Tales of Berseria

[JoeTang]

Given that the game is coming out today, here are my thoughts on it.
Starting with the checklist I had from earlier in the thread about what I wanted improved upon from Zestiria:

Things I hope have improved from Zestiria:

• No temporary party members
  
  • Given the massive outrage, they'll either have learned, or just won't advertise said member as a main character
• Better battle camera
  
  • Certain situations could have the camera zoom in too closely if you're against a wall, etc
• Better AI
  
  • Personal gripe but the AI is too stupid (or the difficulty is just too high for me.
    The enemy tends to (read: always) attack my NPC party members instead of me, leading to their immediate demise
    Also, there is no more 'shortcut' to control allies to use certain artes (i.e. abuseable spell spamming)
• Return of the 'Arte Shortcut' i.e. R-Analog
  
  • R-Analog in Zestiria controlled NPC formation instead of being for 4 artes. I think this also contributed to a smaller arte list.
• Drops?
  
  • It may just be the mid-game, but I've had a hard time getting useful drops for the rather complex equipment skill system
• Equipment Skill System
  
  • I can see how this may be too complex and overwhelming, especially for a more casual player. I'm okay with it thus far, but I'd be more okay with it if I had more control.
• SC
  
  • I'm not really feeling the necessity when I can't see the actual number and only my blue bar, especially when AC/CC exists. It's basically TP that recovers really fast, but you can't see the number itself. It otherwise works fine.
• Map Action
  
  • Some of the map actions were too useless, and it would show a question mark over your head at a location where you could use one. I think it's more today's gamer who doesn't have time for a pomegranateton of secret bullpomegranate and I can appreciate that, but still.
• Support Skills
  
  • Detect Discovery/Chests/Normin, pickup gald, produce food... Mostly useless, though I will admit I missed some Normin after turning it off. Chests are so obvious though, given the detection range...

• No temporary party members
• Better battle camera
  
  • Entering into battle is not seamless like Zestiria. There is a small transition cut, but you end up in the same field like Zestiria does, including all the terrain elements, with the exception being you can't be placed in a small corridor or corner. This is probably why the transition exists; so you don't end up stuck up against a wall. The game will either despawn the enemy or automatically move your battle location slightly to accommodate. You can adjust the camera as you want with the right control stick, though most of the time you'll have it following your target.
• Better AI
  
  • The AI is quite effective. They'll actively heal, revive, and attack with appropriate artes. Very unlike Zestiria where they tend to rush in and die. You still can't abusively spam ally spells though, which is probably for the best.
• Arte Shortcut option
  
  • Not the right control stick, but you get a feature to hold L1 and press O/X/T/S to activate one of your artes at will instead of relying on the arte tree.
• Easier drops
  
  • Less vague drops like "Ceremonial Swords" that depend on enemy level. Instead, it gives a more clear "Topaz Sword" as a drop under the monster's information, meaning this is a 'rare' drop, and it will drop the same item type with two or four ranks down more often.
• Vesperia-style Equipment Skills
  
  • Equip an item and learn the skill by earning enough Grade to master it. Equipment can also roll with bonus skills, so you can get some good gear from drops. There's also two bonus effects that can be unlocked by upgrading which is quite simple compared to Zestiria's grueling maximum +99.
• Map actions
  
  • Basically press X at this thing instead of the convoluted D-pad.

