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Old 2017-01-27, 10:09   Link #361
monster
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Join Date: Dec 2005
So, I stopped playing Zestiria about 2+ months ago because of some other games that ended up taking more of my time. I don't know when I'll have the interest to continue with Zestiria, and I've purchased Berseria, but should I finish Zestiria first before playing Berseria? I read somewhere that the two games are somehow related.
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Old 2017-01-27, 13:04   Link #362
Shadow5YA
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Berseria is a distant prequel, similar to how Symphonia is a distant prequel to Phantasia.

If you played both games, you will notice connections in the setting. However, you do not need to play both games to understand what is happening.
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Old 2017-01-27, 14:02   Link #363
Dist
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As far as going back to Zestiria .. I would not recommend. If it's the story you're interested, just watch the anime as it does everything like 100x better anyways. Tho the anime isn't finished yet so you'd have to wait but like Shadow said, you don't need to know the story of Zestiria to play Berseria.
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Old 2017-01-27, 15:21   Link #364
monster
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Ok, thanks for the responses. If Berseria is a distant prequel, then I might as well play it sooner rather than later. I'll eventually get back to Zestiria when I feel like it one way or another.
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Old 2017-01-27, 16:24   Link #365
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@Robotech Master

Thanks for the response. I've decided to wait with my purchase.
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Old 2017-01-28, 16:06   Link #366
Dist
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Been playing for a while now and I must say that I really dislike the Soul system. I didn't read anything about the game - went in blind. But I did hear talks that it'd be similar to Zestiria so I thought it'd be okay .. And well, it is similar to Zestiria but the Soul system just makes it annoying. Starting with 3 souls and being able to attack only three times in one combo is already pretty bad, but that means if you use Break Soul and don't finish off your enemy, or stun them to gain a soul, you now have 2 souls. Fighting with 2 souls is practically impossible.

Am I missing something here? Lets say the battle starts and I have 3 souls. I get immediately stunlocked and lose 1 soul. I only have two attacks I can use. Am I just supposed to spam them and hope that I stun the enemy to regain a soul, because that literally seems like the only choice to me? Backstepping or sidestepping from an enemy attack CAN give you a soul - but doesn't always, and it seems really difficult to execute although the AI always seems to do it perfectly.

In normal fights it's not as bad as especially if enemies are lumped together then executing Break Soul can really wreak some havoc and regain souls quickly, but if you're against a boss with just 2 souls .. wtf?! This happened to me while fighting that "Fortress" boss pretty early in the game, and that boss really pissed me off. While not difficult, that boss guarded 99.999999% of all attacks made to it, and when you can only hit it twice ... it took FOREVER to kill.
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Old 2017-01-29, 06:35   Link #367
Jaden
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Yeah, souls are definitely a challenge, especially during boss fights without any adds to kill. Thankfully most of them seem to feature adds, and even a constant stream of reinforcements, which is great. An all-you-can-eat buffet for Velvet.

Boss attacks are typically difficult to sidestep, and the chance to land status effects on them is very low, so trying to steal souls is just tough. But one thing to note is that enemies use the Soul system as well. As they rack up souls, you do more damage to them, and they become more vulnerable to status effects, so at that point you can steal the souls back.

When you get 5+ party members, you also get access to the Switch Blast, where you spend 1 BG to switch to a reserve character, who will then perform a powerful attack and gain a soul. When Velvet is bogged down to 2 souls, I like to switch to Eizen, who will then be at 4 souls and can slap the enemies around for a while. When he's spent, I'll switch back to Velvet who will be at 3. If Eizen doesn't have BG, no problem - just take control of another character that does and switch them to Velvet. The switching becomes more powerful when you have skills/cooking/equipment/titles/potentites that increase your max BG and BG generation rate...with a lot of BG, you can just keep switching to build up the soul count without fighting.
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Old 2017-01-29, 06:46   Link #368
Von Himmel
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Just played for a bit and got my Eleanor at last.. man playing on Intense was a mistake. The stun system, break soul etc makes things manageable to beat but they'll take too long to kill holy shit.

One thing for sure though, I like how in this game they make that longer combo will actually going to yield more damage. Some bosses doesn't even take practically any before I manage to combo him
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Old 2017-01-29, 09:24   Link #369
Dextro
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaden View Post
When you get 5+ party members, you also get access to the Switch Blast, where you spend 1 BG to switch to a reserve character, who will then perform a powerful attack and gain a soul. When Velvet is bogged down to 2 souls, I like to switch to Eizen, who will then be at 4 souls and can slap the enemies around for a while. When he's spent, I'll switch back to Velvet who will be at 3. If Eizen doesn't have BG, no problem - just take control of another character that does and switch them to Velvet. The switching becomes more powerful when you have skills/cooking/equipment/titles/potentites that increase your max BG and BG generation rate...with a lot of BG, you can just keep switching to build up the soul count without fighting.
Hum... That sounds like a cool mechanic. I could see some potential in that on the demo but without the gameplay time to fully explore what was possible there I didn't really get too much into it.
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Old 2017-01-31, 04:56   Link #370
-Antares-
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Originally Posted by Dist View Post
Been playing for a while now and I must say that I really dislike the Soul system. I didn't read anything about the game - went in blind. But I did hear talks that it'd be similar to Zestiria so I thought it'd be okay .. And well, it is similar to Zestiria but the Soul system just makes it annoying. Starting with 3 souls and being able to attack only three times in one combo is already pretty bad, but that means if you use Break Soul and don't finish off your enemy, or stun them to gain a soul, you now have 2 souls. Fighting with 2 souls is practically impossible.

