![]() ![]() While this Tales game shares a similar bright, cel-shaded aesthetic with the others in the series, its storytelling is far darker, to the point of being downright sinister. Along the way she meets up with a truly eclectic bunch of demons and fringe-dwellers, who form her anti-heroic party as they move from town to town, doing a mix of noble and horrific things in the pursuit of their goals. This woman, Velvet, is transformed into a demon as part of the same ritual that killed her brother, and as a result she’s imprisoned for years, becoming ever more bitter and violent in the process, before an opportunity to escape presents itself, and Velvet can start tracking down her betrayer to exact her revenge. Revenge against a man she loved as part of her family (her brother-in-law) who betrayed her and slew her little brother, no less. ![]() The characters find themselves wrapped in a quest of earth-shattering importance, but at the very core of the game, this Tales is a far more personal story of a young woman on a quest for revenge. Even when characters fall outside of this, they tend to be righteous and noble, and even when the plots aren’t focused literally on saving the world, they tend to be quite epic in scope. Generally speaking – and with a series that has been around for this long, it is only speaking in broad brushstrokes – the Tales series has been one about heroes doing heroic things and generally behaving like heroes. ![]() There are various reasons for this, which I’ll outline below in summary, this game offers a more mature and intelligent narrative and more interesting characters than we’ve seen in the series previously. With that as context, I’m happy to say that Tales of Berseria is completely different. Related reading: You can check out Matt’s review of the previous Tales game on PlayStation 4, Tales of Zestiria, here. While I do appreciate some of the series’ hallmarks (they tend to represent inter-character relationships that are by turns both deep and charming), there are other features, such as that action combat system the series continues to iterate on, that really don’t work for me. The truth is that I simply don’t enjoy them all that much. Of all the venerable JRPG franchises, the Tales series is the one that I have the most complicated relationship with. ![]()
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