So I recently finished playing "Tales of Berseria" (JRPG game by Bandai Namco) and I thought I would round up my thoughts about the game here (the review should be mostly spoiler free, otherwise notify me and I'll change it).
The story tells the tale of young Velvet Crowe and her adventurous crew (surmounting to 6 by the end of the game) who set out to put an end to a trauma of Velvet's past by all manner of means, ranging from fishing and cooking to straight up fighting. Well mostly the latter. You see while you might be fooled by an early cutesy introduction the meat of the game is truly in its dark undertones which, for a game with a age rating of 16, is a fair amount of the content.
I found also that the content was fairly philosophical at times (perhaps not in the amount of some VNs though). In the game you namely find yourself fighting between different values, ideas and perspectives, something the game manages in my opinion to do with fluidity and better than most games and VNs. This philosophy comes from the intimite and delicate relation the game places between cutscenes, extra dialogue (dialogue you can choose to straight up never open) and world building in which you get to take a part of not a straight up philosophy lesson but instead a smaller amount of nit picks of philosophy. In this regard I found the game interesting above the brute force gameplay and story (we will get to that later) and found myself able to enjoy not skipping every single dialogue line, something I admittedly find myself doing all too often in games.
The story is very good and interesting throughout the whole game, if somewhat trope-ish (what can one expect from a JRPG game?) and while the story never managed to grab me to the point of tears it certainly has its moments for both the ones liking darker and (somewhat) lighter storylines. Is this good? Well, perhaps. I personally did not really enjoy the sudden shift the game took towards the end to become so light namely and I sort of wished the story had stuck purely to the largely dark undertones it held in the beginning, since this shift sort of opened up the door for it being trope-ish for the (in my opinion good) ending. Did this largely influence my enjoyment? Certainly not, but just something to note for those not able to stand JRPGs love for tropes.
In terms of voice acting I can not speak for the English side but with Japanese voices the dialogue is very nicely voiced.
The fighting (which is 50%> of the game in my opinion) is focused on different, so called, artes (attacks basically) which have different effects, elements, level upgrading (..., I was literally still getting new tutorial messages for fights 1 hour before the, ~40-ish hour, game ended). If you are like me however you will notice the little blue bar (so called "souls") next to people's faces and that is, truth be told, the MVP meter, 80% of your time will be spent waiting for this to go up to three bars and then pressing R to do some, so called, break soul ability, which is basically code name for stun lock, invincibility frames and damage central (if you want some NG+ level fighting, I am not your guy, I am the R spammer). If you do not have this bar filled you will be in the living hell mode, where you can get stun locked into the next century and can get absolutely destroyed by different AI unless you run around in circles (blocking does exist but did not work very well in my experience compared to dashing away) and wait for your blue bar (basically working as a stamina bar) to refill by attacking with basic artes and running.
Is the fighting enjoyable? Yes. Is it repetitive? Yes, especially if you need to farm for levels where your life basically becomes turning down the volume to next to nought to not have to use hearing aid in the near future due to the EXTREMELY loud battle sounds (one reason I cannot really speak for the music) and getting perhaps slightly bored of seeing the same cat on a wand for the 30th time. Personally I would have perhaps liked some other battle system (with an lessened focus on stuns and the "souls" (stamina bar) and an increased focus on leveling) but I can also see the enjoyment it brings when you absolutely destroy your enemies with OP and nice animated powers. Beware however, the AOE stun of doom is real in this game so if you screw up your blue bar of destiny you are a bit in the toilet when an enemy does an AOE of half the battleground and you can neither run away, get up your souls (since it takes forever to do so) or attack (due to the extreme damage some bosses do).
In terms of bosses the game too offers a wide arrange, though arguably they are later on narrowed down in terms of difficulty to their AOE attack size and ability to stun lock you and your AI friends (which are actually pretty good in my experience of not needlessly dying), since in my experience that is where the real trouble late game comes up and minor changes in attack patterns become minor.
The characters are also really enjoyable and funny, making me chuckle more than once and not making one character that one guy which is boring compared to the others. The relations between the different antagonists and characters later on get really interesting too, tying in nicely with good story overall.
In terms of graphics the game is generally really good, if perhaps somewhat randomly pixely at some points (I laughed when an antagonist got an 144p background randomly smashed up behind himself while he kept the same quality as the rest of the game). Out doors the quality stays pretty good too and most of the views of the game are pretty nice if looked from afar, if somewhat dulled out if you get close up.
Ending thoughts
Though focusing (perhaps too much) on the the battle system, Tales of Berseria is something to truly enjoy for its story and characters, which is something that brought me back to game and made the experience all the more worth it.
Hello!
