Tales of Berseria Un-Review

I almost regret not buying and playing Tales of Berseria. Almost. I've instead been watching/listening to a play through, and I've been pleasantly surprised by it in general.

For one, you get conversation between characters, even while running around, usually every few minutes - not necessarily full cut scenes, but having the characters talking about what's going on adds to the game. It keeps things more interesting than what is, in my mind, the more standard formula of long treks through the wilds of random encounters between areas where scenes play out.

I'm also surprised by the solid emotional core behind the characters. Velvet's burning desire for revenge is pretty compelling, as are the times that's tempered with sisterly concern. Most of those drawn around her have their own beefs with the Abbey or those in it, so their participation makes sense. And you get some contrast with Eleanor, the Abbey exorcist who gets pulled in and struggles to reconcile what she discovers along the way, and Number Two/Laphicet/Phi, the innocent malak who awakens to conciousness under Velvet and has to work to find himself. Even Magilou, the wise-ass alliterative witch, manages not to be grating to me. Really, the core cast is solid, and has strong motivations that are entertaining to follow. That alone is pretty impressive.


The world building is not revolutionary enough to be startling, but has enough twists so far to be interesting, too.

The Accepted Truth: Something happened some years ago that caused a magical disease, the Daemonblight, to come about. People infected turn into powerful daemons, losing all reason and emotion. Such monsters can only really be opposed by Abbey exorcists, who are strong of will and reason enough to have pacted with spirit-beings known as malakim.

The Several-Hours-In Reveal: There's no such thing as Daemonblight. Daemons and malaks have always been around, but only people particularly in tune (high in "resonance") could perceive them as such. Any human can become a daemon if subjected to too much "malevolence" - which seems a supernatural manifestation of violent/chaotic thoughts/emotions that can be internal or can come from outside. Something happened several years ago that seemed to generally increase humanity's baseline resonance, so while a daemon might have previously been perceived as just a person flying into a rage, it's now seen as the person turning into a daemon. Daemons also are not necessarily feral, but can have the same range of thought and emotion as any human - though many examples seem to tend toward obsessing over something. Most Abbey-bound malakim have their personalities locked away and are treated as magical tools.

Oh, and the upper ranks of the Abbey seem to be trying to manipulate the manifestation of daemons in order to feed and fuel a powerful malak in order to use its power to enforce their vision of reason over the world. Theoretically, that might actually prevent anyone from turning into daemons anymore. Yay! It might also rob people of their free will. Hmm. And they're engineering the destruction of entire villages and turning people into daemon-eating-daemons known as therions in order to achieve this end. Boo!

So Velvet is definitely not a good-aligned character. Having become a therion herself, she jumps at a chance to escape prison (even freeing other prisoners with the expectation they'll mostly die or be caught, but provide distraction for her) and sets off on a revenge quest to kill Artorius - the exorcist who married Velvet's older sister (who since passed away) and ritually killed her younger brother apparently in order to get the ball rolling for this plan. Velvet claims any sacrifice is worth it if she can kill Artorius. Artorius seems to be willing to sacrifice anything in order to see his vision of a daemon-free world through. He's got better PR on his side, though, as most people don't know what he has done and probably don't understand what he is doing.

In a grander view, you can see it as a conflict between alignment-ish Law and Chaos. Neither side is particularly Good, though Artorius might make that claim (more likely, he'd calmly say it's necessary). On that level, who do you root for? A world where people might turn into destructive monsters versus a world where people lack any real passion or free will? Hmm.

But the personal levels are interesting, too. Velvet kidnaps a malak and starts to treat him like a younger brother as his personality develops, even bestowing her dead brother's name upon him: Laphicet. Can her protective streak and his innocence redeem her in any way? Eleanor starts working with Velvet and Co. largely because she's given a "special mission" to do so. Along the way, however, she sees how the Abbey has been committing attrocities and covering them up, leading her to doubt her orders. That's not a unique character story, but it's still done pretty well here.

So far, it's been an interesting ride. I look forward to seeing more of the game, even if I'm not playing it myself.