How does Tales of Berseria compare to Tales of Zestiria?

[Pending]

I tried playing Tales of Zestiria and I couldn't quite stick with it. I had mixed feelings about the combat (and the heavy use of tutorials well into the game) and the story wasn't really drawing me in, but it was my first experience with the Tales series and there was a lot about it that intrigued me. The weapons crafting suggested a lot of potential for stats growth, which I like, it looked like there was a lot of side content even if I didn't have access to much of it when I fell out of the game, and I liked the mix of CGI cutscenes and little anime skits. So even though I didn't end up sticking with Zestiria, I'm very interested in trying out the Tales series again and I was wondering if Berseria might be more likely to draw a player in more.

[chaosbringer42]

Berseria is better in pretty much every way. Other good ones to start with would be Tales of Symphonia/Phantasia/Vesperia (Im completely biased, but I love these 3 the most out of the entire group of Tales games).

[Simon]

Berseria takes places 1000 year before.
The story is a huge improvement. The battle system too. AI are no longer dumb. The story is darker than most Tales games, you are kind of like a villain in this game so it gives some sort of different vibes than other tales. Despite being slightly darker, there are a lot of comedy/jokes that make up for it.

[Firellius]

Originally posted by Simon:

AI are no longer dumb.

I beg to differ. The main character is running around on AI, and despite having self-heal available, it chooses to not use it at all. It will also keep running around with a self-harming toggle active for no reason, either.

[ctcc42]

I have noticed a lot of people dont rate Zestiria very highly, and a lot of others seem to rate Berseria much higher.

Personaly I dont understand why. Playing Berseria feels just like playing Zestiria to me. No wonder given that Berseria mostly reuses assets from Zest. If you dont like the gameplay or the setting for zest then i realy dont know how you could like it in Berseria, because its the same.

The only thing that Berseria realy dose differantly is that it switches out the idealist protagonist for an angsty protaganist.

I love both games. But I dont know that some one who didnt like Zest is going to like Bers. Unless the idealisum is what killed zest for you dont pick up Berseria, because nothing else changed.

[Nito]

The cast is more likable personally i only dislike Velvet(her hatred is very soft she is like a fusion of Guts and Naruto when she goes berserk and "will stop at nothing" she litteraly goes and stop to TALK ((and the game endunbment to make the plot go longer, normal in any game))) and a little bit Eizen( Jesus man shut up about your curse)


Gameplay wise outside battle is the same thing as Zestiria just a few tweeks here and there

And the combat that got way more interering that Zestiria and my all time favorite upgrade since i the game Radiata Stories of PS2 is the combo maker you can choose the order of any skill/meelee atacks to use every RPG/Fighting game should have

Personally with Eizen i make a guard break combo and heal + buff combo

even so it still feels like every tales game that the world is a giant one way to the end like youre in "very similar" places over and over again like make the dungeon talk go to city buy better equips talk leave city talk go to field talk go to dungeon talk end dungeon talk go back to city talk buy better equips talk and repeat

[Kev]

Big fan of this series. Could not get into Zestiria! Kept hating that I couldn't get into it as it looked great but just could not take to it. I donno what happened with Zestiria.

However, this one. Loving it. It's better in every way and feels like the Tales of games I've come to love! I actually care about the game already and characters / story etc. I want to see where it goes but with Zestiria I wasn't really that interested (I am going to give it a second chance later though).

This one...I donno it just ticks all the boxes for me. I love this one so far, I loved it from the first 5mins. Try the demo first, though I have to say the first 5mins of the game I liked more than the demo lol.

My other favourites are Xillia 1 and 2, Graces F and Symphonia. This feels on par with them so far.

[Rob]

I don't really like that they made attacks and skills the same thing. I liked when they were separate. It is hard to keep track of how far into your combo you are when battle gets crazy. Hopefully it gets better later when you can put an element on each button and change when necessary.

[Giro]

Berseria is better in every way besides its soundtrack because Zestiria has a better OST than most Tales games.

Berseria has more interesting characters, much better story, more visually pleasing environments, better pc port in general, dungeons are still crap but better than Zestieria's (the dungeons are my only real complaint about this game), better port.

The only thing Zestiria does better is music, and honestly this is completely subjective as I liked a good bit of Berseria's music


The only people I've seen who say Zesteria is better are people who

1) Played Zestiria as their first Tales game
2) Also think Zestiria is better than all of the other Tales games

[chaosbringer42]

Originally posted by Giroliro3:

Berseria is better in every way besides its soundtrack because Zestiria has a better OST than most Tales games.

Berseria has more interesting characters, much better story, more visually pleasing environments, better pc port in general, dungeons are still crap but better than Zestieria's (the dungeons are my only real complaint about this game), better port.

