Tales of Berseria

I have no objection to you playing with a controller; just isnt' for me. I find the mouse/keyboard much easier and more enjoyable and I don't play games from the couch.

I've been playing this, too. Almost started a topic on it but decided to play a bit more, first. (And one of the first things I would have done would have been to warn Joxer off. There's resp*wns and bad hair everywhere!)

What I found out is that the arrow "pointing to the right" sequence (the third from the top) is tied to left mouse.

Click to expand...

Took me about 25 hours before I figured that out, myself. I was updating the first row, of course, assuming that was the row that would be the left click. I *was* doing the right click row correctly (last row in the list) at least. I had actually fiddled with the other rows, too, though, so I don't think most of the skills were updating for me. And yet I was beating things down no problem in the normal mode!!

Needless to say, you want to push the difficulty up to at least moderate. Otherwise you can just try and stand close to the bad guys, click wildly, and press R every now and again to beat everything in the game.

I could use my controller - it's sitting right here. But I like the mouse for turning and looking around. Now that I know the battle controls are stupid, I can deal with them.

What's really getting to me, though, is the story. I thought that was supposed to be hot stuff!? It seems to have picked up a little now that I have all the characters but so far it has felt like a kids' game. I'm still plugging away but this game definitely hasn't been as good as the reviews led me to think.

wolfing said:

Bah, just get an Xbox controller.

Click to expand...

I didn't get one automatically when I bought the game on PC. So, no.
Besides, I've already tried to explain why even with mushrooms, those menus are atrocious.
For example ship expeditions. Go there, check what you got from an area, why the hell you can't see food/loot and treasure/recipe/cloth at the same page but you must use mushrooms (keyb C or right arrow)?!
When it's not menus, it's hotkeys. Who on earth thought it's a fantastic idea to put escape_dungeon/fasttravel_to_town potions among normal ones and then assign an unique buttom on those (keyb V)?

you said:

Oh well another game I will skip. Tired of horrible UI.

Click to expand...

you said:

I have no objection to you playing with a controller

Click to expand...

Don't skip. Buy when heavily discounted (I did that), thumb it down on Steam because of UI (I'll do exactly that) so Namco does the port properly next time, but don't skip.
The story and substories in this game are not a design crime. It's a redeeming feature making the title worth buying for cheap.

Zloth said:

(And one of the first things I would have done would have been to warn Joxer off. There's resp*wns and bad hair everywhere!)

Click to expand...

That would be a mistake.
Hair in the game fits the style, I won't complain on that. What I will complain about is Gothic level of graphics. Outdated in every possible way. I'm not even sure how a jrpg released in this year can look equal or I dare to say worse than 10 years old Valkyria Chronicles.

Respawns are a part of the game's biggest sin, luckily on normal they're easy to deal with. The game is grind, grind, grind, grind some more, grind even more, grind, grind everything! I'll never understand people who find this fun. Even worse, backtracking over previously cleared areas is a necessity. Luckily there are several ways to avoid unnecessary grind later in the game. Will write when done with the game.

Zloth said:

What's really getting to me, though, is the story. I thought that was supposed to be hot stuff!? It seems to have picked up a little now that I have all the characters but so far it has felt like a kids' game. I'm still plugging away but this game definitely hasn't been as good as the reviews led me to think.

Click to expand...

The story is the very reason why I went through all of it and didn't uninstall.
You just got the final sidekick (6th party member)? You didn't even scratch the story yet, trust me. I suggest do not skip anything. Check town maps when you can freeroam, talk to anyone with exclamation mark in a bubble (not smiley) above their head! When there is an option for more lore, press T on the keyboard - skip nothing.

Most important - kill the english dub horror, switch to original voiceover, listen to emotions and follow subtitles. English dub feels like they gathered random people from street and told them to read lines into a microphone without thinking what are they reading.

It's not for kids, I don't see how less than 13 years old could understand half of it. It's not for geriatrics either, but is still fun.

