Ayyyy FLOW’s pretty cool
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The more I played Tales of Zestiria, the more it amazed me.
First of all, there’s Edna. An amazing character whose personality holds a perfect (and hilarious) balance between childishness, grumpiness and maturity. A badass girl with a sharp tongue.
Every character and every villain magnificently fulfills a certain role that the game would feel incomplete without.
What makes Tales of Zestiria special, however, are its topics. It’s a game about the world and the hearts of people. About what it means to be a hero and a savior. It even adresses the question of whether or not taking a life is always a bad thing.
What are Sorey and friends fighting against? Malevolence. It takes root in human hearts, corrupts them and the world around them. It turns people into cruel and inhuman creatures, who in turn bring pain, suffering, and death, spreading malevolence even further. The world becomes a harsher and grimmer place to live and survive in. While in the real world, Malevolence is not spreading like a virus or some kind of natural curse that affects everything it comes across physically, the effects are shockingly similar.
The more malevolence we and the people around us bear, the more negative do we perceive the world and the more likely are we to change it for the worse. In order to make the world a better place, love, kindness and goodwill must be spread.
Sometimes, people can commit the greatest sins while being fully convinced of their own righteousness, without harboring any malevolence. In turn, sometimes, the best intentions can produce the greatest malevolence. The greater your goal is, the greater your despair will be when you fail to reach it. The purest wish is also the greatest burden. Nobody is safe from malevolence. Not even Shepherds.
Strangely enough, whether or not malevolence will infect you depends on how you face everything that happens to you. If you can come to terms with every misfortune, your heart will not be tarnished. People like Sorey and Rose, who posess a kind, pure, childlike heart and a positive outlook, are the most resistant to malevolence.
I think I’ll adress the hero thing at a later time.
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Some of you have been asking me (justifiably) when Berseria will be coming to the West. Well, Bamco had a press release announcing a rough release date for the Western localization just this morning! The game will be coming to PS4 and PC worldwide in ‘early 2017’. That means most of us will only have to wait about six months after Japan!
Along with this announcement, we’ve also received new screenshots of the current party, along with localized information about the new party members, Skits and the new Switch Blast system.
From left to right: Magilou, Eizen, Velvet, Rokuro, Laphicet, Eleanor
Not shown: Bienfu (Quirky mascot characters have it tough nowadays… ;; )
This is the one of the new party members, Eizen (not to be confused with yours truly). He is the skipper of Aifread’s pirates. He is a malak who has his own will and sails the seas on the pirate ship, Van Eltia. (If you’ve played Tales of Eternia, the names Aifread and Van Eltia should sound very familiar… 
) He is searching for the missing Captain Van Aifread and joins Velvet on her journey to fight against the Abbey.
Shown above is Eleanor, a member of the Abbey who goes against Velvet at first, but eventually joins her as a party member. She tries to be reasonable as much as possible but does get a bit emotional, especially because of her honesty and compassion for others.
Skits function the same way as they did in Zestiria and Graces f, with full body portraits and cut-in effects.
I haven’t disclosed everything on the articles I sourced, but you can check them out here if you’re curious: http://www.abyssalchronicles.com/?fn_mode=comments&fn_id=1457
And here: http://www.abyssalchronicles.com/?fn_mode=comments&fn_id=1458
Are you guys hype for Berseria thanks to this new information? I know I am! The cast looks great, and while the worldwide release date is still rough, at least we know it isn’t too far away. 
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I am mega pumped for the new Tales of game, thank you for sharing details!
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In the wake of E3, new info has been released about the English localization of Tales of Berseria! The details are rather small at the moment, but no less significant.
A new trailer has been released for E3, showcasing some of the game’s animation courtesy of Ufotable. It also confirms that the game’s Japanese opening song, ‘BURN’ by FLOW, will be in the localized game! This is amazing news, since the opening themes for Tales games tend to be either instrumental or, in the case of more recent Tales games, English-sung versions of the openings. Not to mention the song sounds pretty cool! 
Battle and exploration footage, as well as English screenshots for the game were also released, showcasing the battle system, world map travel and cutscenes. You can find them in the article below:
Personally, the battles look really cool. The member switching mechanic is an interesting touch, as well as a clever reminder of the battle system’s roots in competitive fighting games. Eizen looks to be my favorite of the fighters so far (not that I’m biased or anything 
). Skits seem to be more dynamic this time around as well. Are you guys excited about the game? I’m kind of bummed that Japan gets the game in two months while the rest of us have to wait a while longer, but this should be worth the wait!