Am I missing something here? Lets say the battle starts and I have 3 souls. I get immediately stunlocked and lose 1 soul. I only have two attacks I can use. Am I just supposed to spam them and hope that I stun the enemy to regain a soul, because that literally seems like the only choice to me? Backstepping or sidestepping from an enemy attack CAN give you a soul - but doesn't always, and it seems really difficult to execute although the AI always seems to do it perfectly.

In normal fights it's not as bad as especially if enemies are lumped together then executing Break Soul can really wreak some havoc and regain souls quickly, but if you're against a boss with just 2 souls .. wtf?! This happened to me while fighting that "Fortress" boss pretty early in the game, and that boss really pissed me off. While not difficult, that boss guarded 99.999999% of all attacks made to it, and when you can only hit it twice ... it took FOREVER to kill.
I don't know, I wouldn't use a break soul at 3 souls unless I was either positive I'd get another from stunning it (stack that Focus stat if it's not happening enough) or that I would end up with enough BG to use a blast caliber/mystic arte/whatever they call it in English in this game since you gain 1 soul for using them. The equip skills that add to your BG guage when you break soul really help with this. When a party member dies, too, souls will pop out so be on the lookout and snatch those up if you're low.

There's a lot of bosses that like to never stagger though. A lot of the times I think the best way to deal with them is try to find a way to knock them down or just use Velvet and clawspam (safely, mind you; if you only have three souls don't claw again unless you have a BC waiting in the wings -- you might be too early to use these, can't remember) or absolutely cannot let up on your assult safetly. Sometimes you do have to take that risk. Then, as a different poster said, just switch blast.

Even if you don't have access to any of these things, yes, it is viable with 2 souls to stun an enemy and get more souls. I've done it before myself. It might be a bit of a drag, but it can be done. And come now, 3 souls isn't bad at all to fight with. Now, 1 soul... that's... that's hell.
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Last edited by -Antares-; 2017-01-31 at 05:16. Reason: Sooo many typos.
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Old 2017-01-31, 06:46   Link #371
Jaden
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Said I'd review the game by now, but I have 50 hours clocked and the end is not in sight - so I'll just do some random commentary based on my experience so far. Definitely one of the longer games in the series. Could be because there's more voice acted dialogue that I can't bring myself to skip. Or because playing on hard, I feel the need to do some grinding.

First the technical side - it's very solid.

I shaved a point off Zestiria's rating due to technical issues (unsteady 30 fps, unwieldy camera, etc), but this game on PC does not have such issues. There aren't really any graphical upgrades, instead they've spent their efforts making everything smooth and slick. TBF the camera solution isn't the best - they took out any kind of "smart" camera altogether so you'll have to twiddle that right stick yourself now.

But this is good. Since they're not going to innovate on the game engine/graphics side, then there should be no excuse for your game not working properly.

Gameplay - it's not my favorite in the series, but fine.

I miss the jumping and aerial juggling plays from earlier games. I don't like the reliance on RNG based stuns/knockdowns/status effects to get your combos going.

Most of all, I have a problem with how overpowered Velvet is compared to everyone else. I'm driven to cheesing everything with her god-mode Therion form, where all revolves around feeding Velvet enough souls to keep that going. I don't see any alternative playstyle, because the other characters just don't possess anything close to her power. The problem reinforces itself, since the more you use a character, the more efficient their artes become. Velvet is fun to play and all, but using the same trick over and over gets old. I would maybe recommend lowering the difficulty, so you can have fun screwing around with other tactics as well.

Character progression is linear, the only choices are on which gear to use and enchant. For example, to get a lot of Focus for Velvet (which is the correct choice when using aforementioned tactic), you have to give up a lot of raw power, which is fair.

There are a lot of minigames, all of which are crap except the Tales-themed Hanafuda. That I might play even without in-game rewards, heh.

