Tales of Berseria

Tales of Berseria is the 16th installment of the popular jRPG series, which started in 1995 on SNES console. The game was also developed by Bandai Namco. Prepared as a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the franchise, this is the final part of the series. For the first time in the history of the Tales of… cycle, the game introduces a female protagonist. The studio made some experiments with such idea before in Tales of Xillia published in 2011. However, that production featured two playable heroes, who performed equal roles in the story. Tales of Berseria is the first title in the series that was developed simultaneously on three different platforms.

Plot

Tales of Berseria is set a thousand years before the events presented in Tales of Zestiria. It should be noted, however, that both titles have few points in common and the plot does not require us to know the previous installment in the series. Players move to the kingdom of Midgand, which is made up of several large pieces of land and a number of smaller islands scattered across the endless ocean.

A disease called daemonblight is raging in the kingdom, turning people into monsters. Three years before the main events, during the Scarlet Night, Advent took place - a ritual performed by Artorius Collbrande, whose purpose was to give humanity a chance to fight the plague. The main character, 19-year-old Velvet Crowe, who suffered a terrible loss as a result of Advent, swears revenge on Artorius. She is helped in this by a group of unique characters, almost all of whom have their own, not entirely noble, motivations.

Game mechanics

Tales of Berseria addresses some of the gameplay issues and changes that fans didn't like in Tales of Zestiria. The title, however, does not depart significantly from the classic formula of the series. Players observe the action from a third-person perspective, exploring a fully 3D game world, divided into separate locations. We talk with NPCs and perform smaller tasks, which are an addition to the main and linear storyline.

Visible enemies move around the map and by coming in contact with them we initiate a battle. In contrast to Tales of Zestiria, players fight again in separate 3D arenas, which the series has always been known for. During real-time skirmishes we can directly control all members of the team. Tales of Berseria offers a complex, arcade-style combat system based on unique abilities and combos. This time players can assign special attacks (artes) to several different buttons, consciously building the most effective combos.

Technical aspects

Since the game was also prepared for PlayStation 3, it does not offer any significant novelties in terms of graphics. So we are still dealing with not very detailed environments and very simple models of enemies. Game runs at 60 frames per second on PC and PlayStation 4, and the award-winning Ufotable studio again took care of the animated cutscenes.

Last updated on 19 January 2017