Tales Of is one of those franchises that is always amazing. I have yet to play a bad title in the series and it has been fun slowly catching up with all of the titles that have come out. They don’t release as often as in the past but I suppose that’s true for pretty much all of the big video game series. I have yet to play all of the Final Fantasy titles either but in this franchise I was even more behind so it was time to change that. I have another title that I’m in the middle of so you can expect another review in the future. For now though, I think it will be an uphill battle for any title to beat Bersaria. This was such an intense title.

The game begins with Velvet taking care of her brother with the help of her mentor Artorius. Unfortunately he betrays her one day when he sacrifices her brother and imprisons her in a monster tower. She is stunned by this betrayal and now lives only for revenge. No matter who or what she has to sacrifice, Velvet will avenge her brother. This begins her tale of woe and tragedy.

With a 30+ hour title like this, you can bet that the story will be taking a lot of twists and turns as it goes on. The main cast gets fairly large and Velvet really learns how to interact with each other. Any series with revenge as a core theme is going to have to deal with forgiveness, sadness, and the cycle of violence. The game deals with all of that very well and I agreed with a lot of Velvet’s decisions. Characters kept trying to get her off this path of revenge but she was fighting at every corner.

Mix that in with the incredible cinematics and ost and you have a very intense game. I always appreciate it when a game goes the extra mile to have fully animated cinematics in addition to the main cutscenes. The songs are all really good as well and so you will be on the edge of your seat the whole time. An RPG must have a great story to justify the long play time and this one certainly does.

The core gameplay is much more complicated than the average title in the franchise. You have to balance your 3 characters as normal but you can only attack based on the amount of gems you have on hand. You must steal them from your opponents while also saving some for defense and character switching. All the way to the end of the game I can tell you that I never fully understood this system. There are over 50 tutorials at the beginning of the game and they ended up just overloading my brain.

I had to rely on my old button mashing skills to find some good combos and then I stuck to those. I will say that items are incredibly useful in this game. You absolutely need them in order to keep on healing and to keep your status up. You can spam items like crazy in this game and you just have to watch out for the lag when using one. It is less useful in one on one combat. There are very few of those boss fights but they tend to be the most difficult ones when they appear.

There are also a lot of collectibles in the game. You can grab vegetables which permanently increase your stats. Yes, these are as helpful as they sound. You should always make a detour to grab those when possible. The treasure chests confused me a bit because they seem to actually respawn. I may have been imagining things though. I still recommend opening them all and using the pink chests when you have enough orbs set up. I was mainly doing this to get some trophies but ultimately I beat the game before I had opened enough of them.

In addition to the main story you naturally have a lot of side quests as well so the game is not lacking in content by any means. There is always a whole lot to do here and there are always ways to get stronger. The EXP gains dramatically slow down as you get to the end of the game but you should still be fine. Grinding is just a part of these RPGs after all and I have to admit that I always have fun with this part. It just feels good to watch yourself gradually getting stronger. It’s why I never like when an RPG has enemies auto scale to your level and fortunately this one doesn’t do that.

There are over 500 optional cutscenes as well which is a crazy amount. This game is just super detailed and I appreciate that. You really get to know all of the characters and I can say that this was a really strong main cast. I dare say that they are in one of the higher tiers as far as that is concerned. Artorius also makes for a great villain with how the game sets up his character early on. So you know the guy and he does think of himself as the villain. Break an egg to cook 100 omelets kind of thing. His plan has a logic to it without a doubt but it makes sense that Velvet would oppose this.

The production values are through the roof and I really have no negative things to say about this game. It is just utterly fantastic even if it has a really depressing ending. Perhaps one day it will get a sequel but I suppose I just have to recognize that these grand adventures often have a pretty sad ending. You’re not usually going to get to see everyone reach their happy ever after even if I wish that were the case.

Overall, Tales of Bersaria is a game that I absolutely recommend all the way. It is a terrific experience. Some RPGs can take time to get going but this one starts off amazing within the first 20 minutes. I also had fun with the game’s built in customization which is a little cherry on top. Either way if you like action and adventure then you have to buy this game. It can hold its own with any RPG and gives you that somber feeling when it’s all over. You just want games like this to go on forever. The game is difficult but you can always grind your way through it, such is the art of the RPG.

Overall 9/10