Any skills utilized will require a certain amount of souls but players will also have the ability to steal souls from their opponents by knocking them out or stunning them, allowing players to mix up their move sets, with custom made combinations, in an effort to work in some status-effects to keep the flow of combat moving smoothly. The Soul Gauge will feel familiar for fans but does have limitations and perks.
Whenever an enemy is encountered while exploring the party must battle against them in real-time fights that have been altered a bit since the last entry since this time around combat and spell Artes utilize something called a Soul Gauge to execute. While the story may serve as the biggest change from what Tales fans are familiar with, the other half of the game, combat, feels fairly similar to what fans should remember. Combine that with its colorful cast of party members that are all given time to shine and plenty of development, players will walk away from this title remembering them for quite some time, something that I haven’t been able to easily say since Vesperia was released years ago. While the story does take a bit to get going, in fact far longer than past Tales titles, Tales of Berseria’s darker tone and vengeance-fueled lead character help create a memorable storyline that is hard to walk away from. These range from being rather funny to downright serious and show a true return to form for these side-moments that always tend to shine a light on how well-written some of the main characters are in this game. Not only do we learn through various twists and reveals about the tragic pasts of the rest of the party members, but the various skits also provide various looks into their lives and personalities. This leads to quite a bit of tension at times but this type of tension is something that runs throughout most of the game. Eleanor works as something of a foil against Velvet as she offers one of the most virtuous viewpoints in the party often placing her at odds with the rest of her group. This includes a man also infected by the demon plague who is eager to slay his elder brother, a carefree sorceress, an old pirate captain seeking his missing captain, as well as a few more innocent members of the party in the form of a younger child and an exorcist named Eleanor. Speaking of the rest of Velvet’s group, they are almost entirely made up of other misfits and miscreants who join with her. Velvet is more than ready to threaten and even kill people in an effort to get what she wants making her often appear as a very cruel leader for a group of supposed heroes but one that is hard to feel anything but sorry for thanks to how tragic her backstory is. While heavy themes are often used to show how dangerous the plight of the world is or how corrupt an enemy might be, we rarely have seen the lead character so unrelenting in her path for vengeance. Seeing an anti-hero as the main character is nothing new for the genre but is something fresh for the Tales series. After being imprisoned for years, Velvet manages to escape with only one thing on her mind, bloody revenge against the man responsible for her tragic loss and anyone else who gets in her way. Infected and transformed partially into a demon, Velvet is locked away in a prison to keep her away from the rest of society.
That all changes in one day when everything she knows comes crashing down around her as her brother is sacrificed and the culprit is someone she once trusted with all her heart. Storyĭespite losing her sister due to the Daemonblight that has begun to envelop the world while Velvet Crowe was a young child, she grew up to be a fairly cheerful young woman who spends her time studying under her mentor Artorius while taking care of her ill younger brother Laphicet.
That isn’t the only thing that sets Tales of Berseria apart from the rest of the franchise, despite it being set in the same world as Tales of Zestiria, albeit centuries beforehand, is the fact that this the darkest game in the series so far. Price: $59.99 USD – Available Here $99.95 AUD – Available Here Overviewįor the most part, fans of the Tales games generally know what they can expect when Bandai Namco brings another one of these RPGs to the West and with Tales of Berseria they have given us one of the quickest turnarounds for the franchise so far.