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I am somewhat of a Tales of fan, I have played Symphonia, it’s Sequel Dawn of the new World, Phantasia and Abyss and am planning to play Zestiria. For all the others, I don’t have the console they’re released on. Now I have only ever heard the Characters with english voices, but I think those are great as well.
My current favorite is Tales of the Abyss, and my favorite character is from this one as well, namely Jade Curtiss. I just really like his snarkyness, and the performance of the voice actor definitely helped into me liking this guy so much.
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I saw Jade’s solo cameo battle in Zestiria on YouTube, and needless to say, it looks like Zestiria would be worth playing just for that battle alone. :3
(Too bad my laptop isn’t powerful enough for the game… >.> )
I really liked Jade when I played Abyss, too. Kirk Thornton did a fair job keeping him as snarky and awesome as Takehito Koyasu made him. I think they managed to grab him again for Zestiria’s cameo battle, since his English voice sounds an awful lot like him, but I can’t be certain. I hope you enjoy Zestiria, though!
Huh, I hope my laptop can handle the game… Well, we’ll have to get a PS4 in our household at some point, since my mom and I are both Kingdom Hearts Fans and KH3 should come out for that console, as far as I know. So, I guess, I have possibilities.
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Oh man I really lost motivation to play Zestria for a while, and now I think I might play it again for this. I really love Abyss and Jade is great.
Nice! You can get Berseria when it comes out where you live as well, if that’s the case! 
Speaking of which, Berseria comes out in Japan in less than two weeks! Hope you guys who live in Japan are excited, unless you’re also waiting for it to come out in English.
Turns out I was wrong in my post. My mom told me today she ordered Tales of Eternia and Tales of the World, so yay us. I’ll definitely be looking forward to playing some new Tales games. We’ll see if I’ll gush about them later or otherwise talk about them.
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I started with playing Tales of Phantasia on a SNES emulator years ago when I download a pack of “Great SNES games” I found somewhere else (Other RPG in that pack I loved was Terranigma).
After that, I bought this year Symphonia and Zestiria at Steam and enjoyed both of them a lot, I fell seriously in love with Phantasia so Symphonia was greatly enjoying given the setting, Zestiria was good too but far weaker (and I missed not being able to summon cute girls anyway (lol))
Right now I’m watching Zestiria’s anime, today episode’s was great, with the starting of Berseria that I hope we can get soon around here, it looks very interesting~ Though the “darker and edgier” they’re trying to give is something I don’t enjoy in itself (because most of the time it’s used just as a cheap tactic by developers to try to make their product more serious), it felt enjoying so far, and I hope next episode can show the rest of the party, I’d say is nice to have a preview of Berseria.
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During the Steam summer sale I picked up Symphonia, aka the entry in the series I’ve most wanted to try since I finished Phantasia almost a decade ago. I’m pretty sure I’m entering the final 1/3 of the game, and I really haven’t been disappointed. All the little callbacks to Phantasia are making me really happy, of course, but it stands very well on its own either way.
I also started Abyss on PS2 a couple months ago, but since I haven’t hooked up my PS2 at all since coming home from college back in June, so I honestly don’t remember too well where I was. It’s been a pretty fun experience too though, since I have some friends who have played through parts of it with me. One of my new favorite gaming moments is sitting in the lounge of my friend’s dorm fighting one of the bosses, my friend giving me tips, and winning after multiple attempts with 3/4 of my party dead and one of my spellcasters (Jade?) just one hit away from joining them. We celebrated, loudly. :kyogrin:
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That reminds me, Tales of games usually have their fair share of bonus bosses, and for one of Tales of the Abyss’ ones I was in a similar situation. Nebilim, if anyone’s curious. Since the AI was usually too stupid to step outside of spells, I constantly switched who I’d be controlling in this fight, and eventually, after multiple tries, came out victoriously.
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Oh, awesome! I think Eternia is a seriously underrated Tales game, with a very interesting world and cast as well as a refined battle system from Destiny. It’s nowhere near as good as Symphonia imo, but it’s still a fun game. Hope you and your mom enjoy it!
Come to think of it, only a handful of Tales games have summons in them. I figure the developers have an idea dartboard and ‘summons’ only gets hit occasionally.
By the way, Eternia has the Craymel system, which offers a few different quirks from Phantasia/Symphonia’s summon systems as it’s also how your mages learn magic. It should prove interesting if you like summons and want something a little different.
