Tales of Berseria

 PlayStation 4
User Score
7.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 589 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 405 out of 589
  2. Mixed: 48 out of 589
  3. Negative: 136 out of 589
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  1. Unknownl
    Jan 25, 2017
    4
    This game is just like Zesteria was. The combat is pretty bland, and offers little depth. The graphics and animations are sub-par, not they're terrible. Overall I had a poor experience after playing the Japanese import. And not I do not play for story.
  2. wad11656
    Jun 6, 2020
    4
    "Overly-sterilized fast-food gaming" is the metaphor that I came up with while finishing the game: It feels like it formulaically does everything a JRPG is supposed to do, but when you bite into the meat of it, it's very bland (like a very nice-looking fast food burger with a perfectly round bun, but with lackluster flavor). The only standout feature this game has is the storytelling: the"Overly-sterilized fast-food gaming" is the metaphor that I came up with while finishing the game: It feels like it formulaically does everything a JRPG is supposed to do, but when you bite into the meat of it, it's very bland (like a very nice-looking fast food burger with a perfectly round bun, but with lackluster flavor). The only standout feature this game has is the storytelling: the quality (and sheer quantity) of writing and voice acting.

    My favorite part of the game were the little clever quips and banter between the characters. I loved the many small-talk conversations they had that fleshed out the world and characters. The conversations rounded out the characters to make them very believable and complex. On top of that, whenever I had a potential plot hole or question in my head, it seemed like almost every time, the triangle-symbol conversation notification popped up at the bottom-right of my screen, where the characters addressed my question [with some excellently clever wordplay and intelligent humor to boot].

    Plot developments also trickled into the story along the way in a calculated fashion, instead of everything being revealed at once. Some of these plot developments & explanations were really annoying to wait for, however (i.e., Who is this Magilou girl? What's even her story or connection to any of this?). But overall, I found it really cool to slowly discover truths behind the game's story.

    Even though the text translation is quite bad (typos and translation discrepancies throughout the game; there's even a difficulty level they call one thing in the difficulty menu, but something entirely different in item descriptions! What??), the audio aspects of the translation are great.

    Now here's the bad: The game mechanics themselves are extremely sub-par. Battles always felt so dry, lifeless and mind-numbing (once you got over the epicness of the Mystic Artes/Break Souls). (Perhaps some of that apathy/boredom comes with having already played multiple JRPG's in your life.) Movement in the overworld is also robotic and choppy. Tutorials are terrible: There are these HUGE blocks of text that describe different battle aspects, but there's hardly any in-battle practice where you can truly learn the functionality/meaning of different moves/items. This made me too nervous to branch out into using different characters in battle besides Velvet.

    You could mostly cheese battles as long as you got a breaksoul chain going anyway, so learning many of the mechanics was never important to make it to the last boss of the game, on the hardest difficulty available without EVER moving down to an easier difficulty. (Sidenote, I hate games that allow you to change difficulty mid-game, and games that secretly lower difficulty of certain sections after you die enough times on them. How demeaning.)

    Deciding what items to dismantle is a brain-numbing, plain-text dump of a nightmare. In the tutorial for dismantling, the tutor says you'll eventually become a natural at it. Nope! There's no way of knowing the monetary value of an item in the Dismantle menu. I don't think you can see the stat boosts it gives your characters while in the Dismantle menu either. It's therefore very difficult to determine which items you'd like to keep, sell, or upgrade. I ended up just dismantling pretty much everything that a character didn't have equipped at the time and crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. JRPG's NEED to stop this; they need to figure out a user-friendly way to upgrade items and how to determine which items are worth keeping (by showing their monetary and stat values in the Dismantle menu).

    There's also item effects that make certain items more capable/powerful against certain "types" of foes: demi-human, person, undead, etc. I NEVER had to change my items to fit what I was fighting. I tried once, but the icons and names for the enemy types were not matching up; were there translation inconsistencies with the enemy types too, just like the difficulty levels? Seesh. I have no idea how major translation errors in major game mechanics like difficulty level and enemy types can slip through the cracks. Seems like the translation team was really rushed and focused a lot more on the audio/voice acting aspect of it (where we find the most quality the game delivers). Most of the item effects, you read and tell yourself "I have no idea what that means."