If gifs were possible to be used as avatars, I'd put this instantly:

I don't know why you say there is grind in this game. I hate grinding with a passion, and yet I loved this game. Maybe our definition of grinding is just different.

Could be it's definition.

Combat SG/BG based - grind (no grind = no ultimate move, no switching sidekicks).
Loot - grind.
Item masteries - grind.
Shop levels - grind.
Katz chests - grind.
Minigames' buyable rewards - grind*.
Cooking levels - grind.
Ship exploration - grind.
Crafting - grind*.



Leveling can be done without grinding trashmobs, red demons which are minibosses provide shitton of XP (at least on normal difficulty), sidequests that contain fights vs other minibosses too.

--------------------------------------------------
* - not that you need any of it but still.

Skip? Me? Not a chance. I even read most of the smile face chat. I did miss one "skit" because it popped up the option just as I was skipping to the next zone and then the option vanished.

Graphics are definitely sad. The art can make up for it sometimes but The Last Remnant is better on that front and it's almost a decade old.

Did you folks do the cooking much at all? I've barely touched it. I quickly learned to avoid the mini-games, too.

Katz chests are just kinda there. You can't spend the souls anywhere else so you might as well spend it on them but they just give you little apparel items anyway, so whatever.

Voice acting seems fine in English. There are a few bad lines ("that recipe looks really tasty") but it's been OK overall. During a battle it gets ridiculous as four people are constantly shouting out every move they make.

The story does seem to be improving: more things actually going on, less lecturing of #2 on how to behave and him apologizing. Bien is getting less annoying, too, though I think that might just be numbness setting in.

P.S.

Food was something I didn't do much in the beginning but then it was always on (you can set it up to automatic).

Zloth said:

Did you folks do the cooking much at all? I've barely touched it. I quickly learned to avoid the mini-games, too.

Click to expand...

I've put cooking sausages on automatic. Ingredients are dirty cheap and effect is not so bad (heal once if HP dropped too low).
Also my cook is Velvet only - less duration if a crewmember gets stunned. Other crewmembers cooking benefits feel kinda meh.

I did try each minigame and all suck. The worst is fishing - no playing anything just grind till random generator decides to give you the unique big fish. I just don't have time for that bullshit.
But I did manage to finish all card pairing ones including the final "boss" in special katz area, erm, but that's spoiler. The reward? Some whatnot clothes.

Zloth said:

Katz chests are just kinda there. You can't spend the souls anywhere else so you might as well spend it on them but they just give you little apparel items anyway, so whatever.

Click to expand...

Yea… No. After opening a certain number of these chests, you'll get an invitation to special katz area I mentioned above. And trust me, you want to see it! Or rather you want to hear the music playing in there.
Master level of trolling. I'm putting 0:48-1:04 as my ringtone, I promise!

You don't need to open all of those chests for this, but I dunno how many. It's still too much of grind.

Zloth said:

Bien

Click to expand...

Should have been a playable character, I know!
Well, the one with original voiceover. The one with dub should die miserably.

Finished the game. Took me 69 hours.
It says I can play newgame+ now, yea right, grind moar to get hero reached level 200 achievement, not gonna happen!

Learned that this game is actually a prequel to Tales of Zestiria. There is absolutely no f. way I'll buy that game unless someone says it's not a grinder like Berseria. And it is, right?.

Luckily for me Tales of Zestiria was turned into anime series so I'll watch it instead of buying grind-o-rama. If anyone else is interested, it's airing worldwide on Daisuki, legally and of course for free:
http://www.daisuki.net/hr/en/anime/detail.TalesofZestiriatheX.html
Note that Velvet, Magilou and Zaveid have cameos in it according to myanimelistnet, and anime has japanese audio with different subtitles of your choice (english, french, german, italian, spanish, port. brasil, russian, thai) so if you played Berseria with silly english dub instead of origial audio, well… Sorry 'bout that.