A few things that I missed having from Zestiria:

• Enemies on minimap
  
  • Something that I got used to from Zestiria, and I believe Xillia 2 had it as well
• Items on minimap
  
  • Unfortunately, you can't see any items on your minimap except for collected chests. There's no indicator on whether they've respawned on the minimap itself, but you'll eventually get a counter in the corner telling you how many unopened chests are on the map. Probably to incentivise exploring the map more. I actually miss Xillia 2's super cluttered minimap.
• Map travels
  
  • The map travel feature in Berseria is less powerful than Zestiria; the biggest example is you can't instantly move to a dungeon, only Towns and Fields. Overall field movement is a lot better though
• Normin
  
  • Normin allowed for targeted drops; i.e. most of my drops will have Attack on it. The overall drop system is better in Berseria in my opinion, but I believe the only way to target drops is to have a certain item that makes what you're equipped with drop more often, and it doesn't include skills.
• Map + monster details
  
  • Zestiria had a feature where you could check on the world map what monsters were in the area, and what items they dropped. In Berseria, you can't see drops this way and you have to look in the Bestiary to see it, which was annoying. You could still check in battle, but the Bestiary was pretty annoying to sort through. Since the overall drops were so much more specific though, it was less of an issue in my opinion, but still a QoL decrease.

My opinions:

Good

• Story
  
  • Very enjoyable throughout. Wish it kept going because I liked it so much.
  • Every character's substory/sidequest is pretty interesting, though I liked Rokurou's least
  • Even the enemies substories (Oscar, Teresa, Artorius, etc) were pretty neat, and all the other characters you meet developed the story pretty well
  • Vast majority of sidequests are unlocked when you reach the final dungeon, so you can just progress forward instead of overleveling doing this other stuff, which I prefer
  • Set a couple thousand years before Zestiria so it's standalone. If you played ToZ, you'll understand some foreshadowing and have questions about certain developments that are different from what you know, but it's fine without knowing.
• Areas
  
  • I think the area size is toned down compared to Zestiria where everything was excessively large.
  • Geoboard helps traveling too, and areas are segregated by ocean travel
  • Fast travel is more easily accessible/affordable in my opinion
• Equipment
  
  • Much better than Zestiria in my opinion. No ridiculous combinations required. Skills aren't super gamebreaking if you don't have them. Lower tiers are still very useful.
• Upgrading Equipment
  
  • A much more simple system than Zestiria and Graces, which can go up to +99. This maxes at +10 and feels much more impactful.
  • Materials for upgrading are streamlined and simple
  • Item rank is clearly visible and meaningful towards the upgrade system
• Combat
  
  • Smarter AI that can fend for itself
  • Enemy spell targeting lines so you know when to dodge
  • More interactive combat with the gaining/losing Souls and the pickup appearing on field
  • Variety of fighting styles esp. with Break Soul
  • I love the shoe upgrades in combat
  • Wandering Enemies are intense
• Systems
  
  • Cooking system is more traditional with mastery from characters that give certain boosts, which is pretty neat and useful for a lot of fights.
  • Expedition adds some lore and incentives for playing for longer stretches I guess. Free items, etc.
  • Mini-games - There's a ton of them. I liked about half, can't believe I spent so much time playing the card game... Or the slide puzzle.
• Tutorial/Progression
  
  • Gradually introduced to mechanics of the game so you're not overwhelmed with too many new things, such as advantage/dangerous/risky encounters, everyone's Break Soul, Hi-ougis, etc. I think Vesperia was most similar to this. Some things like difficulty and higher upgrades are locked behind progress, which I think was good at the beginning for focusing on actual progress instead of trying to farm a +10 at the beginning.
  • Artes are obtained based on level instead of whatever weird obfusicated system Zestiria used (three hidden stats based on leveling with titles, really?). I personally prefer Graces/Xillia 2's system though, but this is fine.

Bad

• Areas
  
  • I wish they reused areas from Zestiria. I think they wanted to avoid what they did with Xillia 1&2 where they literally reused the entire map, but it would have been cool to visit some of the ruins you found in Zestiria. There's two or three areas I believe that you see again.
  • Fast travel is limited to Towns and Fields, not Dungeons. Annoying but manageable with the speed you can move at.
• Materials
  
  • One specific material seems excessively difficult to obtain; only gotten from equipment with 0 bonus skills on it, and required for the +2 upgrade on any odd rank equipment. More difficult as you increase the difficulty because skills are more common.
• Combat
  
  • Only Velvet has access to every enemy type, making it more difficult to play solely as alternative characters. This is pretty consistent from all games though, MC is just too strong always, hopefully they get better with this in the future.
  • Bug, Wolf, and Armadillo enemy types rustle me to no end. They move way too fast.
  • Wish there were more spells/wish I liked more of the spells we have. I miss a lot of the older spells like from Symphonia/Vesperia.
  • Artes - Their obscene fascination with reinventing the wheel every game for Artes. Rokurou would have worked really well with a few of Ludger's dual sword Artes for example.