I’m trying to remember where disk 1 ends on the GameCube version, but it’s been a while since I’ve played Symphonia…I should probably fix that. ^^;
That’s the beauty of cooperative play in Tales games. I remember when my little bro and I were fighting the final boss of Symphonia, having forgotten to switch the difficulty back from Mania after grinding for so long. I figured something was off, but we kept fighting anyway and somehow won. It was awesome. :3
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My younger brother has played both Abyss and Vesperia and liked them a lot. I tried to play Vesperia, but I felt like it dragged too much. We’re both enjoy the Tales of Zestria the X anime, though.
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Hey everyone! Just a quick reminder since Tales of Berseria is out in Japan today: if you bought the game already, please refrain from spoiling anything past the first boss battle. Those of us waiting until next year for the English version of the game want to cherish the experience, so please don’t ruin it for us.
Thanks for complying, and I hope you have a great time playing Berseria!
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I haven’t played many games in the Tales of series, but the ones I have I have enjoyed a lot for the most part. I’ve played through Symphonia and really enjoyed it despite the age, I know many consider it their favorite though personally that goes to Vesperia for me. I like the cast in that one the most, especially the protagonist Yuri. He just felt so different compared to so many other generic as hell JRPG protags out there (and it doesn’t hurt that Troy Baker gave a really damn strong performance). I also enjoyed the story of it for the most part, though towards the end it did start to peter out with its final act for me. Still really solid all around. Abyss is another one I loved and it’s at a very close second to Vesperia due to its great character development, most notably for Luke who is my second favorite Tales protag.
Those are really the big three I always recommend people if they ever want to get into the series. I’ve also played Graces F but I find the story and characters there to be quite poor outside of Pascal, but the gameplay to be the best in the series. Also played about twenty hours of Hearts R on my Vita. I like the gameplay of it but like Graces F most of the characters aren’t doing much for me outside of Beryl. Will get back to it at some point in the future.
All that said I think Berseria looks pretty interesting so I’m hoping that one ends up well!
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I’ve been thinking about several things regarding the Tales of Series lately, so I’m posting here again:
First off, one thing I like about these games is something that many RPGs still don’t do, and that is having a unique theme for almost every city in these games. Be it (Tales of the Abyss) the soothing guitars of Grand Chokmah or (Tales of Symphonia) the orchestral sound of Meltokio, every city has its own character thanks to that.
Second, I myself played Tales of Phantasia after Symphonia, so for me all those mythology gags came backwards in a way. Was always great when I was going like “Hey, I know this track!”. Although the most changed one of these are the following two tracks (Both are heard in the second half of their respective game, so click at your own risk): Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Symphonia. A very similar part is heard at the one minute mark in both tracks.
Third, I’m planning on playing Tales of Phantasia again, and I remember (Tales of Phantasia) getting my ass kicked by the enemy group of 5 Charon in Dhaos’ castle in the past. Charon was a small, red flying enemy that most of the time casts Thunder Blade pretty quickly. With this specific group, you have 3 on one side and 2 on the other. Does anyone have a good tipp on how to fight these, because back then my answer was level grinding, and there has to be a better way.
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Very true. Even though Sakuraba is known to reuse themes and progressions occasionally, he does a fair job of pushing out a massive soundtrack that gives unique themes to nearly every area or event of the game. Granted, quantity doesn’t always mean quality (especially in the case of Graces), but I admire his work in Symphonia and perhaps even Abyss.
The same applies to Go Shiina, as well. In Legendia, most major areas have unique themes, all of which are excellently composed. One of the reasons a lot of people prefer Legendia’s OST over the dozens of Tales soundtracks is because Shiina’s style is less reliant on just simple melodies and focuses more on instrumental depth and variety. It would have been so easy for Shiina to just copy Sakuraba’s style like he was initially planning to do according to an interview, but Shiina already had his preexisting style and it wouldn’t have been quite as fun for him to pretend to be someone else. I think that’s why Legendia’s soundtrack has a ton of character to it, even moreso than most of Sakuraba’s themes.
Still like Sakuraba more, though.
I’m the opposite case, although I know where you’re coming from because I never finished Phantasia. I knew that it shared the same summons, some of the same locations and even some musical themes with Symphonia, although I never got every reference to Phantasia until after the fact. Still, I wish you good luck on your playthrough of Phantasia!