Also, I did what I promised. When someone calls me, a portion of Katz music from my phone kills everyone nearby.
You want the ringtone yourself? Here it is, in mp3 format so you can put it on android/windows phone, but if you're using iphone just convert it in iTunes:
https://app.box.com/s/im2rhl12r5r9b6z3h3ji0y6nr1hye5x1

LOL Basically for joxer everything that makes an RPG an RPG is a grind (basically everything with levels).
I did 0 grind in Tales of Berseria, but that's according to my definition of grind (basically fight stuff for the only reason of gaining levels to beat the game).

Nope.
Levelup is RPG element. It doesn't have to be designed as grindy, but due to limits of hardware 30 years ago and due to MMO garbage the black plague of gaming is still not erradicated.

Wrote before, because you couldn't save the current state of the whole world on ancient machines, there was no way for game to remember which trashmob you killed so the game just kept bringing them back. In RL it would basically mean you kill Hitler and the world resurrects him. But well, we knew the hardware can't remember much stuff, so we accepted that games can't provide much different content nor variety of experience and we cherished if repetition is at least a bit fun.
The hardware limit also disallowed adding a variety of content in a game. Games were supposed to be as small as possible, randomly generated "dungeons" were not there because it's so awsome but because for hand crafted stuff just there wasn't enough space.

Also wrote that I cannot understand gaming media where they talk about outdated graphics yet never bother to inform a potential customer that a game has outdated trashmobs design.

But anyway, fight stuff to get levels does not have to be grind-o-rama. In fact Berseria over time provides a few "tricks" to avoid it. Partially.
After about 15 hours IIRC of the game, a potion appears that makes trashmobs on much lower level than you nonhostile. After playing the game for 30 hours, 'xcuse me after grinding for 30 hours, a sort of hoverboard appears that if mounted, instakills all underleveled trashmobs you hit - but you'll still have to fight those with bigger level than you.
While earlygame avoiding grind is near impossible as trashmobs are usually faster than you so you can't escape them till you get +10% map moving spreed (available twice), at least you're not forced to grind over same old trashmobs after 1/4 of the game and later while backtracking.

Finally I wrote in one of previous posts, minibosses and bosses provide tons of XP in this game. Enough to bring you to the level required for next set of areas. But because of SG/BG design to prepare the ultimate mystic arte skill for a clash against some boss, you need to grind at least a bit.

That's just about gathering XP through fighting trashmobs that can't die. However the game contains an excessive amount of grinding not just as combat but everywhere. For example, how do you level your cooking at max level (25)? By grind, that's how. There are not cooking "chef bosses" that'll boost it.

Wrote too much, haven't I?
Well anyway. By adding the pot and hoverboard instadestroy mechanics, the developer admits being aware that grinding sux, yet fails to make the game grindfree. And all the game needed was to make trashmobs deaths permanent. Or ingame option, an grind on/off switch without adding potions and hoverboard instakills.
They just didn't, because, horrible respawning of also mana orbs, loot in chests and permastat herbs would not "fit" in that case.

I think it's time for me to sum up stuff without this much detail and, yeah sorry, thumb the game down on steam. No, not because grind, I wouldn't bother with that there are plenty of people who don't know better that'd still buy it.
But because one of the worst UI I've ever seen.

joxer said:

Nope.
Levelup is RPG element. It doesn't have to be designed as grindy, but due to limits of hardware 30 years ago and due to MMO garbage the black plague of gaming is still not erradicated.

Wrote before, because you couldn't save the current state of the whole world on ancient machines, there was no way for game to remember which trashmob you killed so the game just kept bringing them back. In RL it would basically mean you kill Hitler and the world resurrects him. But well, we knew the hardware can't remember much stuff, so we accepted that games can't provide much different content nor variety of experience and we cherished if repetition is at least a bit fun.
The hardware limit also disallowed adding a variety of content in a game. Games were supposed to be as small as possible, randomly generated "dungeons" were not there because it's so awsome but because for hand crafted stuff just there wasn't enough space.

