Tales of Berseria Remastered - Switch Review

Here’s a piece of trivia: I love JRPGs, but I hadn't played a Tales of game until very recently. Does that make me a fraud? Maybe, but it bears saying, because when I played Tales of Berseria Remastered, it was with the eyes of a first-time player, after all!

Originally released in 2016, this isn’t exactly the oldest game in the Tales of series, so it came as a bit of a surprise when it was picked to have a remaster, and I was happy to finally have a chance to sink my teeth into it.

For this review, I’ll address the game both from a new player's perspective and also judge it as a remake, though my exposure to the 2016 original version will be second-hand at best. Ultimately, I was both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised by Tales of Berseria, but let’s take it one thing at a time.

The Good – Tell me a tale

The first thing I have to bring up is the quality of life additions in the remastered version, and oh my, are they good for a first-time player. Tales of Berseria Remastered adds an early-game fast travel item, which makes Grade Shop options available from the get-go; adds retry functions upon losing particularly tough battles; and adds autosave features, all of which feel stellar when it comes to shaving down some of the slower parts of the game. I can say with absolute certainty that I would not have had a good time without these implements in the remaster.

Not only that, but the remaster also comes with the entire library of DLC costumes, items and accessories built in, and there are a lot of options. It’s fun to customise the character’s styles and clothes, and the accessories not only are beautiful, but they are also full of references to other Tales games, which made a newcomer to the series such as myself interested in checking out specific games.

As for the merits of the game regardless of version, I have to praise the storytelling and character work of Tales of Berseria. I always expect a good narrative from a JRPG, but the amount of focus given to even small character interactions in this game is incredible.

The cast as a whole is interesting, and I loved following their specific plotlines, but I particularly enjoyed how many small conversations and semi-cutscenes there were of the cast just…talking. About anything, really; by pressing “X” on certain locations, the player is treated to small interaction skits between the characters and these are a goldmine of characterisation or comedy and the highlight of many sections for me.

TL;DR

• Quality of life improvements make this version very accessible.
• All added DLC costumes and items are fun to have
• Incredible character writing, lots of focus on everyone

The Bad – Please let me just talk this one out

Now, for the first of the unpleasant surprises, this one really hurt me because I was so excited about it at first. The combat system in this game is a mess. Conceptually, it’s very interesting. Each character has a very wide array of skills and a limited number of times they can link actions together to make combos, and that number fluctuates dynamically depending on things such as hitting weaknesses, inflicting status, dodging, etc. So far, so good.

But the problem is that Tales of Berseria took a very solid baseline for interesting combat and bogged it down under an almost unending pile of clutter, poor explanations and annoyingly specific extra mechanics. Did I also mention that the combat encounters get very hard to see with 4+ combatants casting flashy spells?

It took me a long time to grasp how to work the combat system right, and even then it was frustrating. The game will never explain everything early, and battle tutorials will be popping up randomly throughout the entire game, even in late-game climatic areas. So much about the combat feels unintuitive and unfun even when you are winning. And you know the insane part? The game throws so many minute details around, yet it is still possible to mindlessly mash while playing Velvet and stumble into victories. 

Is the combat fun once it finally clicks and once the game throws you a bone in the shape of some potencies? Yes, but it’s absurd how long that takes to happen and how hard the game makes it to play things the way they are meant to be played.

Speaking of making things hard, Tales of Berseria is an obnoxiously grindy game. While that isn’t anything new to JRPGs, the amount of micro-management one has to do while grinding is ridiculous. Artes, characters, equipment, skills, and AN ENTIRE BOAT – all of these have their own little exp bars and ways to level them up, and once you’re done it’s off to the next.

How hard is it? Well, it’s not like the game has any shortage of monsters to fight, because there are filler encounters absolutely everywhere in the game. And each one takes the player to the designated battle mode zone to deal with the messy combat system listed above.

These are problems intrinsic to the game way back from when it was released. With the added QoL options, a lot of these things can be mitigated or avoided partially, yes; but that left me with a weirdly hollow feeling that instead of trying to fix a broken system, the remaster tried to make itself better by allowing me to play less of the game.

Now, for something to do with the remaster itself: why is this the remastered version? The quality of life additions are extremely welcome, as are the DLC adds, but comparing Tales of Berseria Remastered to the original 2016 release, I can’t help but think, "Is that it?”.

The graphics are the same, with minor resolution and performance boosts. Mechanically the game is the same, with the addition of a couple quality-of-life changes and toggle options. Everything else was, essentially, already available and just moved around a bit, which really just makes me think of this as more of a deluxe or GOTY version of the old game, rather than something new

TL;DR

• Messy and cluttered combat systems
• Unintuitive tutorials and mechanics
• Obnoxiously grindy without heavy use of Grade
• Many QoL solutions are simply playing less of the game rather than a fix
• The remastered version almost doesn’t add enough to justify itself

Final Score: 6/10

Man, this one hurt me a bit. I was really hoping I’d love this game more than I did. And it’s not like I hate it either! The characters and story in Tales of Berseria keep me extremely engaged, but the actual gameplay part annoyed me deeply for so long that I couldn’t fully forgive it.

Is the game much more fun by using the exp bonuses and the option to just turn off encounters? Oh yes, tremendously, but I just can’t feel good about the solution being “just don’t play this part; it sucks” rather than some more positive changes. It’s a remaster, people, come on! It has been 10 years!

If you have already played and enjoyed the original Tales of Berseria, this doesn’t have anything new to make it worth your while. If you are a new player like me, I’d never suggest playing the original over this version.

Thank you for checking out our Tales of Berseria Remastered Switch review, thank you to Bandai Namco AU for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

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