Then again, puzzle gimmicks were never my favorite part of JRPGs. I loved some of the changes made for Zestiria, but sadly the large world, equipment fusion, and puzzle-heavy dungeons are gone. Berseria doesn’t try and reinvent the wheel, it just wants to give you that old wheel you had as a kid and make you happy. You could describe the gameplay similarly. Berseria doesn’t shake things up with the visual formula, instead polishing and refining the details to make the crispest looking Tales game to date. Environments are also pretty simple, but things like sharp lighting and glossy textures give them some vibrancy. Character models all have a beautiful, almost painterly style of coloring and shading to their textures that make the characters look attractive and vibrant, even if the models themselves would feel right at home on a PS3 – the PS3 version is only out in Japan. The overall graphical quality of the game is really nice. It isn’t just skit visuals that look sharp. They all add fun development to these characters that wouldn’t fit in the main story cutscenes, and seeing your party of characters coming together as pals is always a treat. In previous games you would see simple character portraits as they had various goofy conversations, but Berseria ups the ante with dynamic animations and various illustrations for the characters as they speak, making even the most boring skit a lot more engaging.

Comedic “skit” scenes make their return, popping up as you explore the open world and triggered with the press of a button. It’s a story with plenty of that classic Tales charm and cheesiness, though, that much is for sure. Admittedly, the experience dips in the second half when it relies on backtracking for various MacGuffins, but I had become too attached to the characters by that point for it to entirely ruin the experience for me.

While she has a caring heart deep down, the brutal way she goes about achieving her goals and protecting the people she comes to care about made for one of the most unique JRPG stories I’ve seen. Your early party is made up of other colourful escapees, and they’re both just as morally ambiguous as Velvet.

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