the cap (including some exclusive boss drops!) so I just went and dismantled 90% of what I had to make room, keeping on average 2 or 3 of each different piece of gear. Well, late in the game it turns out there's a gimmick monster that you can only kill by reflecting damage back at it, and damage reflection is a RANDOM gear drop ability. And given that I had thrown out hundreds of pieces of gear… well, let's just say I didn't beat that monster the intended way (dropping the difficulty down to the easiest setting lets you cheese it). That is just really aggravating. Also a more minor gripe but having level 3 Mystic Artes unlock in the final dungeon (and only after finding and beating optional bosses) is really not that exciting.
And it brings me to the next point, which is that there is so much useless crap they expect you to micro-manage. Not just gear but also things like cooking. I'll be honest, I didn't cook a single recipe in the entire damn game. I just do not have the time or interest. I accumulated various recipes through the game's mindless "expedition" mechanic where you send off your ship for 30 minutes and it finds loot for you, but hell if I ever used it. In a game like this where you regen HP easily in combat and there's no TP, cooking was just another thing I didn't want to deal with. Then there are all the equipment masteries, and titles which also level up. At a certain point when the results screen of battle shows you 20 different things, you stop paying attention. Every battle it's a list of level ups, list of artes learned, list of equipment dropped, list of gear mastered, list of titled acquired or leveled... it's just like shit man, have a little restraint in your game design.
And again I loved Xenoblade Chronicles X which has similarly elaborate mechanics for just about everything, but this game just felt like it did it all wrong. For example, in Xenoblade you craft gear augments. These augments give your gear specific boosts, but they can be added and removed from gear as you please (so long as the gear has augment slots). That would have made a lot of sense in Berseria, which clearly expects you to swap out gear constantly but also upgrade it. That way your upgrades would mean something, and you wouldn't have to abandon your +6 armor because you found some much better base armor and have to start over. Just one example of an easy fix to something they clearly didn't think through. And equipment mastery would be MUCH better served working like Vesperia, where it was exclusive to weapons (less overwhelming than it being for every gear type) and instead of magically adding stats to your character it would provide a unique skill that you could activate with skill points.
Other than that, perhaps my biggest issue is they still aren't handling travel and backtracking very well. Areas are unnecessarily large and quite boring after the first time through (if not even during the first time). Some of them are quite pretty, but giant screen after screen gets old fast, especially when you can't fast-travel past most of them. Like sure you can warp to towns when the game decides to let you (though it requires a consumable item that you don't get a "bottomless" version of until literally the final dungeon), but you still often have to traverse multiple field areas to get back to a random dungeon for a fetchquest or whatnot. Having an overworld made this less of a problem because the world map is compressed and you can largely go straight to whatever area you want, maybe occasionally having to traverse a field area until you have flight. But when everything is just interconnected fields, it's pretty lame. And the Geoboard that makes you "run" faster isn't as useful as it sounds. Putting aside the fact that it's annoyingly difficult to control, you still need to find special spots in every area in order to activate it. And these spots are almost always found once you're done or nearly done in an area, even ones you're backtracking to. It's used as a way to access spots you couldn't before, so there is somewhat of a reason for that in many cases, but come on guys don't make your mobility option also a progress lock. Once again I think that's bad design.
My final issue that I'd like to bring up -- I feel like despite the characters having widely unique combat styles (something I praised earlier), I feel like the individual characters struggle to define their roles in combat. There are characters that lean more toward melee and ones that lean more toward magic, with a couple in between, but when deciding who to use over whom, I have a really hard time separating the niches they fill. There is no obvious healer; healing artes are spread across party members. For example Eleanor is a highly-offensive melee player with a few offensive magic spells, but in exchange she is fairly frail. So why is she one of the two players who can revive dead party members? And despite there being customizable strategies for party members, the A.I. can be annoyingly one-minded. Eizen almost always tries to cast Resurrection as soon as any character has a status ailment, even if they're not dead. And if they are dead, he will exclusively attempt to resurrect them no matter what.