    So yeah, decent at first, but after 90 hours of main story gameplay (I don't remember doing a ton of side stuff) and becoming bored of the cinematography and apathetic even to the dialogue and characters (the features I liked most), I am so done. If I were to rate a 1-10 on the "fun" factor, it'd be a 0-2. I have to credit/acknowledge the writers/translators for the excellent voice acting and intelligent humor, so that's the only reason I'm giving it more. I'm never playing a game from this stale, repetitive, boring series again.    … Expand
  3. MoniWhite
    Feb 9, 2022
    4
    Pretty janky, combat and graphics are not very good, the story is OK but not good
  4. kingofkoopas
    May 11, 2021
    3
    I have eight hours in and I desperately want to find reasons to keep playing this game. I cannot believe that there are people out there who could rate this higher than a seven, let alone a full ten, poor saps. This game does nothing well, everything about it is mediocre at best. The characters are not only silly, but nonsensical as well and it's not because it is a JRPG either. When yourI have eight hours in and I desperately want to find reasons to keep playing this game. I cannot believe that there are people out there who could rate this higher than a seven, let alone a full ten, poor saps. This game does nothing well, everything about it is mediocre at best. The characters are not only silly, but nonsensical as well and it's not because it is a JRPG either. When your characters act like nothing phases them, constantly being cocky and laughing at danger then nothing really matters. You certainly cannot get invested in a plot where there is no danger or threat. Velvet who can only grumble about revenge just barely escapes being another generic character. The rest of the crew you have seen a million times on animes and other games, only much better. The game's characters had a few moments where they made me chuckle, but for the most part I was rolling my eyes. The combat is where this game really hurts the most. I have been mashing buttons randomly for hours. I never bothered reading what the attacks do and I have managed to keep going. No enemy or boss cant stand up to my mashing of the buttons. The attacks themselves all look the same, it's mostly chaos in the battlefield. I have not needed to change characters at all during fights. I haven't bothered upgrading anything, I am just hoarding every item I have. This game is definitely better than that horrendous Zestiria. So I guess I can say that this is a step forward. Everything about this game is mediocre, good thing I got it on a sale.… Expand
  5. Chell_R
    Aug 31, 2020
    3
    The most disappointing Tales of game... -to DATE...

    that Isn't Zesteria...
  6. Sbc0412
    Jan 26, 2017
    2
    Bland and redundant. Dpes not really do much for the RPG environment nowadays. Nothing terribly creative. Seemed like they just needed to throw out another title.
  7. tomvs123
    Mar 9, 2018
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. If you're looking for an intelligent, convincing, and dark story, this isn't it. Out of 32 years of gaming, this is one of the worst stories with the most unconvincing characters I've experienced. Spoilers below.

    The story might seem good if you read a synopsis (from the protagonist's initial point of view). Girl's brother is killed secretly by a high-ranking official, so she goes on a revenge rampage, killing innocents along the way until her brother is avenged.

    This isn't exactly unique, but there's plenty of room to fill in the gaps to create a great and dark tale. At least, that's what I was hoping..

    It's Immediately obvious that the protagonist's reason for revenge is suspect. As you witness his death, there's no signs that he was being forced. And the respected brother-in-law (supposed murderer) must have a good reason for killing his little brother. How about we just ask him? No? Okay, then the protagonist will go into her stupid blind rage and ignore the obvious issues with the situation.

    It is explained far later in the story that the little brother asked the brother-in-law not to tell the protagonist that he was willingly being sacrificed (to save humanity). Why a secret? The writers likely realized that the whole blind rage thing was a bit unbelievable, so they threw this in... And it was obviously thrown in as it makes no sense.

    And what does the protagonist do after realizing that her brother wanted to die and that her blind rampage is meaningless? After a bit of uncharacteristic stupid rage (for the most part she's portrayed as being mature and intelligent), she decides to continue on with her quest for revenge, primarily because that's all she's known for the past three years and her friends (of about a month) like her more when she wants to murder people.

    At this point in the story, all intelligence went out the window and I lost all hope in the game. It couldn't have possibly recovered from that, and I was right.

    It then turns into a story where you're actually the good guys. The sacrificing your brother to save humanity thing actually turns humans into emotionless drones. That's bad because the story tells us it's bad, so then we go on a quest to save humanity, although still pretending we're evil along the way.

    So that's it. You save humanity and everyone who had previously been stricken with the world's daemon disease is magically cured. And this was supposed to be a dark story... Well, at least the protagonist got stuck in a sort of limbo due to a last-minute inadequately-explained reason.