Also wrote that I cannot understand gaming media where they talk about outdated graphics yet never bother to inform a potential customer that a game has outdated trashmobs design.

But anyway, fight stuff to get levels does not have to be grind-o-rama. In fact Berseria over time provides a few "tricks" to avoid it. Partially.
After about 15 hours IIRC of the game, a potion appears that makes trashmobs on much lower level than you nonhostile. After playing the game for 30 hours, 'xcuse me after grinding for 30 hours, a sort of hoverboard appears that if mounted, instakills all underleveled trashmobs you hit - but you'll still have to fight those with bigger level than you.
While earlygame avoiding grind is near impossible as trashmobs are usually faster than you so you can't escape them till you get +10% map moving spreed (available twice), at least you're not forced to grind over same old trashmobs after 1/4 of the game and later while backtracking.

Finally I wrote in one of previous posts, minibosses and bosses provide tons of XP in this game. Enough to bring you to the level required for next set of areas. But because of SG/BG design to prepare the ultimate mystic arte skill for a clash against some boss, you need to grind at least a bit.

That's just about gathering XP through fighting trashmobs that can't die. However the game contains an excessive amount of grinding not just as combat but everywhere. For example, how do you level your cooking at max level (25)? By grind, that's how. There are not cooking "chef bosses" that'll boost it.

Wrote too much, haven't I?
Well anyway. By adding the pot and hoverboard instadestroy mechanics, the developer admits being aware that grinding sux, yet fails to make the game grindfree. And all the game needed was to make trashmobs deaths permanent.
Beside that, respawning also mana orbs, loot in chests and permastat herbs is horrible.

I think it's time for me to sum up stuff without this much detail and, yeah sorry, thumb the game down on steam. No, not because grind. Because one of the worst UI I've ever seen.

Click to expand...

But all the things you mentioned are optional. You don't have to max cooking, you don't have to max chests, you don't have to max mini-games... you don't have to max anything. If you follow the story normally and kill the mobs on the way you will finish the game without any problems. It's like complaining that Skyrim is grindy because you have to shoot arrows to max archery and you have to forge lots of weapons to max blacksmith... it's an RPG, that's how you're supposed to improve your skills, otherwise just play a shooter, you are already maxed on a gun the first time you pick it up (well, at least the shooters I used to play when I was a kid, I believe latest shooters you actually do have to shoot to become better).

IMO nothing is optional in RPG if it fits your character.

This game has several optional quests, most of them are crewmembers' personal quests. My Velvet was a type who wanted to give them a hand, your perhaps is not.
Black turtle boss sidequest is not a crewmember though, but it was a superb finale for torturing poor merchant over item prices so I wouldn't call that one optional either for my Velvet.

The only optional quest in my case was the cliffhanger bullets for Zaevid - but I didn't know what will happen there. Nor I knew it's connected to Zestiria, I've expected it to be completely settled in this game. But I won't say it's bad - it's great to have a bridge with another game from series.

I don't have to max cooking, that's true. And I didn't max cooking. I did reach level 15 cooking on Velvet, because, well, my Velver ain't a professional cook but can prepare a meal here and there, so she cooked a bit. Because that cooking was so grindy, I didn't even think about if others in the party should cook too - and per the story Magilou should definetly cook something here and there!
I don't have to max anything through crafting, and in fact I didn't even touch it.
I do however have to explore all locations on sea and get every single treasure/rags possible, sadly I didn't manage to do that. Also I wanted my Velvet to love fishing as it's something she did with her family, but the minigame design is so horrible I just couldn't force myself into it. Etc.

Please, don't compare this game with Skyrim. Unlike Skyrim, this game has no bug (except keyswitching where setting anything that isn't default can break something in menus).
Even more important, Skyrim has no story nor sidekick stories.

