Tales of Berseria released in the States (and a few other places) last week, and unlike other games in the series, we haven’t talked about it much in this space. So let’s fix that today.

Berseria has a lot of things going for it. It’s the first release designed for the current generation of consoles (Zestiria was an enhanced PS3 port), so it’s very pretty. The animation is smooth like butter and the game avoids some of the glaring flame-rate issues that earlier titles have had, at least so far. It’s the first Tales to feature a solo female protagonist, because Xillia and Symphonia 2 had split duties (and Symphonia 2 never actually happened).

Velvet has an interesting, tragic backstory from the get-go, and other than her outfit (which can be fixed with costumes), she seems like a cool addition. The rest of the cast so far is solid and the English voice acting is pretty good. I can already tell the battle system won’t be my favorite in the series, but I’m still optimistic that it’ll be fun.

These are all very early impressions…we’ve only been able to spend a couple hours with the game to this point. I’m sure there will be more in the future, from a full review to a possible playthrough for the YouTube channel. In the meantime, here’s the opening video from Berseria in its untouched glory.

Burn

Music to My Ears covers soundtracks or individual songs from video games. You can view all posts in the series by clicking here.