Tales games are struggles, and they're not just between a world-saving cadre of misfits and some ruthless villain or eldritch power. They're clashes of quality. On one side, you'll find entertaining characters and hectic, enjoyable battle systems. On the other, you'll find routine RPG design and stories that manage the unenviable feat of being both largely cliché and thoroughly confusing. It's been the Tales standard for a long while.
The series needs a new edge, especially after the by-the-numbers Tales of Zestiria. That's why Bandai Namco made Tales of Berseria a few tones darker than its predecessors.
Like many RPGs, Tales of Berseria grants its main character about an hour of happiness before tragedy unfurls. Velvet Crowe is a cheerful teenager in a village seemingly unscathed by an outbreak of magic that turns humans into monstrous daemons. Nothing is safe for long, however, and Velvet's life is shattered in gruesome spectacle.
Three years later, she's caged in a citadel, and one of her arms is a clawed, shadowy form that devours all the daemons fed to her. Everything she once loved is long-destroyed, and the man responsible for it all now leads a powerful religious order called the Abbey, using spirit-folk known as Malakim for the betterment of all civilization. Velvet doesn't care what's best for the world. She wants to avenge her family at all costs.
Fortunately, Tales games specialize in building surrogate families, so Velvet finds one in the demon-infected samurai Rokurou, the relentlessly melodramatic witch Magilou, the reluctantly in-tow Abbey exorcist Eleanor, and two Malakim creatures: a pirate named Eizen and a near-emotionless Abbey acolyte who Velvet brusquely adopts and names Laphicet.
The typical Tales game is hardly free of bleak moments, but Berseria uses them more frequently and more adeptly than any other piece of the series. Velvet wants revenge no matter who she has to hurt, no matter what her arm has to devour, and no matter how much of civilization she has to throw into chaos. And for someone raised in a remote village and confined for years in a cell, Velvet is remarkably skilled at manipulating situations. With her, Tales of Berseria manages something a lot of sordid fantasy stories can't: she's ruthless and violent and opposed to the greater good, but she's never so terrible that the audience won't sympathize with her—or wonder why her equally messed-up comrades stay by her side.
Tales of Berseria's newfound ferocity seeps into the battle system. It follows the Tales standard of letting the party roam small open areas while attacking enemies with simple button-presses. Yet the combat here proves more intense, relying on a stockpile of Souls that determines how many times a character can attack, defend, or evade. Expend them all, and you'll end up merely chipping away at an enemy's defense. Fortunately, Souls regenerate quickly, and Break Souls unleash nastier attacks with ease. Chains of regular moves and more powerful Artes can be freely mapped to the controller's four action buttons, and it's lots of fun just to customize the sixteen different slots and find a combination that works just right.
