2015 marked a low point for the Tales series. Tales of Zestiria was an underwhelming entry despite its exciting battle system. With a boring plot and mostly unimpressive characters, it wasn’t exactly an entry to write home about, at least for me.
However, the follow-up entry, 2017’s Tales of Berseria, was nothing short of a redemption story. As a prequel set a thousand years prior to Zestiria, Berseria’s revenge plot and ragtag gang of scoundrels made for a tempting adventure. Tales of Berseria Remastered introduces tons of quality-of-life features that make it a worthy journey to experience on Switch, and even one worth revisiting if you’ve played it before. While it’s a rock-solid port, you might be disappointed that there aren’t any extra graphical bells and whistles, though.
The game follows a woman named Velvet Crowe. On one fateful night, her younger brother, Laphicet, is sacrificed by the exorcist Artorius Collbrande as part of a ritual to quell the daemonblight, a disease that turns humans into monsters. From that point on, she vows to enact vengeance on him and end his misguided plans to rid the world of daemons.
As an antihero, Velvet’s backstory immediately grabs your attention. It’s a welcome change to the typical Tales protagonist who tends to be altruistically heroic, especially compared to Zestiria’s goody-two-shoes main character, Sorey. [Editor’s note. The following paragraphs discuss a couple of characters’ arcs, so if you haven’t played the game before and want to know absolutely nothing, skip ahead two paragraphs.]
Berseria has one of the best casts of any Tales game, as the characters have complex relationships with each other. Velvet meets a young boy with repressed emotions due to a magic spell by Artorious’s religious organisation, the Abbey. She names him Laphicet, acting as his adoptive older sister and slowly healing the inner wounds from her younger brother’s death. It’s touching to see Laphicet gain his emotions back while Velvet learns to control hers over the course of the game.
Another favourite character of mine is Eleanor, who initially works for the Abbey and is a staunch follower of the church’s vision. Over time, however, she becomes disillusioned and eventually comes around to Velvet’s side after witnessing the Abbey’s true colours. Each of the main characters in Berseria goes through tremendous growth in a satisfying way that feels earned by the time credits roll.
Aside from the main cutscenes, you can view optional skits that pop up as smaller scenes where the main cast talks about the events that occurred, or just random topics. The stellar voice acting helps bring the skits to life and adds even more personalisation to these characters.
Berseria’s real-time action combat is also one of the best examples in the series. In this iteration, each character has a Soul Gauge, which is expended whenever they attack with special moves called Artes and string together combos. The gauge’s maximum limit can be increased by performing actions like landing critical hits, inflicting status ailments, or dodging enemy attacks at the last second.
It’s the perfect mix of offensive and defensive pressure. When your Soul Gauge runs out, you’re encouraged to fall back and let it refill automatically, preventing you from simply spamming attacks and forcing you to be more strategic.
And by conserving your Soul Gauge, you can fire off powerful attacks called Break Souls, which add quite a lot of cinematic and energetic moments in the already-chaotic combat. These include attacks such as unleashing Velvet’s giant arm to swipe at a group of enemies, or sprouting dragon wings for the cursed pirate Eizen to launch a shadowy fireball into the ground (the latter — SPOILERS! — a clever reference to his ultimate and cruel fate in Zestiria). Those who’ve played it will really appreciate some of the nods and connections that Berseria makes.
Berseria’s combo system is also more flexible than Zestiria’s. Whereas the latter forced you to follow a specific combo attack chain laid out in an Arte Tree, the former lets you swap out different Artes to create your own combo strings. This allows for much more experimentation in the Arte Tree than ever before.
The biggest issue plaguing the original Berseria was its egregious amount of backtracking. You also had to use limited consumables to warp back to the start of a dungeon to exit it or fast-travel to other areas. All of these factors combined made for some really annoying and uneven pacing.
However, Berseria Remastered alleviates that. Instead of being found in the final dungeon, the bottomless versions of these same consumables can be acquired within a few hours of starting the game for unlimited use. Additionally, the running speed on the field has been increased by 20%. These small quality-of-life additions make a big impact on the game’s pacing, reducing much of the tedium.
Like Graces f Remastered, you now have access to the Grade Shop immediately when starting a new game. This is typically only unlocked once you’ve finished the game, and you can select certain parameters and unlock bonuses to carry over to New Game Plus. For those who’ve already played Beseria before on other platforms years ago, it’s a fun way to add more spice to your playthrough on Switch. I personally went with 10x EXP so I could hilariously steamroll everything in my way. But if you want to play Berseria Remastered on a completely fresh basis, you’re welcome to do that, too.
Berseria Remastered is a good, but not exceptional Switch port. Frame rate is capped at 30fps, and texture pop-ins occur frequently. I played this on Switch 2, and this was still the case whether I was playing in handheld or docked mode. On the bright side, the game performs well enough with very few gameplay hiccups.
Conclusion
Tales of Berseria is still one of my favourite entries in the series, thanks to its excellent story and charming cast of characters. The gameplay is as fun as ever, and it’s aged well since its debut nearly a decade ago.
This remaster offers plenty of new features for those who’ve already experienced the game, and they’re an extra cherry on top for newcomers. Beyond those quality-of-life additions, the port itself doesn’t exactly go above and beyond, but if you’re looking to play this game on the go, you can’t go wrong here.
