I was able to play Tales Of Berseria at E3 last year at the Bandai Namco booth. Going into it then, you’re thinking it’s just another role-playing game from Bandai Namco. I enjoyed what I saw at E3 but didn’t know what to expect moving forward from it. Jump ahead in time to the present when I received a review code from Bandai Namco to review this game. I still didn’t know what to expect from the franchise but from the minute I started the game, I knew it was going to fun!
If you have read any of my past reviews from Bandai Namco, then you know one of my pet peeves is not having English dialogue. Well, Tales Of Berseria has that and then some in the way of duel audio. The game allows you to select English or Japanese every time you start the game. If I ever learn Japanese, then this is great to have, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
The reason why I mention this at the start is because Tales of Berseria has some great voice acting. The cast is a who’s who of animated/anime voice actors. The Likes of Cristina Vee, Erica Mendez and Monica Rial did a great job. The rest of the cast did a great job as well. You’ll just have to play the game to find out just how well the cast did. I’m not going to spoil anything.
There are anime cut scenes that add to the story, which were interesting. There are also small bits of dialogue that come up throughout the adventure, that need activation. This gives more backstory to the events going on at the time and allow for more of the voice cast to be heard.
Without giving too much of the story away, the player plays the role of Velvet Crowe, trying to get vengeance for the death/sacrifice of her brother. This turns your once sweet demeanor into that of a monster, a cold dark monster with only one thing on your mind, revenge.
There is a lot to the main game, such as monster fighting, like a typical role playing game should have. You might think that the constant battling would get repetitive after awhile but I have to say, that feeling never entered my mind.
A theory I had is that the battles are slightly different every time so you’re never fighting the same fight twice. You fight the same monsters at times while you’re traveling but the fights are different. There are even big monsters to hunt down and collect reward money for, similar to quests. These monsters are stronger than the run of the mill monster you find in various locations and it will take all of your team of misfits to win!
Each character that joins your party has a different style of fighting, common to role-playing games. You’ll be able to chain combo attacks together and strike huge amounts of damage to your enemies. You’ll be able to buy/find weapons and accessories to power up your team even more. One addition feature is that you can enhance your weapons/items by stripping down items you already have and reuse them.
This might be the difference between winning a fight and losing. The further along I got in the adventure; there was less of a difference in weapons found/available for purchase. When you find something you like, you strengthen it as much as you can. There is an interesting way around buying multiple items/accessories. If your character can master the item/weapon/accessory, then they’ll get the bonus effects of that tool without having to wearing (at least that’s how I interpreted it)
You’ll join a band of pirates in your quest for vengeance and you can use these pirates for good. You’ll progress far enough in the game that you’ll be able to send scout ships out to locations and find treasure as well as other items. Your scout team will unlock new routes and strategies to use while on the high sea. The more exploring you do, the more items you’ll find and that will help you out in your mission.
The controls and combo systems sound like a hassle to start out but they’re easy to learn. The tougher part of battles is figuring out when to swap characters because you can only have four fighters at a time. Figuring out when to swap is all part of the strategy that makes the game fun.
It will also take some time to figure out how to regenerate attack souls/power. This allows you to perform special attacks and like I mentioned before, each character has different attacks. Attacks have different effects, as do different items/weapons. One weapon might have different abilities/effects compared to another. A good way of thinking is like if you play Pokémon and two of the same species of Pokémon are totally different.
The game has good music to listen to while adventuring as well as mini games to play. Games that are long, like Tales Of Berseria, need things to take the player’s mind off things and these mini games/music do just that. One mini game has you taking food orders at the bar where the informant you need info from stays. It’s interesting side stories like this that build the story and characters. The side stuff in the game didn’t feel tacked on or forced.
Good music, great voice acting, and an all around fun game. It’s these reasons that I’m giving Tales Of Berseria for the PlayStation 4 a 9.5/10. I would like to thank Bandai Namco for the review code.
9.5/10