Tales of Berseria Remastered – Review – After a decade this story about revenge still feels fresh and new

Tales of Berseria belongs to the darker and more mature entries in the Tales of series. Originally released in 2016, the game combines a tragic story with fast paced action combat and one of the best parties in all Tales Of games. The remastered version of the game now gives players on PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox a chance to experience it for the first time, with additional quality-of-life options.

Tales of Berseria breaks with a lot of genre conventions, and that makes it feel fresh even today. Released in 2016 for the first time, the game quickly earned its reputation for being one of the strongest entries in the Tales Of series. Even today it is one of the recommended games, when it comes as an entry point to the long-running series. 

The story of Tales of Berseria is about Velvet Crowe, who isn’t your typical JRPG protagonist. Instead of being your optimistic and idealistic JRPG hero, Velvet deals with anger, trauma and is driven by her thirst of revenge. After her brother was sacrificed in a ritual by her father figure, Velvet is betrayed herself and is imprisoned when is is infected and becomes a so-called daemon. When she is freed, her journey isn’t about saving the world, but a journey of vengeance. Velvet acts out of her own egoistic interest, and her moral complexity gives her story a lot of weight and introspective.

And it is not just Velvet that elevates the atmosphere of the story. Tales of Berseria features one of the strongest casts in the entire Tales series. Characters like the cynic daemon Rokurou, the secretive witch Magilou and the stoic pirate Eizen, bring a lot to the table. Each of them has their own secrets that slowly get revealed during the story and each of them have their own burden to carry. The group dynamic feels natural. While at first feels more like they tag along, because they are all hunted, the group grows together and they start to respect each other. Numerous skits and small situations support the group dynamic, and it is always fun to see and hear, what the party has to say to situations, each other and big story moments. Rarely did a cast in the Tales series felt so authentic than in Tales of Berseria.

Gameplay wise Tales of Berseria uses a real time combat system on separate maps. While you see the enemies on the overworld, you get warped into small combat arenas. The combat is fast and flexible and doesn’t take long. Even bosses can be beat quite fast, if you keep up with your equipment such as weapons, armor and rings and look out for useful skills on them and keep them upgraded regularly. The core of the combat system is so called Artes you can combo chain together. With each button press, you trigger one Artes after another. Different Artes are more effective in single target or multi target combat and they can be more effective against certain elements or enemy types. While you always control one character, you can switch between them during combat. Up to 3 other party members are controlled by the AI and you can actively switch in the rest of them. The AI does a good job in general, but you can always tell the AI to use or not use specific Artes and you can adjust AI behaviour if you want to min/max the combat, which is a good idea on higher difficulty settings.

Structure wise the game is quite linear with small open areas, dungeons and cities mixing it up. After a while it gets a bit repetitive to walk between the areas, but chests, collectables and powerful optional monsters, keep it fresh until then. The game also includes small puzzles here and there, but nothing to talk home about. They are done quite fast. So are systems like cooking and the scout system, where you send out your ships to gather materials, ingredients for cooking and some collectables. I’m a sucker for these passive timer-based background activities and enjoyed my time with it, especially when the ship finally brought back a rare item that you were able to display or when a new area was unlocked.

A standout point of most Tales games is the music. And as expected the music of Tales of Berseria is still full of absolute bangers. The moment I fought my first boss and the music set in, I was absolute into it again, finding myself humming the songs of some towns, areas and bosses again like it was 2016, when I first played the game. The music does a great job supporting emotional scenes just as it increases the hype for big boss fights. The game also comes along with both English and Japanese audio and both voice casts do an amazing job, bringing the characters to life.

When it comes to performance, Tales of Berseria Remastered runs without a hitch on PS5 Pro. I have to say, I had a hard time seeing any changes between the PS4 version and the PS5 version, but first and foremost it feels like a port to modern systems such as Xbox Series, Switch and PS5. Loading times are fast as well and the anime look from 2016 still holds up until today. Everything just looks a tad clearer and more high resolution.

The biggest addition to the Remastered version are the countless comfort options the game gives you right from the start of the game. The navigation got improved quite a bit. Proper destination markers for where you must go, encounter toggles and the early grade shop access, with numerous options for experience gain, cheaper shops and much more and the infinite bottles to fast travel out of dungeons and to previous cities.

Additionally, the Remaster includes all previous DLC, featuring character costumes, bonus items and other extras, which, in combination with the budget price, is a good reason to get it as a new player. 

We would like to thank Bandai Namco for providing us with a copy of the game for review purposes.