The only thing Zestiria does better is music, and honestly this is completely subjective as I liked a good bit of Berseria's music


The only people I've seen who say Zesteria is better are people who

1) Played Zestiria as their first Tales game
2) Also think Zestiria is better than all of the other Tales games

So...you are saying Berseria is better and people who like Zestiria have no taste (its true but still). :D

[Rens Agatha ⁧【レンス】]

So eizen live for 1000 year

[Giro]

Originally posted by chaosbringer42:

Originally posted by Giroliro3:

Berseria is better in every way besides its soundtrack because Zestiria has a better OST than most Tales games.

Berseria has more interesting characters, much better story, more visually pleasing environments, better pc port in general, dungeons are still crap but better than Zestieria's (the dungeons are my only real complaint about this game), better port.

The only thing Zestiria does better is music, and honestly this is completely subjective as I liked a good bit of Berseria's music


The only people I've seen who say Zesteria is better are people who

1) Played Zestiria as their first Tales game
2) Also think Zestiria is better than all of the other Tales games

So...you are saying Berseria is better and people who like Zestiria have no taste (its true but still). :D

More or less lol. Zestiria would look very good on paper but its execution could've been done waaay better.

There should be no reason people like an anime based off Zestiria more than the game itself.

[Firellius]

Having played more of it, I can say that Berseria is leagues better than Zestiria, but also leagues worse than most other games in the franchise. The combat has been made a lot more complicated for literally no reason at all, and it results in a very, very awful gameplay experience if all those factors align in the wrong way. Character switching mid-combat is heavily forced due to status effects being ungodly OP in the game, and enemies have a 100% chance of inflicting them, so you're likely to get killed if you get hit once, unless you switch.

It also causes characters to overlap tremendously, with four out of six of the cast fulfilling largely similar, very vague roles.

[SOUS CHEF HELLDAVE]

Originally posted by Giroliro3:

Berseria is better in every way besides its soundtrack because Zestiria has a better OST than most Tales games.

Berseria has more interesting characters, much better story, more visually pleasing environments, better pc port in general, dungeons are still crap but better than Zestieria's (the dungeons are my only real complaint about this game), better port.

The only thing Zestiria does better is music, and honestly this is completely subjective as I liked a good bit of Berseria's music


The only people I've seen who say Zesteria is better are people who

1) Played Zestiria as their first Tales game
2) Also think Zestiria is better than all of the other Tales games

I'm in neither of those camps but I think Zestiria is better. Someone above I think alluded to thinking the same. Berseria's problem is pretty much Velvet and Eizen from a character standpoint to me. Especially Velvet....she's REALLY angsty, even for someone that deserves to be mad as hell the way she's written and or translated makes her really hard for me to like in a lot of scenarios.

[Giro]

Originally posted by ctcc42:

If you dont like the gameplay or the setting for zest then i realy dont know how you could like it in Berseria, because its the same.

The only thing that Berseria realy dose differantly is that it switches out the idealist protagonist for an angsty protaganist.

I love both games. But I dont know that some one who didnt like Zest is going to like Bers.

I personally didn't like Zestiria because of the characters and story. I found it all to be either very uninteresting/cliche and/or very cheesy.
Whereas Berseria has one of my favorite casts and characters of any Tales game.

Other people hated the large empty maps (exploration but nothing to find) as well as the equipment system and the battle camera.
Which are all pretty much nonexistant issues in Berseria.

I dont think many people complain about the setting or the combat in Zestiria since the combat is very similar to Graces combat which is regarded by many as the best in the series.

(I personally hate graces though lol.)

[Giro]

Originally posted by I'll Deleta Ya:

Originally posted by Giroliro3:

Berseria is better in every way besides its soundtrack because Zestiria has a better OST than most Tales games.

Berseria has more interesting characters, much better story, more visually pleasing environments, better pc port in general, dungeons are still crap but better than Zestieria's (the dungeons are my only real complaint about this game), better port.

The only thing Zestiria does better is music, and honestly this is completely subjective as I liked a good bit of Berseria's music


The only people I've seen who say Zesteria is better are people who

1) Played Zestiria as their first Tales game
2) Also think Zestiria is better than all of the other Tales games

I'm in neither of those camps but I think Zestiria is better. Someone above I think alluded to thinking the same. Berseria's problem is pretty much Velvet and Eizen from a character standpoint to me. Especially Velvet....she's REALLY angsty, even for someone that deserves to be mad as hell the way she's written and or translated makes her really hard for me to like in a lot of scenarios.

I agree about Velvet being too edgy and static for most of the game. However I think Sorey is in the same boat except replace the edgy-ness with "goody two shoes, chosen one, top student, we must do the right thing all the time" etc.

Lloyd was really goody goody too but he at least had some unique characteristics.