    And if issues with the main plot weren't enough, every single character is poorly-written with motivations that make no sense.

    First of all, the protagonist is now 19 and spent the last three years in a cell only eating daemons. When she comes out, she's a mature and intelligent woman who knows more than she should about the world. That makes no sense for someone who has been in solitary confinement for three years. Maybe she went on dates with the daemons around town before eating them.. There's just no reasonable explanation.

    Most of the characters in your party join and stay for silly reasons. Rokurou: You told him where to find a sword (that you passed up for no good reason earlier). So he just sort of stays forever and makes up more reasons to stay as time goes on. Eizen the pirate: He joins to fight your brother-in-law because he thinks they stole his captain. Let me clarify there: He and his crew join a 19 year old girl and start taking orders from this girl. The girl doesn't join them...

    Number two actually joined for a good reason (he was forced), but there's other major character problems with him. He looks to be about 10, was born 3 years ago, and his personality had been sealed that entire time. Now it's unsealed and over the course of about one month, he turns into a completely normal sociable 10-year-old. It takes much much longer than that to build social skills. Hell, I've seen 40 year olds who are still working on some.

    And then there's other little bits of nonsense here and there. Like when you first get out of confinement and just happen to find some demon lingerie in a treasure chest and decide to wear it for the full game. And characters just happen to pop up (on the other side of the world) exactly when you need them to do something or explain something (that Zaveid guy does it multiple times), which makes no sense story-wise.

    Oh, and the game is covered in unnecessary and uncharacteristic comedy. Also, the NPCs have nothing interesting or useful to say. It's like their lines are lifted directly from a different Tales game. I had to stop viewing the optional skits and talking to NPCs about 10 hours in to be able to bear the game.

    It's insulting how bad this story was put together. I'm shocked that so many people like it. Maybe they're just focusing on the gameplay, or the game's target audience just doesn't care about plot holes.    … Expand
  8. Lullabye_bye
    Aug 28, 2017
    1
    As someone who has only played some of the worse games of the Tales franchise, I have to say that this game is the one I'd regard as the worst. The combat system is dull and boring, even compared to some turn-based combat systems, the characters are incredibly one dimensional, and the narrative is, to be frank, a big pile of horse dung.

    On the combat system: there is little to no    As someone who has only played some of the worse games of the Tales franchise, I have to say that this game is the one I'd regard as the worst. The combat system is dull and boring, even compared to some turn-based combat systems, the characters are incredibly one dimensional, and the narrative is, to be frank, a big pile of horse dung.

    On the combat system:
    there is little to no strategic input. Fighting enemies and even boss battles just feels like a chore and a waste of time. Button mashing to this degree, when the attacks don't even look flashy or cool, is just pointless.

    On the characters:
    The cast of the game is lacking in presence. They are primarily defined by one characteristic, and they never develop beyond that. The cast doesn't go together at all. Their interactions, whether through the main narrative or the optional skits, are bland and at times even annoying.
    The main character doesn't develop at all during the game. Her character of a revenge seeking young woman is incredibly annoying, as that is the only thing that really puts her apart from any other grumpy side-character. She is utterly useless.

    On the narrative:
    The game expects investment from the moment the it starts, which is one of the reasons why it falls so flat. The entire prologue to the game is completely unnecessary, as it could easily have been told through flashback or dialogue. Even after the prologue falls the narrative flat. It progresses incredibly slowly, with more filler than an episode of Naruto. Jokes aside, The way it progresses is just painful to play through.
    Now, the way the main character goes through the narrative is just boring. Every moment we are reminded that she wants revenge and that she has to kill the "villain" to get it. Everything is about her revenge, even when the dialogue is as far from her revenge as possible. The narrative may seem interesting on paper, but the way that is executed is just plain bad.

