Been planning to play this game for years but never knew how to approach JRPGs but after playing some YS games and Tales of Xillia, and with the recent remaster, I decided to finally jump into Berseria all though I might've learned recently that it's a prequel to the maligned Zestria. As a whole, I did enjoy my time with Berseria even if the gameplay is worse than Xillia and there are some major issues with the story pacing in the middle half of the game. It's also longer than Xillia and with the story pacing issues I mentioned it can feel that way.
The story which is usually the main attraction for these games is mostly on the good if not great at certain points. The prologue is fantastic for the most part, the initial backstory of Velvet's early childhood could be delivered better since it felt sudden but the rest of it is great. It can be a little reminscent of Berserk's eclipse but there's enough here to defreniate Berseria from that.
Like in Xillia, the characters and the synergy they have is by far the biggest high point of the game. The way the party banters especially during the skits do a great job at fleshing them out during frequent combat portions of the game and is a great way to have the other party members get involved even if you don't use them in combat. It's still shocking it's exclusive to this series. One complaint I do have is that it can get a little overdone here. There are moments you will run for little while if not less than that and a cutscene that is presented like a skit starts to playing then there are 3 if not 4 skits after that. Xillia did pace them out a lot better.
The story during the early and latter portions are quite good and move at a decent pace. There is the middle portions of the game where Shepard Artorious and the Abbey lose Velvet and the team's trailer and they disappear from the story for so long, I almost forgot there was any looming danger the cast has to worry about. There is a scavenger hunt where many of the monsters the characters try to get end in failure and there is this one child monster who is really annoying and serves no geniune purpose to the story. He has one touching scene where Velvet hugs me while unloading his hatred on to her but that's it. There is also a very long section where a book has to get translated and these sections really do move slowly.
When the fight does get back to the villains, it does get good and thought provoking again. There is a twist late game where it recontextualizes her whole revenge quest and it made into a much deeper character. She eventually mellows out becomes more like how she was in the prologue before she got consumed by hate.
The other characters like Rangetsu and Magilou have more agency towards the end and the story finally starts to pick up. It's just that I always have to think, "man that middle section was such an annoying drag". The ending was decent but the fact that it's a prequel to Tales of Zestria did hold the ending back from being more impactful since it felt like it was setting up for a game I'm not sure if I'll even play.
Gameplay on the other hand is where the gameplay for the most part is worse than Xillia. No linking or linked artes, no special move shortcuts, and the gear and weapon systems are presented in a convoluted way. Half the time I wonder if me buying new gear and weapons actually did much of anything. There's a stamina meter which replaces the turns you can do but that just made everything needlessly confusing. I eventually lowered to easy to get to the story faster.
One improvement is that there are actual dungeons this time and the devs seem to know how copy and pasted the level design is so they added those cat orbs to give the player a good idea where they are going without using the full map or mini map. The dungeons are okay if nothing special except for a bizarre water dungeon a good way into the game where you need to press a bunch of switches in a certain order to progress. Whole thing is a massive curve ball compared to the rest of the game.
Overall, I did like enjoy my time with Tales of Berseria in spite of it's problems even if there are certain parts I don't want to do again any time soon like that dreadful middle portion of the game. The highs of the narrative are still high with that said.
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