The cast, the story, the writing, and the voice acting (went with JP of course) are all fantastic. Haven't finished yet so no verdict, but these elements are elevating the game to what is perhaps my favorite in the series. I love being the renegade party of villains that still somehow ends up saving the world (come on, as if that's a spoiler!). The balance between drama and comedy is spot-on. Love all the characters, and the game does a great job making you invested in them. Finally, the connections to Zestiria were done rather tastefully. At first, it seems like a completely unrelated world, but the two perspectives reinforce each other. You'll definitely get some more fascination out of the story if you've played (or watched anime of) Zestiria.
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Old 2017-01-31, 09:56   Link #372
GDB
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Most of all, I have a problem with how overpowered Velvet is compared to everyone else. I'm driven to cheesing everything with her god-mode Therion form, where all revolves around feeding Velvet enough souls to keep that going. I don't see any alternative playstyle, because the other characters just don't possess anything close to her power. The problem reinforces itself, since the more you use a character, the more efficient their artes become. Velvet is fun to play and all, but using the same trick over and over gets old. I would maybe recommend lowering the difficulty, so you can have fun screwing around with other tactics as well.
Unfortunately, this has become an ongoing issue with Tales games that does not appear to be ending any time soon. It started in Xillia 2 and has continued on since then. Granted that's only 3 games now, but that's still 2 too many.
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Old 2017-01-31, 11:04   Link #373
Jaden
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Yeah...though I didn't have as much of a problem with it in Xillia 2, since the game was designed around Ludger. And tethering gave you some interesting options at least. Zestiria's OP Mikleo armatization was rather inexcusable.
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Old 2017-01-31, 11:34   Link #374
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Was Sorey really that OP in Zestiria? Better than playing as a Seraph of course, but I preferred playing and armatizing as Rose.

I agree with the issue though in this game. I originally thought I'd want to play as Rokurou but he's just really .. not good, at least when compared to Velvet. Eizen and Laphicet don't interest me, and while I don't have Magilou yet I doubt she's fun to play. Honestly the only mage class that was even remotely fun to play in Tales games was Pascal from Tales of Graces.
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Old 2017-01-31, 13:46   Link #375
Von Himmel
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I think every character is 'dumb' in their own way though. Magilou can pretty much spam free magic when there's enough mobs that keep casting magic, Eizen somehow keeps stunning bosses/mobs which actually lead him to spam his BS almost as much as my Velvet...Rokurou with his fast combo and quick guard break etc.Velvet has some insane survivability with her break soul spam if she can generate enough soul sure, but other characters are pretty OP too.

Personally, I think this is better than what they did in Xillia or Zestiria. At the very least I can change main characters any time I want and doesn't end up feeling crippled because I deal less damage or I feel the characters are lacking in their ability.
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Old 2017-01-31, 17:00   Link #376
sparhawk1610
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Well, I have started to play it today. I get to the part how I escape from the Island. I must say that I like it more like Zestiria. But I missed that song from anime in part where Velvet takes Seres.
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Old 2017-01-31, 22:55   Link #377
Shadow5YA
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Was Sorey really that OP in Zestiria? Better than playing as a Seraph of course, but I preferred playing and armatizing as Rose.

I agree with the issue though in this game. I originally thought I'd want to play as Rokurou but he's just really .. not good, at least when compared to Velvet. Eizen and Laphicet don't interest me, and while I don't have Magilou yet I doubt she's fun to play. Honestly the only mage class that was even remotely fun to play in Tales games was Pascal from Tales of Graces.
Sorey and Rose weren't that different, since in the end it was eventually required to armatize to deal enough damage to bosses, where they both had the same movesets. You didn't have many options.
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Old 2017-02-02, 10:19   Link #378
Jaden
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OK, all done with the game, I believe the only things I missed were some cameo battles and super bosses. Unlocking color variations for all the characters is the sign that you've completed everyone's sidequests. 79 hours, holy crap. Yeah, I struggled with certain enemies quite a bit, stubbornly refusing to reduce difficulty.

Still, it says something about a game when I feel compelled to play it non-stop for a week. It's an 8.5/10 from me, on par with the best games in this series. Symphonia's still my favorite, but only because of how good it was for its time.

Spoiler for Light spoilers for ending:


Finally, some tips for people still playing:

- If you need levels and grade, find some monsters you're comfortable dealing with, USE DARK BOTTLE and fight dangerous encounters back to back. You can develop very fast this way.

- Optional bosses in the final dungeon are optional! They don't even drop any unique items or anything. If you don't feel like running around for hours looking for them...you can just go for the throat. EDIT: I just realized beating them is what unlocks the final Break Soul and Mystic Arte for each character, LOL. Might want to beat them after all.

- When using a mystic arte, you can hold down the trigger and a D-pad arrow pointing to the direction of another character, including reserves. This will cause them to chain their mystic arte to yours, regardless of their position or their own combo as long as they have BG. I've chained 8 mystic artes this way, it's the best way to take down tough bosses.
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Old 2017-02-02, 13:40   Link #379
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Old 2017-02-03, 07:01   Link #380
-Antares-
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Aside from Zestiria things, you need to take it as references. It seriously references every mothership Tales title at SOME point, and even some of the spinoffs.
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