Okay I'm hearing a lot of good things here. Some people even saying it's better than Vesperia.
That's a pretty big claim. Can someone explain why it's better than Vesperia?
I don't know if it's better than Vesperia in the long run, both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I think it holds its own very well for these reasons:
- I think the cast is better and while still a little tropey, I think they tried to give the characters, particularly the younger three who experience the most development (Velvet, Laphicet, and Eleanor), more parts to their character that are explored over the course of the game. Compared to how say, Rita, had a more singular element to her character that the game focuses on and drives a lot of her interactions and development for a large portion of the game. Like I think Velvet could have been a cut-and-dry tsundere-type character as well, but she's actually quite normal (if a little monotone) in most conversations, and I think they did pretty good at contextualizing her behavior over the course of the game and seeing her change (or even retain) the way she interacts with certain characters as you progress through it. Another example is Laphicet where the game kinda breaks his development up into a first phase where he starts to develop emotions and opinions, and a second phase where he takes these emotions and opinions and uses them to figure out what kind of position and impact he wants to have regarding the group and world around him, instead of trying to stretch out one of the two phases out over the entire game. I will say that Magilou may not be to everyone's liking though, for me she was annoying at some point, amusing and interesting in others. Rokurou, Eizen, and Magilou are Yuri-ish characters who are older and have already been through a lot of stuff, and while they have their own goals, are mainly there to give some insight on the world and guide the younger characters.
- While the art style may or may not be up to debate as better or worse, I think Berseria does display a
much firmer grasp of 3D presentation. There's a much better understanding of animation, camera movement, dialogue pacing, and cinematography shown in the cutscene direction that makes many cutscenes look much more dynamic and interesting to watch than several of those in Vesperia.
- The main narrative kinda meanders around a bit and there are some parts I would have liked to see a little more fleshed out, but I think it mostly understands what it's about in terms of its themes and characterization, and how the various events, twists, and turns should tie into them. When I got to the end I didn't feel like the plot went off the rails like Tales has a bad habit of. It's not super original or anything but it's a pretty fun, consistent adventure. Vesperia I felt lost the plot around the last 40% or so when you suddenly have to collect magic spirits to stop the sorta-random final bad guy in his sorta-random sky fortress, and how the story kept going even though most if not all of the main characters saw their character arcs to their conclusions.
- At least from a quantity perspective, the game has a good amount of content. There's plenty of bosses, items, minigames, costumes, attachments, artes, etc.
- Combat-wise I tend to like their weirder/more experimental combat systems than the Symphonia/TP-based stuff so I give it the edge in that area. Someone who still thinks Vesperia (and maybe Xillia/Xillia 2) had better combat than Xillia/Xillia 2/Graces/Zestiria I wouldn't expect to have their position changed by this one.
That said, I think Vesperia has the better art style more overall, it has more thoughtfully-crafted environments (they've improved with Berseria but I think they'd be better off making some of them smaller but denser and more detailed in the next game), it (particularly the PS3 version) is still the golden standard in content for a Tales game, and it has somewhat better music.