Tales of Berseria (and other Tales of games)

[RandV]

Agreed they really need to go back to their more classic battle system in future games.

I've played just about every JRPG from the 8bit-PS2 era but for some reason I never really got into the Tales series, I've only played Phantasia, Symphonia, and Zestiria, but I fully agree here.

Zestiria was too much change for changes sake, it probably all sounded good in the design room but when actually playing it the greater sophistication just ended up being a pain. I'm sure the majority set of players just found a preferred move set and stuck with it, elemental alignments and fancy combo's be damned. In particular how the level of your skills effected your beginning action points(?), took me a while to figure out why when I changed my moves around to match the enemies in the dungeon I could no longer attack right away.

Is Berseria better in this regard?

 

[Unholy]

I always change my artes around by elements whenever I learn a new one. Makes stuns and combos much more easier and really helps with boss battles if you are on higher difficulties.

Graces f had probably my favorite battle system. Symphonia and Vesperia are my two favorites and the battles are for the most part the same concept with elements and combos, etc it's just as the series goes on it just gets a lot faster and the emphasis on elements grows too. All the moves seem crazier and combat gets faster and seems more spammy cause of it.

Berseria is better pretty much across the board. They did too much with Zestiria and Berseria feels more better and back to a good Tales style.

You still need to and should take a look at what artes you are assigning and their elements. You can technically not bother and just button mash but it won't make things easier and doesn't seem fun either.

 

[misterchainsaw]

I personally love the Berseria combat system. Takes a bit to get used to, sure, but I really enjoy the ebb and flow of battles that the souls system creates.

 

[Pirate King Luffy]

I personally love the Berseria combat system. Takes a bit to get used to, sure, but I really enjoy the ebb and flow of battles that the souls system creates.

I like it better than ToZ battle system.

 

[RandV]

I always change my artes around by elements whenever I learn a new one. Makes stuns and combos much more easier and really helps with boss battles if you are on higher difficulties.

Now that I think about it there was more than just that being a nuisance. There was the item upgrading, the complicated grid thing, the seraphim zone leveling, etc etc. Just a massively complex system for min-maxing when you can mostly just button mash your way through the game.

For the artes selection thing I forget exactly how it worked but you started each encounter with a set amount of action points(?) to perform skills/artes, which I think was calculated by the level of each skill. With my go to setup, I could pull off full skill combo's right from the start of battle. If I changed my setup to match the area, the skill levels would be low so to start each battle I'd have to do a number of regular attacks before I could use them. Even if I went through the entire dungeon with the new setup, the skills never leveled up high enough to be as effective as just going back to my main combo.

 

[Unholy]

Now that I think about it there was more than just that being a nuisance. There was the item upgrading, the complicated grid thing, the seraphim zone leveling, etc etc. Just a massively complex system for min-maxing when you can mostly just button mash your way through the game.

For the artes selection thing I forget exactly how it worked but you started each encounter with a set amount of action points(?) to perform skills/artes, which I think was calculated by the level of each skill. With my go to setup, I could pull off full skill combo's right from the start of battle. If I changed my setup to match the area, the skill levels would be low so to start each battle I'd have to do a number of regular attacks before I could use them. Even if I went through the entire dungeon with the new setup, the skills never leveled up high enough to be as effective as just going back to my main combo.

Yeah Zestiria was made too complicated and it just overerall wasn't amazing. It also didn't help in ToZ you were limited as far as who you wanted in your party at the same time. Shouldn't have forced you into 2 humans and 2 seraphim only but that's kind of how they made it due to the story. That's a big no-no for me. Berseria did some changes and toned down some things for other things. Much much better.

 

[Kairi Zaide]

Spoiler alert !§ About 40 hours in...
[spoil]Just came back to Abball... What the heck. That's one insane plot twist OR illusion by Melchior, I don't know yet. But i'll wait tomorrow to find out. This story is amazing.[/spoil]

 

[Do Make Say Think]

I always change my artes around by elements whenever I learn a new one. Makes stuns and combos much more easier and really helps with boss battles if you are on higher difficulties.

