Tales of Berseria
18 hours in out of 60+ and I think I'm done with this. It's a solid C+ rpg, but it's just boring (plus long) to the point where I'd rather use the remaining 40+ hours to play a better rpg in the timeframe. I'm too old to stick with 7/10 quality games for 60+ hours.
Things that are good about Berseria:
1. The art direction, 60fps and 1080p are all great. Definitely the best Tales has looked in a while, and probably the best looking of the full 3d games.
2. Mini-games being back.
3. Non-paid DLC required custom items are nice to have again.
4. Being rewarded with additionally gameplay systems from optional bosses is nice.
5. Lack of loading is very nice
Things that are so-so about Berseria:
1. The battle system is ok, probably the worst since Xillia in terms of shallowness + it lacks a lot of flash. For 3d battle systems, I liked Graces/Zestiria much better, and prefer most of the 2d Tales battle systems to this. If it wasn't a Tales game this battle system would be good enough, but for Tales it falls somewhere in the middle and a step back from the last game. On the plus side, there's freedom to do whatever moves you want, and you can combo for a long time easily. On the negatives, It's too easy even on Evil difficulty and there's not a ton of depth, it doesn't feel intense, it's not flashy and so it's just kind of boring.
2. The cast is just ok. They definitely grew on me after the full party showed up about 5-6 hours in, but even when you have the whole cast these are 2nd/3rd-tier Tales characters at best. They're just kind of uninteresting people. Cast reminds me the most of Rebirth's and Graces mostly unmemorable casts. On the other hand they do the best they can with each other and the group dynamic is good.
3. The skill learning system is just ok. It's better than Zesteria's dumb equipment/skill system, but it's still really boring and feels like an archaic system from 20 years ago. Combined with the dumb random stats on equipment, if you want to learn all the skills it forces you to constantly be using equipment with worse stats for most of the game. Same dumb problem as Zesteria.
4. Music isn't good, but it's not terrible. I guess it's ok. It's hilarious when a Zesteria song starts playing because it's 10x better than any of the other tracks in the game. Go Shiina is very missed.
5. While the tons of skits are nice to have, the skits are way too long and most are boring. It's especially bad because they'll follow up a long boring cutscene in-game and you're finally glad to have control over your character and that's when they'll give you 1 or 2 long boring skits to go through. Prefer skits showing up mid-dungeon to break up the exploring/combat.
6. So far 18 hours in the story is ok. Just past Fighting Rokurou's brother at the port and getting the ship back. Around the 14 hour mark I thought I'd reached the climax of the intro and was hoping the next part of the game would be the fun Tales adventure of now exploring the world and learning the mysteries of it, but then you go into a cave for hours -_- It's not a bad story, seems ok, but I keep hoping it picks up and at 18 hours I'm kind of tired of hoping it picks up and becomes interesting. Maybe it still does at 30-40 hours in, but that's a long time and there's better rpgs to play.
Things that are bad about Berseria:
6. Everything's boring. This is problem Zesteria had at parts, but it's much worse here. Everything in the game is mostly fine and playable, but it's just so uninteresting for 90% of the time and easy it feels like going through the motions. Spread that out with a slower paced 60 hour+ story (which is really a 30 hour story paced slowly) and it's just barely enjoyable and runs a consistent half entertaining/half bored out of your mind game. The story is mostly boring, the cast is fairly uninteresting, the dungeons and towns are boring, the equipment system tinkering is boring, even the skits are boring and too long. I'd say it's the most boring/uninteresting Tales game in the series in my opinion. Which is unfortunate because unlike some of the BAD games in Tales, there's not a lot that's really bad about Berseria, it's all decent stuff but just put together in a dull uninspired 7/10 game.
7. The fields/towns/everything not a cutscene or battle SUCK. I just spent like 1-2 hours going through a huge ass cave of NOTHING. Which followed a giant field of NOTHING, and then I got to a small port town of NOTHING. There's absolutely jack and shit to do in this game. It's FFXIII but worse with giant fields that take a while to go through. From my memories of the first 8 hours of so of Xillia before I dropped it, Xillia had the exact same problem.
The big problem is that they make these giant fields with lots of nooks and crannies, but there is no encouragement or reason to explore the fields out. There's a couple of treasures, but since the equipment/loot system is junk, you'll almost never find anything good. There's collect items that don't really do anything. And there's no sense of Majesty or fun in exploration like something similar to Xenoblade where you walk into a giant jungle with a waterfall and go "woah" and just take in the scenery and music, or discover some interesting ancient ruins. Part of that is that if you played Zestiria all the way through, 90% of this game is just running through the same areas with new colors. It's not interesting, I've seen all these places. Even the towns are lifeless with a few NPCs to chat and a tiny Inn or one other building with one room to enter. Towns, dungeons, fields, they're all big and empty.
8. I'm going to make this a separate point but the dungeons have fallen so far from the old 2d Tales games. Hell even the fixed camera 3d ones like Symphonia and stuff had puzzles with sorcerer's rings, Graces had pushing ice blocks, even Zesteria had a couple of dungeons with puzzles, and all of these games had shorter dungeons (not counting final dungeons) than Berseria so far. Berseria dungeons have nothing in them at all, just a bunch of boring empty fields that are fairly big and you run through screen after screen, dead end after dead end and all you do is fight the same couple of enemies again and again and grab some collect items. Even when there is a locked door, the switch is like you go around the one corner you haven't been to and it's right there. That's not a puzzle. Why even bother putting in switches like that. Dungeons are just terrible here and the towns are depressing.
9. The equipment/loot is crap. Random stats done wrong, skill system that requires using bad equipment to get a decent skill, it's like they looked at western loot games and were inspired but fucked it up big time. Shops are still terrible as well, which they've been since like Xillia. Tales need to reboot the entire equipment/shop system and just go back to traditional jrpg where you find good loot in chests (which gives encouragement to explore dungeons), or buy good equipment at each new town. After so many games of fucked up equipment/shops I'm really sick of Tales being so bad at this.
Overall:
That's pretty much it. There's not much "bad" about Berseria. It definitely does some things right, and its problems mainly stem from the fields/dungeons/towns/loot. The problem is that those being 50-75% of the gameplay time combined with a slower drawn out story over 60 hours+ with just an ok Tales cast and a dumbed down battle system ends up creating a almost puts-you-to-sleep game. It's a solid effort, and I can see how a lot of people will like it more than Zestiria for the consistency, as it feels more like FFXIII polished dull versus Zestiria's fun, broken, but ends up being a total mess.
As a fan of the series since the old school days, with like 14 or 15 games cleared in the franchise, some which I hold very dearly as fantastic jrpg expereinces, whose been trying to give each entry a fair shot despite plummeting quality for over a decade, I think this is the last straw and I'm done with Tales. Judging by the drastically falling sales in the series I think I'm not the only one.
In my opinion, since budget and falling sales are a concern, they really should go back to either 2d or 3d fixed camera. All full 3d has brought to the series is giant boring fields. 2d Tales games were mostly fun, hell I had a lot more fun with Narikiri Dungeon X on PSP than Berseria; that battle system was a blast. If they go away from full 3d I'll jump in, so maybe if they do another handheld entry, but otherwise this is my last console Tales game. You can only hang on to a sinking ship so long before you end up drowning with it.