If you noticed the post about the poems from before then you might have noticed my random writing and this post is supposed to be something of a follow-up to that content. This post will follow up a short story that nothing came of that was written give or take two years ago by me. Same story as before there is no real meaning, just felt like it would be a waste for it to be left as scrap in the mass of my random writing.
The Figurehead
Through a windowsill the rain blew in, in manners almost as if the mild defence of the human mind could not keep away those memories, memories of their saddened pain of drenched teary days and although neither one of the two men of the now crowded inn said anything, they knew, they knew that their hollowed livelihood were of no end and that for every shed tear of the gods above, the men below would yet yell out and exclaim their shallow belief and blessed tears that their wretched lives were of the quality goods to which the oysters lying deep below the seaweeds darkened decay. There was no need for chatter, neither of the two men said who was who, for they knew that in this world, the quandary of the voice were of no need. For as the men saw it they were the only part of the world that still remained undimmed and flaming akin to that of their dreams - the creaking of the wooden floorboards, the moaning of the drunken maid on the floor above and the pianists flaccid hand movements were that of the finest quality in this world - there was and could be no greater joy and yet all that to which the fellow man's dream had held had now long since lost it’s harmonious glamour of an illusion, an illusion of bliss, an illusion of freedom being brought to the prisoners in free men’s clothing.
A lightning strike suddenly shook the world and the cheery scenery fractured like the painting of a masterpiece getting torn to shreds by it's master and in the shriek of a world dying, the sudden silence of a requiem turned their attention to the sound of water splashing down from above. Falling silently down on the ship of a journey never ending going toward that of the infinite, the small tears going down the outline of a mast, out over the dark musty floorboard and out through what looked like the captain's cabin, spreading ever thinner to the ends of the horizon, where they could see their Midas touched fingers’ blinding golden land, their dream, a dream whose sudden path shone over a world where happiness could not coexist, a world with wounds deeper than that of body, a world whose grandure layed deeply rooted high above that of others but with the pains written be above the chiseled stone of sorrowed tears and strove the men to flee and with the fear of a thousand tears to stand out on top of the figurehead of their doom. Down below a darkness deeper than that of the void and every chasm in the whole world sang out to them, begging for their warm plea and with the sudden rocking of a lightning strike, the rain and the men fell down, back below. With it’s arms open the silence embraced them, dastardly did it ring out over where their true dream laid, way beyond the silence of a million seas."The dreamer is but the orchestra, the dirigent meanwhile, is that to which lay unknown, the lusting anger of something outside that of our own, to that of which the strings to which this world upholds lay below", who had said those words? Where were the ones below whose hungering plea could still be heard for all up above that of the masts, for those quiet enough to hear? Who were they and where did they come from? They had forgotten. Once more their consciousness darkened and in the sound of the rupture of a sinking ship a voice cried out, deep below:
''Wake up sleepyheads!''
Hello!
This is a collection of three small poems I made in the past (I only remember the meaning of two so it is largely give or take as to the meaning). It seems nothing ever came of them so I thought I would atleast post them up on here as a side note if nothing else for the time spent on writing them.
Méconnaissance
An endless journey,
toward a space blotted known,
yet beyond that of our own.
What have undone, the done untold,
toward the pieces' fractured bone,
for eyes beyond those of their wretched own.
Such as to the checkered pieces, reigning free of worlds of predefine seed,
Breath out over the unperturbed queen of thee,
alas for as long as none are free let the blessed fire rain be,
''Knee to knee''.
The merry tethered sea of tea tattered and shattered
and the knowledge and wisdom, could not see the bothered,
and moving to and fro’ toward neither beginning nor end,
the unaffected swerve of ivy down the pattern.
The Sun Sets in the East
The sun risen eastward,
A Glory risen backwards,
As I walk along the shallow graves,
alone.
Going over bridges of these golden waterways,
I can hear the silence of a crying moan screaming over seas of east,
A final requiem in our silence, as I see.
The walk along the graves of my dismay,
I hear the sudden stutter of an engine far above,
A bringing of our tempest.
I see the silhouette of a bomber far above,
Blowing the last of our world asunder,
A small leaf fell down in my tea.
The emperor cannot hold onto these,
Fallen leaves of a gloried sea of tempest tea,
What of our bittersweet yearning glee?
Today an empire rise,
and tonight an empire fall
back below.
Lady Ashore
The duke calls our bidding of days over again,
As enemies in our very grave,
The game had begun and just as quickly ended, and as the final piece fell,
Our gambit was lost.
Alas pupateers, we given free,
An empire shattered,
by deaths debris.
The final emperor calls for my last stand,
For there were no unrest, no distress among these,
For the final feast.
I rush forward,
Set free, these fallen angels bleed,
Blister free.
As the shadows fall tall,
I see the last royal guard bleed,
To the sound of a rain dyed red.
Last I see, I bend no knee
For I remembered thee,
My lady across our shore.
