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Tales of Berseria |OT| The Band of the Crowe

DR2K

Banned
I really like this game so far. Played 4 hours straight last night. I could see this as the Tales that dethrones Vesperia.
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
I like the characters and story so far, but combat is pretty boring. I'm on Hard and it feels like something lower than Normal difficulty. Here's hoping it steps up.

Agreed. I can't imagine how the lower difficulties must fare because you are practically untouchable on Hard. 8 hours in and my only wipe was against a Dire Foe. They actually have been popping up pretty often for me due to playing on hard and wiping the floor with common enemies with good grade, both which trigger their occurrence. They have been the only real threat for now, but still enjoying the game so far.
 

Soriku

Junior Member
Haven't had any issues yet. It zooms in and out, and of course it's not focused on one character is like single player battles.

It's better then Zestiria's camera, which my girl eventually grew irritated with and quit.

She took over Velvet, I think I'll try Eizen next time.

OK sweet I just remembered these games offer 2+ player and I always used to play them myself, but I have a girlfriend now and we lament that there aren't that many (good) 2 player games, so I might get it sooner than expected.
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Rokurou is super fun to play as. He's also grown on me a lot. He's the resident funny man without being a total joke character. I like that.

His skits with Laphicet are adorable, lol.
 
what if someone ask her about the way
her brother
was killed ?
At that time she looks at the camera and says "He was killed not by a sword, as in the original Japanese release, but by a magic cross of light in order to maintain a Trading for the West." Then the game continues on.
 

Bladenic

Member
Yeah the game is very easy even on Hard. It's very different from Zestiria, which I found could be quite difficult on Hard. Like if I fought the wandering enemies in Zestiria on Hard upon first discovery it would be a battle filled with deaths and life bottles thrown everywhere. I just fought a code red demon in a new area in Berseria and had no deaths and I was playing as Rokurou whom I haven't even played much as. I think Zestiria was harder because 1. The AI 2. Enemies just hit ridiculously hard, 1 or 2 hit KOs were plentiful. 3. They probably made it harder because you could swap out Seraphs and they would heal (even though it took forever). Berseria's AI alone makes the game quite easier I find since they're not always dead. They still die occasionally from an enemy soul break or from getting ganged up on during link encounters but their survivability is overall much higher than Zestiria's AI.

Also you can issue commands to go all out or prioritize defends using R3. I got a tutorial for it like 20 hours in, so I'm not sure if it was available way beforehand or not.
 
How is Hard mode compared to Zestiria's Hard mode?

I found ToZ on hard to be extremely frustrating. Some battles took me a few retries to gather a plan of attack (which was rewarding) but more and more made me feel like breaking the controller (especially bosses suddenly spamming their most powerful artes with 1/4 HP left and becoming staggerproof). In the past I would sit back, grind, or practice moves before reattempting but in ToZ grinding didn't help too much when HP was tied to orbs and herbs.

How's the party AI on hard? Are they dying 30secs into battle like ToZ and you have to solo a 20k HP boss, or can they dodge and help out?

EDIT: Thanks Bladenic! You answered most of my questions before I even posted them!
 

Bladenic

Member
Surprised to hear so many call hard difficulty so easy. How do you unlock the other difficulties? Grade shop/NG+?

From code red daemons (basically the hunts/Giganto of the game). I fought one that dropped an item that unlocked Intense difficulty.
 

aravuus

Member
From code red daemons (basically the hunts/Giganto of the game). I fought one that dropped an item that unlocked Intense difficulty.

That's an... Interesting way to unlock new gameplay options lol. Good to hear you can get them on your first playthrough, though.

Two hours to go!
 

Shouta

Member
Berseria is easy on Hard for quite awhile then there are a few difficulty spikes later on when there are more potent enemy combination and formations. Pretty fair on the whole though.
 
I get like every Tales game and bounce off in a few hours. I've stuck with Abyss on my 3DS and Vesperia, which I thought was really good.

The combat always seems so button mash to me and the character building is always needlessly odd and complex.

Is this a good one or bad one of these?
 

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
I get like every Tales game and bounce off in a few hours. I've stuck with Abyss on my 3DS and Vesperia, which I thought was really good.

The combat always seems so button mash to me and the character building is always needlessly odd and complex.

Is this a good one or bad one of these?

Play on hard so its not as button smashy.
 

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
I'm 6 hours in and all it has been is button mashing. There's zero difficulty so far on Hard.

I think the difficulty spikes later on will make you tweak your gameplay style and overall its up to the player if they want to go deeper into the mechanics or keep mashing. I bet harder difficulties will punish you. Kinda sucks you still have to unlock em.
 

Jiraiza

Member
Rokurou is super fun to play as. He's also grown on me a lot. He's the resident funny man without being a total joke character. I like that.

His skits with Laphicet are adorable, lol.

Yep, Rokurou's my favorite character to play. His moves get pretty cool later on, too.
 

Rpgmonkey

Member
Berseria is easy on Hard for quite awhile then there are a few difficulty spikes later on when there are more potent enemy combination and formations. Pretty fair on the whole though.