    In conclusion:
    I'd prefer Tales of Zesteria over this game, despite Zesteria having a blander story overall. At least the cast made Zesteria somewhat enjoyable, even with the bad combat system. I can't say the same for this game though. Now, I may not have had a good experience with it, but some people still enjoy this game, so it must do something right; I just can't seem to find it.    … Expand
  9. chonky96
    Oct 2, 2021
    1
    This game is just empty. Huge areas and landscapes filled with nothing except some grass and some trees maybe. Repetitive combat, you just smash buttons. The story is fine but doesn't make up for the overall low quality of the game. Graphics literally look like they are early PS3. And that would be okay if they at least put some effort into the world crafting which is just hollow andThis game is just empty. Huge areas and landscapes filled with nothing except some grass and some trees maybe. Repetitive combat, you just smash buttons. The story is fine but doesn't make up for the overall low quality of the game. Graphics literally look like they are early PS3. And that would be okay if they at least put some effort into the world crafting which is just hollow and empty. No idea why this game is so popular. I got it for 10€ which is fine. Won't be playing it again… Expand
  10. Blackbox20
    Feb 21, 2017
    0
    Let me give some pointers.
    Graphics: could have been from a gamecube.
    World: Crafted so empty an simple you could not do worse even if you tried.
    Combat: button mashing because you can preset all the combo's
    Gear and crafting: i have played fo 10 hours now and all the stuff you find have either a few % stat difference and
  11. Drayer
    Feb 19, 2017
    0
    I want to know how bad the games where before all reviewers played Tales because this is the most soulless empty bland boring game i have played in years.
    The story could be good if they did any effort.
    Let me give some pointers. Graphics: could have been from a gamecube. World: Crafted so empty an simple you could not do worse even if you tried. Combat: button mashing because you    I want to know how bad the games where before all reviewers played Tales because this is the most soulless empty bland boring game i have played in years.
    The story could be good if they did any effort.
    Let me give some pointers.
    Graphics: could have been from a gamecube.
    World: Crafted so empty an simple you could not do worse even if you tried.
    Combat: button mashing because you can preset all the combo's
    Gear and crafting: i have played fo 10 hours now and all the stuff you find have either a few % stat difference and are all the same same.
    Looks: because it was to much work to make gear actually have a different look they added the wardrobe where you can change a few outfit and can unlock the dumbest items like a mustahce, cowbow hat, glasses, etc.
    Voice acting: because the story is so kid friendly everytime stuff gets serious the characters act so indifferent it makes the story fall completely flat.
    Price: 45 Eu for this piece of **** B game is just insulting, i can buy the witcher for this money.

    Seriously i don't know how people can give this game a high score, i guess they havent ever played a real good game.    … Expand
  12. Offyourocker
    Apr 3, 2020
    0
    this game can pretty much be summed up with the sentence "sometime's i'm angry, other times i'm less angry". now, if that didn't make it clear enough, the story is questionable at best. beyond that, the graphics aren't something a person should expect beyond early ps3. the game play? technically, that can also be summed up by my initial quote. i'm not even sure if the companions DOthis game can pretty much be summed up with the sentence "sometime's i'm angry, other times i'm less angry". now, if that didn't make it clear enough, the story is questionable at best. beyond that, the graphics aren't something a person should expect beyond early ps3. the game play? technically, that can also be summed up by my initial quote. i'm not even sure if the companions DO anything, and i'm fairly certain your monstrous hand does all the work. as a more personal issue, i found ingredient collection and weapon creation to be the most tedious i've ever seen in a game. one ingredient in particular can only be obtained from breaking weapons/armor that don't have a buff effect and it's a basic upgrade material that's "most easily" obtainable that way. due to "perks" you get as you continue the game it makes it even harder to get un-buffed equipment. not to mention they are entirely random. you want to focus on a specific build? not if your equipment doesn't allow you to. lastly, due to how the weapon experience bar works, it makes it feel even less pleasant upgrading or changing equipment.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

80
#80 Best PS4 Game of 2017
42
#42 Most Discussed PS4 Game of 2017
27
#27 Most Shared PS4 Game of 2017

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
79

Generally favorable reviews - based on 57 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 46 out of 57
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 57
  3. Negative: 0 out of 57
  1. CD-Action
    Apr 5, 2017
    80
    Despite simple, painfully dull dungeon designs and PS3 era graphics, it’s one of the best Tales games in years. The story is really sound, the combat system is solid and interesting, difficulty levels are properly balanced at last, character development and crafting are addictive and players are introduced into the world at a perfect pace. [04/2017, p.65]
  2. Softpedia
    Apr 3, 2017
    85
    Having played some of the previous Tales games, I can definitely say that Tales of Berseria is the best title in the series. What makes it even more appealing is the fact that you don't need to have played Tales of Zestiria or any other game in the same universe to be able to play the new one.
    Read full review
  3. Games Master UK
    Apr 2, 2017
    73
    In some ways, this is the most innovative Tales game for years. In others, it's still stuck firmly in the past. [March 2017, p.78]
See all critic reviews »