This game's story carries it really well. It offers small improves over Zestiria's terrible combat and gear systems, but they're both pretty bad still. Berseria's combat improves over time, but it's only "fun" when you're stomping enemies in rapid succession and able to consistently land status effects. Which means fighting bosses is a really boring slog, almost more so than it was in Zestiria because they changed how your "SP" system works.

But despite that, this game's story is very good and compelling. Even if I don't recommend Zestiria overall, I do recommend playing it before this one if you are interested in Berseria at all; so many story beats of Berseria land and hit much harder if you play Zestiria first because this game is a prequel to that game. Indeed, much of the reason of why Zestiria's story had a flat ending is explained in this game. Without spoiling, you play as the bad guy in this game who fights to get revenge. In Zestiria, you play as the good guy who has to clean up the mess left by the bad guy in Berseria.

You do have to overlook the Noticer components of this game like strong independent warrior female protagonist, "religion" being bad, and some really off the wall "reason" and justification for their cause. But it still does a great job showing the natural feminine and woman components of the protagonist throughout the game , with several moments of overwhelming emotion and lack of logic that often requires the male characters to rein her back in to reality. Which gives a nice laugh to us.

So if you can overlook those things, the story becomes extremely compelling. The pacing mid-way isn't the greatest, but the beginning is great and as you progress towards the end it becomes very very good. Magilou is written extremely well, possibly one of the best Tales of characters in terms of writing. She serves as the comedic relief but does so with such finesse that she steals the show any time she's on the screen; I often cared more about her story and fate than I did of any other character. Eizen was also very good, being extremely stoic and rational, providing logic and reasoning throughout the story even when the women were doing women things. Which makes all the more reason to play Zestiria first because of his role in that game. I was impressed by just how much this story compelled me to see what would happen next, which is something I haven't felt Tales of do since Abyss.

The music is a miss, not terrible but nothing all that particularly notable. Zestiria's OST was better. Still nothing compared to Phantasia and Symphonia. But the story carries the overall game regardless. I also wish the characters had access to most of their R2 and L2 abilities earlier in the game, because they really help the combat loop a lot. None of them are particularly overpowered or anything, they just give you more options on how to play the game and strategize difficult encounters. Most enemies won't live long enough on Moderate difficulty to pull off the level 3 Mystic Artes anyway, given the requirements to make them happen. Hard mode and above requires excessive grinding in this game's gear system (getting loot to drop with the right rolls then enhancing and desyntheisizing for materials to further enhance the gear you actually want) only to have to do it again a few hours later in the next area when the enemies upgrade. It's very tiring, repetitive, and not fun, like you're playing a Korean grindy MMO instead of a single player Tales of jRPG.

But again, despite all that, the story is really good and makes the game overall absolutely worth playing. Definitely recommend.

This game's story carries it really well. It offers small improves over Zestiria's terrible combat and gear systems, but they're both pretty bad still. Berseria's combat improves over time, but it's only "fun" when you're stomping enemies in rapid succession and able to consistently land status effects. Which means fighting bosses is a really boring slog, almost more so than it was in Zestiria because they changed how your "SP" system works. But despite that, this game's story is very good and compelling. Even if I don't recommend Zestiria overall, I do recommend playing it before this one if you are interested in Berseria at all; so many story beats of Berseria land and hit much harder if you play Zestiria first because this game is a prequel to that game. Indeed, much of the reason of why Zestiria's story had a flat ending is explained in this game. Without spoiling, you play as the bad guy in this game who fights to get revenge. In Zestiria, you play as the good guy who has to clean up the mess left by the bad guy in Berseria. You do have to overlook the Noticer components of this game like strong independent warrior female protagonist, "religion" being bad, and some really off the wall "reason" and justification for their cause. But it still does a great job showing the natural feminine and woman components of the protagonist throughout the game , with several moments of overwhelming emotion and lack of logic that often requires the male characters to rein her back in to reality. Which gives a nice laugh to us. So if you can overlook those things, the story becomes extremely compelling. The pacing mid-way isn't the greatest, but the beginning is great and as you progress towards the end it becomes very very good. Magilou is written extremely well, possibly one of the best Tales of characters in terms of writing. She serves as the comedic relief but does so with such finesse that she steals the show any time she's on the screen; I often cared more about her story and fate than I did of any other character. Eizen was also very good, being extremely stoic and rational, providing logic and reasoning throughout the story even when the women were doing women things. Which makes all the more reason to play Zestiria first because of his role in that game. I was impressed by just how much this story compelled me to see what would happen next, which is something I haven't felt Tales of do since Abyss. The music is a miss, not terrible but nothing all that particularly notable. Zestiria's OST was better. Still nothing compared to Phantasia and Symphonia. But the story carries the overall game regardless. I also wish the characters had access to most of their R2 and L2 abilities earlier in the game, because they really help the combat loop a lot. None of them are particularly overpowered or anything, they just give you more options on how to play the game and strategize difficult encounters. Most enemies won't live long enough on Moderate difficulty to pull off the level 3 Mystic Artes anyway, given the requirements to make them happen. Hard mode and above requires excessive grinding in this game's gear system (getting loot to drop with the right rolls then enhancing and desyntheisizing for materials to further enhance the gear you actually want) only to have to do it again a few hours later in the next area when the enemies upgrade. It's very tiring, repetitive, and not fun, like you're playing a Korean grindy MMO instead of a single player Tales of jRPG. But again, despite all that, the story is really good and makes the game overall absolutely worth playing. Definitely recommend.