{"id":147,"date":"2017-02-06T23:19:17","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T04:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=147"},"modified":"2017-02-06T23:19:17","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T04:19:17","slug":"game-ramblings-32-tales-of-berseria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=147","title":{"rendered":"Game Ramblings #32 &#8211; Tales of Berseria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.talesofgame.com\/en\/game\/tales-of-berseria\/\">More Info from Bandai Namco<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: PS4<\/li>\n<li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: JRPG<\/li>\n<li><strong>Also Available On<\/strong>: Steam, PS3 (Japan Only)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The <em>Tales of<\/em> series has been going on for a long time. \u00a0Most people&#8217;s familiarity with it is directly tied with the\u00a0GameCube release of <em>Symphonia<\/em>, but that&#8217;s just one of many main line titles in the series. \u00a0<em>Berseria<\/em> in a lot of ways feels like a final act in the PS3 game line and a natural\u00a0progression of the PS3 titles starting with\u00a0<em>Xillia.<\/em>\u00a0 With this being a direct universe prequel to\u00a0<em>Zestiria<\/em> this makes quite a bit of sense. \u00a0However, there&#8217;s been a number of changes that have pushed the gameplay ever further towards a direct action RPG style.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest high level difference long time\u00a0<em>Tales of<\/em> players will notice is that this story is decidedly darker than your typical titles in the series. \u00a0The surface level of the story is very direct with this in that you are playing the bad guys. \u00a0At its core, your group is basically out to destroy the world, even if their motives are somewhat more selfish than that. \u00a0However, beyond the surface layer, there are a number of themes that play on negative psychological aspects that I was surprised to see in such detail. \u00a0All that said, the progression and ultimate redemption of the party\u00a0in the final act is worth the pay off. \u00a0Players of\u00a0<em>Zestiria\u00a0<\/em>will also connect a lot of dots about how the game&#8217;s shared universe works, and the return of a handful of\u00a0characters from the previous title adds a nice layer of depth to the universe, even though the thousand year gap between the two games means they are largely disconnected from each other.<\/p>\n<p>At a gameplay level, things are largely as they have been for a while, with some key differences once the battle system is reached. \u00a0Like <em>Zestiria\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0the\u00a0<em>Xillia<\/em> titles, there is no distinction between dungeons and a larger scale overworld. \u00a0Everything is interconnected using realistic scale environments, so moving between towns, fields, and dungeons is fairly direct. \u00a0The environments are scattered with non-random battles that start with interacting with enemies. \u00a0There are also your standard assortment of treasure chests, as well as the return of herbs and item spheres that can be collected around. \u00a0The only new addition to item pick ups are Katt souls, which serve as a secondary currency for unlocking some specific chests\u00a0largely filled with outfits and visual accessories. \u00a0The end result is that if you&#8217;ve played a\u00a0<em>Tales of\u00a0<\/em> game on PS3 in the last 5\u00a0years, you know what you&#8217;re getting into here.<\/p>\n<p>Battles are where the gameplay has changed the most. \u00a0Pretty much every\u00a0<em>Tales of<\/em> game in the past has had standard attacks on one face button, and Artes attacks using a secondary resource on another face button. \u00a0This is all gone. \u00a0For one thing, all attacks are now set by the player across the four face buttons based on a position within a combo chain. \u00a0All attacks and artes now using a single resources that determines how many attacks can be chained in a single combo. \u00a0The resource stack grows by applying negative conditions to enemies or properly timing dodges, and shrinks when negative conditions are applied to the player. \u00a0With 3+ resources available, the player can also activate a special overdrive-like mode or special attacks, depending on the character, giving a boost to damage as well as a significant heal. \u00a0Because of the constant back and forth in changing the active combo length, as well as the layout of the custom combos, the game feels very distinctly like a 3D fighting game in battle. \u00a0While these titles have always been very action-focused, the changes here have pushed the game in a direction that is a distinctly fresh take on the gameplay, even if a lot of the core pieces are very recognizable to returning players.<\/p>\n<p>Also of note to the core gameplay loop are some changes to the gearing system. \u00a0Stats are still very much there, but the most important aspect to gear is a mastery stat. \u00a0Every piece of gear has a mastery stat, which can be anything from flat stats (+x Defense, etc), to type-specific increases (+x% damage to undead), to very specific effects around status conditions (-x% time to applied poisons). \u00a0Once an item mastery has been earned, it is permanently applied to the character. \u00a0Because of this change, I was typically wearing whatever gear was not mastered, rather than whatever gear was the best. \u00a0By the end of the game, the summation of all these individual masteries was easily more important than changes in stats between two pieces of gear, so I was constantly searching both in shops as I got to them, as well as for treasure chests in all the environment areas for new gear that I hadn&#8217;t seen before.<\/p>\n<p>Given that we haven&#8217;t heard anything about the next <em>Tales of<\/em>\u00a0title, my assumption is that they&#8217;re now digging in to get going on the true next-gen progression of the series. \u00a0While\u00a0<em>Zestiria <\/em>and<em> Berseria<\/em> were on PS4, they were direct ports from PS3 titles released at the same time. \u00a0Given the departure that the PS3 titles were from some of the past games, I can only assume that we&#8217;re going to see a similar change in gameplay for whatever the next title will be. \u00a0However, it feels like the changes have already started here. \u00a0The action focus of the battle system is a very distinctly new feel to the series, even if a lot of the core pieces feel the same. \u00a0Because of the constant healing and changes to gear mastery,\u00a0the game felt more focused than ever on the core combo-based action, rather than the number crunching typical of most JRPGs. \u00a0Like <em>Final Fantasy 15,<\/em> it feels like they&#8217;re moving further away from what started the series&#8217; popularity, but like <em>FF 15<\/em>, I&#8217;m also pretty confident it&#8217;s for the best. \u00a0Technology has progressed to the point where we can have the grand adventures, as well as fast paced gameplay, and I feel like we&#8217;re only scratching the surface of where this series will be going in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from Bandai Namco Platform: PS4 Genre: JRPG Also Available On: Steam, PS3 (Japan Only) The Tales of series has been going on for a long time. \u00a0Most people&#8217;s familiarity with it is directly tied with the\u00a0GameCube release of Symphonia, but that&#8217;s just one of many main line titles in the series. \u00a0Berseria in &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=147\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Game Ramblings #32 &#8211; Tales of Berseria&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[5,29,77],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jrpg","category-ps4","tag-jrpg","tag-ps4","tag-tales-of"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}