Look what you made me do
Tales of Berseria is probably the best version of the long running series that I’ve played. Its darker story of tragedy and revenge felt much more grounded than the others I had played. I had picked the game up on a Steam sale years ago and had only played a handful of hours before it was placed in the ever-growing backlog. Fast forward to 2026 and Bandai has dropped a remastered version of the game but not only that it gave me a reason to finally dig into this game.
MSRP: $39.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $39.99
Tales of Berseria, much like many other RPG’s will ultimately see its characters in a quest of the utmost importance. But at its core the story is about a young woman who was horribly wronged and is out for revenge. Velvet is her name, and she ends up being transformed into a demon through a ritual that also kills her brother. She ends up being imprisoned for years, which only made her hate and bitterness grow until the avenue for escape presents itself. This Tales game shares the bright graphics and cel-shaded style of its kin, but this game is darker than any other I’ve played.
Velvet is a woman on a mission, and she is determined to see it through come hell-or-high water. On multiple occasions during my playtime many people were murdered for impeding progress. Now that’s not to say that in this game players will just slay innocents, the team is more of an ‘anti-hero’ group so while they indeed do some bad things, it is usually for a good reason; think Marvel’s Thunderbolts. The enemy in Velvet’s story is her brother-in-law; and without spoiling anything I really found myself siding with her during the game, even though I admit that she went too far at certain points.
This remaster of the game seems to have fixed quite a few of the issues I saw in the original version. For instance, there was some awful pop-in, tress would just appear and it was very disconcerting. Now everything runs smoothly at a nice 60 fps on the Series X, sure I had some slow-down here and there during combat sequences, but for the most part this remaster shined.
Speaking of combat, the system here is pretty standard feeling especially if you have played any of the other seventy-two thousand ‘Tales’ games. Players will press buttons to execute attacks in real-time and can be done in combination for great effect. One highlight that I enjoyed is that the characters didn’t constantly shout the name of the attack they were doing as if this was an episode of the Power Rangers from the 90’s or like they do in Tales of Arise. Berseria does seem to have a low number of variations when it comes to enemies which is kinda lame but other than that the combat is fun.
As someone who missed the original release of Tales of Berseria, I really enjoyed this remastered version. They story is about revenge, and is much darker than the typical JRPG but to me it also felt more earnest in its approach. While the developers made things prettier with the remaster, I do wish this was a full-fledged remake; but what’s here is a lot of fun.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