Graces f had probably my favorite battle system. Symphonia and Vesperia are my two favorites and the battles are for the most part the same concept with elements and combos, etc it's just as the series goes on it just gets a lot faster and the emphasis on elements grows too. All the moves seem crazier and combat gets faster and seems more spammy cause of it.

Berseria is better pretty much across the board. They did too much with Zestiria and Berseria feels more better and back to a good Tales style.

You still need to and should take a look at what artes you are assigning and their elements. You can technically not bother and just button mash but it won't make things easier and doesn't seem fun either.

Graces F has one of the most satisfying JRPG battle systems I've had the pleasure of playing.

A shame everything else about that game so forgettable.

 

[Unholy]

Graces F has one of the most satisfying JRPG battle systems I've had the pleasure of playing.

A shame everything else about that game so forgettable.

I loved Graces f a lot.

Some didn't like Asbel, I did. Loved the whole friendship theme of the game. Sophie was a beast and Cheria's voice actor was Keiko from Yu Yu Hakusho and made me like her character a bit more.

And yeah the battle system was awesome. I really want to replay that one, too bad my PS3 doesn't read discs anymore.

 

[Kairi Zaide]

I just miss being able to jump in the air and all that, and have individual artes assigned to a bunch of button combination rather than just combos

 

[Kairi Zaide]

Oh and I just discovered you can add artes to LB + A/B/X/Y.

Which is great because I love using Banishing Thunder, Rising Falcon and Cerberus Wave outside of combos. :3

 

[Kairi Zaide]

Just finished the game.
[spoil]That ending though. <3[/spoil]

 

[Unholy]

Going to go really hard starting tomorrow night to try and get this done before Zelda comes out.

Really liking these characters and stories we have in this one. Feel like I got a pretty good comp going, just need to finish mastering old equipment for two characters we got last. Eizen has a harem going.

 

[Kairi Zaide]

Eizen was the character I literally did not care about giving good equipment. My team was always Velvet/Laphicet/Magilou/Eleanore, sometimes I would switch Eleanore with Rokurou.

 

[Unholy]

Eizen was the character I literally did not care about giving good equipment. My team was always Velvet/Laphicet/Magilou/Eleanore, sometimes I would switch Eleanore with Rokurou.

Velvet is no question. Magilou beat out Laphicet for me, I don't really need both in at the moment and she is just straight up stronger. Eleanor surprised me with her stats when I got her so I put her in and it was pretty much a toss up on who to kick out between Eizen and Rokurou. Neither really was much better than the other and decided to keep Eizen for now. Might switch once in a while cause I really like Rokurou too.

 

[Pirate King Luffy]

I used Eizen as tank since he was up there punching away. I gave him a piece of clothing/armor that increased his HP. He had at least 1000 HP more than everyone else. He was probably one of my favourites in the game. I liked using his him.

 

[Kairi Zaide]

Velvet is no question. Magilou beat out Laphicet for me, I don't really need both in at the moment and she is just straight up stronger. Eleanor surprised me with her stats when I got her so I put her in and it was pretty much a toss up on who to kick out between Eizen and Rokurou. Neither really was much better than the other and decided to keep Eizen for now. Might switch once in a while cause I really like Rokurou too.

I liked using all three of Laphi/Eleanor/Magilou since they all have cleric artes, and I don't use in-battle items. Eleanor was my all balanced character (pretty much the same in all stats), Velvet was obviously my berserk (I focused on attack, both defenses and focus), Magilou the typical mage (Quite frail, but hit extremely - extremely hard), and Laphi didn't hit as hard but was more tanky since he was my main cleric. Regarding Roku, I made him a tank with good attack and decent arte attack. Despite not focusing on his equipment that much, I made Eizen a mixed attacker.

I could have switched Laphi and Magilou depending on the opponent and do the same with the men, but I felt Laphi's place in the story was too important to not let him fight all the time. And also I always my favorite characters (Magilou was my 2nd favorite, Laphi my 3rd and Eleanor my 4th)

Not sure these were the best sets - but hey, it worked out!