Man, after everything I've written you'd think I hate the game or something. Even I feel like I should. But for whatever reason, maybe because of how far my standards have dropped given recent entries, I still enjoyed it in the end.
As to the story and ending.
! The story did a great job of showing how self-destructive revenge can be. By the end of the game, the heroine is so far beyond redemption it's hard to see how she could have a happy ending.
! And she doesn't. It's a fitting end for her but it is quite depressing watching a montage roll of what her life might have looked like in an alternate reality where she had not experienced tragedy. It's depressing and quite powerful.
I can finally comment about the ending. I actually mostly disagree, and I thought the ending was pretty meh. Spoilers just in case:
! I actually don't think Velvet is anywhere beyond redemption… the game never truly made her a villain. They tried to make her seem all cold and selfish, and to an extent she was, but they really were careful to never actually make her a bad person. All the people she "used" for her own gains she ended up treating well, or even helped/rescued because "oh they just happen to have something I need; I'm just doing this for leverage guys I swear!" The people she killed were either evil or left her no choice (the bit with Oscar and Teresa was so badly written... I think it was the weakest story point). It would have been different if her quest for revenge was unjustified, but the Abbey was clearly incredibly twisted and far more screwed up in terms of what they were doing, both to specific people and to humanity as a whole. The ONLY thing that poses even a small moral dilemma is the matter of removing Therions and causing populations to become demons. But it's not like there was a better solution, given the alternative, and technically it's not even Velvet's fault. Plus they weren't her decisions alone... the entire party was there with her, they are just as responsible. Oh and in the end Phi turned all the demons back anyway lol.
! So no, I don't think she was beyond redemption in any way. And the way she turned so sweet and cheery in the Aball illusion is complete proof that she is still human, still capable of happiness and love. Not that it's not sad. It's still a tragic story overall, but I still thought the ending was very very silly. I could not take it seriously with Phi turning into an uber-dragon and Velvet and Laphi locked in an eternal cycle of feeding. I honestly think it's pretty dumb. But whatever!
Finally finished tales of berseria co-op
Game was pretty good, and I can see now the connections to zestiria
My favourite is definitely rokurou and second eizen
https://mynintendonews.com/2018/11/15/tales-of-series-23rd-anniversary-broadcast-8th-december-2018/
Tales of 23rd Anniversary broadcast (also known as TalesRoom) will be happening on the 8th.
Picked up Vesperia Redux, which I started during my brief dalliance with an Xbox360 back in the day but never finished.
Story and characters are great, but, uh, starting to remember why I never finished. Combat is really janky in this game. Feels like everything has an input lag. Frustrating to have Yuri run across the map, slowly raise his sword, get lightly poked, then get stun-locked for five seconds. There's a 1-on-8 battle with him where it's just a struggle to get in a position where you can do anything at all.
Might improve as it goes on, but feels worse than it even did in Symphonia, which was older.
Well you can
Set it to Manual, where you don't auto-run at enemies and attack from a set distance (and don't have to be blocking to jump), and/or
Abuse Free Run which is completely OP most of the time.
Early game you feel like crap because there are tons of small battle skills that add up (and several of them were just default mechanics in Symphonia). Examples would be the ability to hop backwards while blocking, recover from the air/ground, do perfect guards to nullify damage and advance while shielding, etc. Later you get outright broken ones. Overall it beats Symphonia just for the camera alone.
Massive leak of the next Tales game, Called Tales of Arise:
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Tales of an Actual Budget trailer just debuted. Looks like an actual next-gen Tales game.
I technically haven't enjoyed pretty much any of the last few Tales games, but maybe they've been putting all their resources into this fella.
Next gen? I'm sure it'll release on PS4 as well. But it might have promise. At least Berseria was… playable.
Next gen? I'm sure it'll release on PS4 as well. But it might have promise. At least Berseria was… playable.
There's been almost no difference between PS3 and PS4 Tales of… games, and very little from PS2, really. Just meant this is the first one that actually looks like a PS4 game with a PS4 budget. It's due to launch on PS4.
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Hang in there, Kierkegaard.