Yeah later on enemies start getting better spells and they take off the kid gloves with stuff like status effect penalties and the need to swap characters around to better handle certain enemy combinations.

That said the button mashing thing the game only handles indirectly through making Break Soul spam trickier by making them kill stuff less easily and it becoming easier to get status effects or die and lose souls, with this all being increasingly exacerbated as you move up the difficulty scale. It turns the combat into a game of maintaining and boosting your party's momentum because things can get sour quickly if everyone only has one or two souls. Fights where that momentum is hard to lose will probably always feel like mindless mashing.
 

Bladenic

Member
Got Velvet's second mystic arte. However I only activated it once, other times I just got Lethal Pain. I believe the arte says you can activate it after an 8-hit combo, but I don't think that's correct since it says to use Break Souls. I think it's more like you have to use eight moves before you can activate it, plus 4 BG.

It looked pretty cool, though. Mystic artes are one of my favorite things about Tales games so can't wait to get the others
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
Yeah the game is very easy even on Hard. It's very different from Zestiria, which I found could be quite difficult on Hard. Like if I fought the wandering enemies in Zestiria on Hard upon first discovery it would be a battle filled with deaths and life bottles thrown everywhere. I just fought a code red demon in a new area in Berseria and had no deaths and I was playing as Rokurou whom I haven't even played much as. I think Zestiria was harder because 1. The AI 2. Enemies just hit ridiculously hard, 1 or 2 hit KOs were plentiful. 3. They probably made it harder because you could swap out Seraphs and they would heal (even though it took forever). Berseria's AI alone makes the game quite easier I find since they're not always dead. They still die occasionally from an enemy soul break or from getting ganged up on during link encounters but their survivability is overall much higher than Zestiria's AI.

Also you can issue commands to go all out or prioritize defends using R3. I got a tutorial for it like 20 hours in, so I'm not sure if it was available way beforehand or not.

How is Hard mode compared to Zestiria's Hard mode?

I found ToZ on hard to be extremely frustrating. Some battles took me a few retries to gather a plan of attack (which was rewarding) but more and more made me feel like breaking the controller (especially bosses suddenly spamming their most powerful artes with 1/4 HP left and becoming staggerproof). In the past I would sit back, grind, or practice moves before reattempting but in ToZ grinding didn't help too much when HP was tied to orbs and herbs.

How's the party AI on hard? Are they dying 30secs into battle like ToZ and you have to solo a 20k HP boss, or can they dodge and help out?

EDIT: Thanks Bladenic! You answered most of my questions before I even posted them!

Yea, the big problem with Zestiria on Hard(spent most of the game on the difficulty myself) is how stiff your reactions to almost anything related to combat were. Spells took too long unless pushed out at end of combos(which could be easily broken by off screen hits or back attacks. Blocking was very sluggish due to almost frustrating animation priority. It was a game where you literally were forced in cases to trade small combos and block to avoid forced counter-measures, the flow was rough.

But the most damning offense was the free immunity enemies received after major chain combos. You hit stun them and have a tight window to do extra damage before the game puts up a game-breaking magic barrier that blocks any and all attacks for a short duration. It's meant to prevent spam, but its a cheap and tactless solution, and severely punishing to the player when you are trying to keep the combo chain active only to suddenly be wasting SP on an unflinching foe that you cannot break the animation cycle to respond. It infuriated me constantly.

Thankfully Berseria doesn't seem to suffer from any of these issues so far. It is a bit too easy given how absurd Velvet's Break artes can be against fodder. I barely even notice what the AI is doing as I just decimate almost everything myself. Only Rokurou seems to have issues with dying against major foes so far though. It's not constant(unless facing an optional Dire Foe, but lifebottles seem reserved exclusively for him in my playtime).
 

Jiraiza

Member
Got Velvet's second mystic arte. However I only activated it once, other times I just got Lethal Pain. I believe the arte says you can activate it after an 8-hit combo, but I don't think that's correct since it says to use Break Souls. I think it's more like you have to use eight moves before you can activate it, plus 4 BG.

Yeah, it's after 8 actual artes, and not the combo counter. Misleading.
 

Anoxida

Member
https://twitter.com/TalesofU/status/824666039879360513

Game is unlocking on Steam midnight CET, so ~3 hours from now.

giphy-downsized-large.gif


Steam store lying again.. dammit.
 

Datschge

Member
Guys, the release always has been for midnight CET, it's where it's being published, and the game is being published on 27th there (even on PS4)...
 

Lulubop

Member
Well, the Steam page has gone from "unlocking in less than a hour" to "Coming Soon." Goddamnit.

Yea, smh. Someone is screwing up and I don't wanna hear, "it was always at this time".

I checked about an hour ago and it said less than an hour to go. Now it says coming soon, come on.
 
Played for six hours straight today, it's awesome. The prologue was excellent, finally a Tales game with some balls.

Really curious how this story is going to play out.
 
OMG people this game is awesome! Laphicet won my heart with both his cuteness and sweetness! No really that skit where Rokuro and him
imitate Bienfu melt my heart....it was way too much.
His smile must be protected!

My favourite characters so far is Oscar and sadly he is not playable :( or at least not to my knowledge.
 
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