If I played a Velvet who is IGN reviewer, then all stuff except the main story would definetly be mustskip. But I never play an IGN reviewer. To me everything is important.
That's why my rating is usually lower than theirs.

Well, okay, I admit, there is something I don't care about. That's newgame+ (unless it changes something drastically so it's worth it) and achievements that are not "game finished" and "sidequest(s) completed". Basically stuff that speaks nothing about the game.

OK, the game is getting good now. It took a good 30 hours to even get interesting to me. 60 hours in and I'm definitely having fun.

I really wish the store menu was better. Sell, dismantle, and enhance should *all* be options on the same list. Instead, I have to keep jumping back and forth between menus. (Oh jeez, I maxxed the balmy fluid out again….)

English acting seems good to me. There's a few bad lines here and there and the re-use of voice actors gets noticeable but I like being able to close my eyes while the skits are going on.

P.S. And that silver skeleton thing actually beat me. TWICE!!

Man, ignore the silly crafting, unless you're into NG+. The only useful effect is "reflect damage", but other than that it's all smoke and mirrors and items with this random stat you can buy at shops. Not earlygame though.

How could something beat you twice? Velvet is almost unkillable and even if dead and no party member has healing spell yet just use HP pot on her. Any.
One thing, don't use the pirate XO in the party ever. He's plain useless. At least in my case was. Everyone else rocks.

I think I spent a good chunk of my 100-hour run in the crafting section. I love crafting in RPGs (probably why the Atelier series is like my favorite RPG series), so I couldn't ignore it. I had to have at least one of every item in the inventory. Some people like to spend hours exploring the map to see if they find a blue butterfly in a remote corner of the world, I am the same way with crafting.

Ah well… It simply looked useless and not fun to me. Once my characters mastered an item, I sold *everything*.

I seriously have to get some will to list good things and bad things in my opinion. Because even if the crafting itself is IMO not done well, on the positive side inventory is not limited by unnecessary weight or some other silly mechanics as in some other games with crafting. I mean, someone might think I hate everything in this game, but it's not so.

So is the game worht finishing Joxer ?

Silvery Skelly was nasty. He does his creeping death thing where he lies on the ground and worms forward. If you're in front of him when he does it, you'll get stunned and lose a lot of HP. If you leave him alone for more than about 3 seconds, he does some big AOE death ball. None of my characters can survive that ball and it fills up most of the battle circle.

He's a Code Red so he's all by himself. You can't farm anything to pump your souls up so keeping tharian (sp?) mode going the whole time just isn't going to happen.

The crafting system itself is fine. The only bother is the way they have the menus set up so you can't break up then enhance quickly. Lots of items give a stun reduction with just a +1 enhancement! (Plus it's a good way to mark things as 'want to keep' when you go over to the sell menu.)

you said:

So is the game worht finishing Joxer ?

Click to expand...

It is, definetly. You want to see how the story ends. Honestly.
However the last "dungeon" contain IIRC 6 optional bosses. This area is perhaps the worst dungeon design in the game, and design of all dungeons in the game is bad now you can only imagine what worst means. To get to those optional bosses you need to backtrack a lot through trashmob respawns (okay, you'll get a skateboard ability at one moment) and it's unbelievably irritating. So, instead of wasting your time on them, just try to reach the end boss as soon as possible. When the final fight starts, concentrate on "the kid" first.

Zloth said:

Silvery Skelly

Click to expand...

Untarnished Silver Corpse? Yea, it's not easy, you need to move a lot there and just peel little by little as if you were playing Caitlyn vs Garen top in LOL.
The only actually challenging miniboss is IMO Blood-Spraying Crystal. Every other can be nailed with patience. And pots. Loadsa pots. Sometimes BG restoring pots (arkane and soul bottle) are a must. For this crystal boss, you need to prepare differently.