Tales of Berseria: Ridiculously Well-Written Characters

Xylia

Terrarian
So, awhile back Steam had this huge sale on all the Tales Of games, and I wasn't sure which to even get, and I kinda did this "eenie miney moe" type thing and clicked on Berseria.

I've heard conflicting stuff about Vesperia, I already had Symphonia (should play that sometime), and Arise is just too expensive for me at this point, and Zestiria also had some mixed reviews about it.

Berseria, however, was sitting pretty in the very positive area and I figured "what the hell why not". The fact it had a female protag helped, I won't lie.

I was not, however, prepared for just how well-written the whole thing ended up being! I know it's an old game, and I always arrive to the party late, but meh. I'm gonna write about it anyway because it's almost 2300 and I'm bored. /shrug Sue me, lol.

Not many games pull the "Grey and Grey Morality" off well. I've seen games try it and end up being cheesy all around, and/or various people are given Idiot Balls and/or they do stuff that makes you scratch your head and go "wut?".

Tales of Berseria, though.... you don't see much of that going on here. Who even IS the protagonist, and who even IS the antagonist, anyhow? You might assume Velvet is the protagonist, because, well, the story is told from her POV and it's her that you're mostly in control of (though, technically, you can control anybody in battle and/or put anybody in front in the field). The story follows her almost exclusively except for the occasional "Meanwhile in the antagonist's lair..." cutscene.

But yet... they did an excellent job of pulling off the whole thing where sure, she's the focus of the story, and she's in the protagonist's place, and sure you can emphasize with her, but yet she does some really .... morally questionable stuff. And rather than having the evil egomaniac villain, the antagonist also does some very morally questionable stuff, but once you learn more of his backstory, his ultimate goals are... not so unreasonable afterall. Obviously, the steps he's willing to take to GET there do a great job of painting a picture of a guy who has clearly lost his marbles and all sense of reason (despite his speeches about reason), but yet his reason for losing said marbles is understandable to a point.

And then, going back to Velvet, I can't exactly fault her for her descent into madness, either. The stuff that poor girl has to go through throughout the course of the game (I haven't actually completed it yet, so please watch the spoilers -- I got up to what looks like the final story dungeon, need to finish it here soon) is just one huge tragedy after another.

The game also does a great job of teaching some moral lessons too, about why blind lust for revenge is bad, what it can do to you and those around you, how it can consume you. You can see in real-time how Velvet nonchalantly walks down the road of revenge and just ignores (almost) everything else along the way, to the point that even her best friends stumble some trying to come to grips with some of the things she says and does, and it leaves me the player going "girl! listen to what they're saying!" wishing that at some point, she'd soften up some. Not expecting her to give up her quest, but perhaps approach it with a "I gotta do what must be done" rather than "I HATE HIM I WANNA KILL HIM RAAAAAAH!" type blind rage.

Anywho, the both the writing and the simple but addictive gameplay (that also has a lot of room for mastery) have really kept me playing until (almost) the end, during a time where lately it's hard for me to focus on a game for more than a few hours at a time. This is one of the first in quite awhile (other than Inscryption) that have actually kept my interest.

Highly recommend it, for anybody wanting to see some great storytelling in a JRPG with a very flashy combat system.

EDIT: BTW, Velvet's English Voice Actress. Top-notch Voice Acting. Some of the best I've heard, getting out some very raw emotion in some of her lines.
 
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