Tales of Berseria Remastered PS5 Review. Bandai Namco has ended the remaster treatment of the Tales of franchise with Tales of Berseria. Unlike Tales of Graces f and Tales of Xillia, however, Tales of Berseria is a PS4 game that’s already available on modern platforms. Considering the types of remasters that Graces f and Xillia received, does the remaster for Tales of Berseria up the ante at all or does it stick with the same pattern?
If you haven’t already played Tales of Berseria, check out our original review of the game here to learn about the story and its gameplay.
Tales of Berseria Remastered Review (PS5) – More Re-release Than Remaster
Bells and Whistles
The more impactful additions are felt at all times. For starters, a star marker appears in the zone to show you where to go. The only caveat to this is that you need to be in the same zone as the marker. Otherwise, the marker doesn’t appear. In my mind, this is to complement the new map setting that indicates zone names on bordered zones, even though you haven’t been to those zones yet. Combine this with quest updates that appear in the corner that tell you where to go, and you have the tools to put two and two together. That way, the game isn’t completely holding your hand.
In the initial release, the game provided you with a Bottomless Denore Bottle and Bottomless Inoph Bottle, which allow you to teleport to the entrance of a dungeon and teleport to the nearest town, respectively. In the original release, these handy infinite-use bottles came as rewards near the end of the game. In this remaster, you receive them in the first couple hours. This makes progression much quicker if used regularly. To boot, you also run at 1.2 times speed at all times. Time is of the essence.
Finally, the Grade Shop is available to you immediately, complete with enough points to activate every bonus in the shop. The Grade Shop provides benefits like increased health, earned experience, and skill points. All of these changes allow you to complete the game much more quickly than the original game. In fact, the Platinum Trophy for the original game required two play throughs. Here, you only need one.
Very Little To Show For It
With that said, that’s all there is to this remaster that wasn’t in the original game (outside of some scenes that were exclusive to the Japanese version). The target audience is anyone who missed out on it completely or fans who want an excuse to play it again. Considering how well Tales of Berseria sold, one could assume that this release is an attempt to double dip in that player base.
To Bandai Namco’s credit, the company has been very candid about what changes are included in this remaster of Berseria. The full list of additions and changes can be found here, with a translation done by Steam user Make linked here. Some additional niceties are things like a retry option after dying in a normal battle (not just after boss fights), picking up items without pausing (with Tales Coins the only exception to this rule), and visible icons that indicate when something is new (like equipment or skills).
Regardless, there were plenty of other Tales of games in the franchise that could have benefitted from a re-release like this. We’ll likely never know the specific logistics behind this decision, but we at least know how we feel about it. Tales of Xillia and Tales of Graces f both received remasters in this brief remaster project, but both benefit automatically (and far more significantly) from the fact that they initially released on PS3. Now, players have a means to play them on modern consoles–along with the same additions that Berseria received in its remaster. I imagine that fans will still buy it, but it still feels like a cash grab more than anything else.
Leaving Other Options On The Table
On its face, $40 is not a terrible price point for a remaster. However, the original release still exists on PS4 and is at least half the price. I’m a long time fan of the Tales of games, and I personally love that this release, along with the other recent remasters, received a physical version with some extra bells and whistles. Nonetheless, the urge to buy Tales of Berseria once again is not quite strong, despite additions to make the experience a little more user-friendly. To boot, it’s still a great entry in the franchise in its own right. With that said, this experience essentially exists on modern hardware already.
Review code kindly provided by publisher