Combat
Overall combat felt more fluid and impactful than Zestiria's, particularly since there isn't such a huge gap in power between something like Armitization. Your artes felt like they had more power than the Martial Artes styles in Zestiria. I felt combat was more dynamic with the choice of when and how to use your Souls, and how enemies weren't insane in their ability to take out your AI. Some major quality of life improvements include the better camera angles, and indicators of spell's area of effect, which can help you target enemies or let you dodge incoming attacks.

The Liberation Linear Motion Battle System lets you customize the arte chain tree so you can put any arte in any position in the tree. You can even set an entire tree to be one arte if you want to activate only that one at any time, though a feature later makes this pretty pointless. It overall makes a lot more sense than the more rigid versions of Graces and Zestiria.

The new resource, Soul Gauge takes a while to get used to. It's basically a two-part CC/AC + SC/EG/TP
The CC/AC part, the number of actions in a row you can perform, is represented by the diamond's outline and known as Soul.
The SC/EG/TP part, the cost of an arte, is represented by the diamond's blue fill which I think is 25 or 50 SG.
Both refill when you don't do anything, or when you use Break Soul.

You start a battle with 3 Souls; i.e. you can chain 3 actions before having to stop and replenish it. You can gain Souls by applying a Status Condition to an enemy, landing the killing blow, or picking up a dropped Soul in the battle field (your first successful dodge drops 1 Soul). You can lose Souls by taking a Status Condition, using your Break Soul ability which heals you and does a special effect unique to that character, or by dying.
You can increase your base and maximum through equipping upgraded equipment. If you have less Soul, it becomes easier to apply Status Conditions, so you're not completely screwed if you get stuck with 1, but it's vastly more difficult.

I very much liked the dynamic of weighing the cost between using Break Soul to heal/deal damage vs having the extra action for the fight, and how to set up your arte tree to effectively leverage your attack's properties.

Some tips and notes:

• L-Stick can affect the direction of some artes, but not which arte is activated
  
  • If you're like me and are used to letting go of the L-stick to activate a Neutral Arte, don't do it. Letting go of L-Stick while running makes your character enter a stopping animation which delays your attack significantly. Just hold your L-Stick in a good direction (i.e. towards the enemy) and attack
• L1 is Guard now instead of Square, but it also functions as an Arte Shortcut button later
  
  • Do not get used to acting out of Guard, because once you get this second function, pressing L1 + X activates an arte shortcut instead of being Guard -> X
• Hitting a guarding enemy drains you of your SG and flinches you.
  
  • Get your guard break aura (hold guard for 2 seconds) to avoid this
• Not all artes will combo into others
  
  • Some artes simply move you out of range of other artes. I think one of the biggest offenders is Mega Sonic Thrust. It has knockdown/knockback and you can't really follow up on it with most artes, especially at the beginning
• Break Soul continues your combo/arte chain
  
  • You can use Break Soul to extend your combo chains, especially to activate level 2 Mystic Artes which require an 8-arte combo chain
• Weakness chain requires all of an enemy's weaknesses hit for it to activate
  
  • This can be difficult to manage since only Velvet has every single type available, and sometimes impossible on a boss because they'll Super Armor mid-combo
• Status Down effects make Status Conditions apply more easily. e.g. PATK Down makes Stunning easier.
• Feel free to run away from a Wandering Enemy instead of getting a Game Over
• If an enemy's DEF is too high (?), they'll start reflecting elements they're strong against, meaning you do no damage and instead take damage and flinch

Character tips:

• Velvet
  
  • Be mindful which artes move you away from the enemy because she has quite a few that can't link to certain other artes
  • Her Break Soul can be used to tank basically any damage making her invulnerable as long as you have Soul
  • I found Swallow Dance to be one of the best openers
• Rokurou
  
  • The timing of his Break Soul needs to be very precise to get the counter
  • He probably has the easiest set of Status Down into Status Condition set-ups in the game
• Laphicet
  
  • He has a lot of the larger area of effect disruption spells later on
  • I never had much luck playing him close range, though his last few artes have more range to them
  • The AI seems to be very good at using his Break Soul and healing to keep the team alive
• Eizen
  
  • Has one of the two Revive spells in the game
  • A lot of his base artes are really easy to spam with; Ditch (?, level 13) in particular
  • The AI is kind of bad at using his Break Soul. Getting an enemy into Down is quite easy with him though and it autotargets whatever is Stunned/Down if you use it manually.
  • His artes chain into his spells quite easily, especially with the teleport spell
• Magilou
  
  • Spirit Drop is super overpowered, it's extremely easy to stun things with it
  • Her first and second rank spells come out really quick and are easy to spam
  • Her Break Soul, Spell Absorber, can be really abusive if the enemies are all casters. The AI isn't that great at using it though, so manually switch to avoid huge spell spamming
  • As far as I can tell, her last Break Soul is completely random, so it's extremely difficult to activate her 3rd Hi-ougi reliably
• Eleanor
  
  • Her first set of spells allow her to play at range very safely
  • Earth Drake and Cleansing Lance can be affected by L-stick direction
  • The multihit arte that moves her backwards doesn't always pull enemies with her; chaining it into a spell is a good follow-up in this case
  • Her first Break Soul doesn't combo very well into anything, and her second makes it better but a lot of monsters seem to just not have the right hitbox for it to be super effective. With her third though, she's a monster.
  • She has the other revive spell in the game

[Dark Link]

A generic tip for all characters: Low SG cost artes with the added ability to possibly stun is some of the most OP stuff in the game and it only gets better as the game progresses due to being able to enchance your gear.

I really love the equipment upgrade system in Berseria. It's so much simpler and easier to understand as opposed to Zestiria. Zestiria's system was extremely annoying until you got to the point of being able to x2 / x3 specific equipment skills, and that wasn't relevant until NG++ where you're basically farming for mega endgame gear to take into Unknown.

Also the AI for both ally and enemy is really damn smart, at least in Hard+, as they'll somewhat frequently do perfect dodges. It's nice you also get rewarded for doing it yourself.

This is probably why the transition exists; so you don't end up stuck up against a wall. The game will either despawn the enemy or automatically move your battle location slightly to accommodate.

Which is funny, because in the demo, both NA and Japan, you could transition in a certain spot and get stuck if no one in the team had long range attacks. Granted this was a demo only thing and didn't exist at all in the full game, but was still interesting to see happen.

[JoeTang]

Lol at that position. The EN voices are super cringey as usual.

Played a good bit through first town up until you get Eizan with my friend. It was pretty difficult trying to keep up in battle as Rokurou with Velvet, even when I knew how to play and he was brand new, since Consuming Claw is so strong, and whatever his default stage 2 arte is that pulls him backwards is dumb. Playing Rokurou became immensely easier once you get Hurricane Thrust.

Another note about the upgrade system is you'll probably have a hard time getting the Odorless Liquid or whatever it is that comes out of salvaging a 0-skill item if you're playing on a higher difficulty later on in the game, since you get more stones that increase the chance of skills dropping. The easiest way to counteract this is to go to one of the low level arenas and set the difficulty to Simple and grind through it.

Getting to +10 for anything does end up costing a lot of materials and money, but it's nowhere near as tedious as older games.