Tales of Zestiria

"Tales of ..." fans know what to expect, but for anyone who hasn't played Tales of Berseria, then it is important to know that the game mechanics and fighting styles are very well-rounded and the gameplay and fighting are easy to pick up. Having said that, the main game can be completed anywhere from 30-50 hours, based on your play style. Although, there are a few things that seem to be a bit over-developed/forced if you are looking to 100% the game. Functions like fusion and unions are well explained in the game, but unlocking the achievements required quite a bit of grinding for me. *ALSO* If you intent to 100% the game (56/56 achievements), then you will have to buy the DLC for Alisha's story, which currently runs $9.99 USD + tax. I bought this game quite some time back and worked to complete many other "Tales of ..." games and when I picked it up and was nearing completion of my first playthrough, I only had about 30 achievements unlocked. I didn't know that 6 of them are gated by he DLC. Just wanted to give a heads up as your cost to 100% the game will be the game's base cost + Alisha's DLC. Not my favorite "Tales of ..." game, but not my least favorite, either. Some parts of the game and world are not as intuitive and I ended up spending hours just researching the achievements and some of the potentially missable quests/events during the first run. I also worked my way in difficulty levels as quickly as possible. Your mileage will vary. I still have 9 more achievements to unlock, some are related to equipment/union and the rest are related to the EX dungeon(s). I play fast and don't skip cut scenes/skits, but after reading, I do normally prompt for the next line to speed things up a bit. I anticipate that my full steam runtime will be ~83 hours after completing the remaining achievements. Update: It took right around 85 hours for me to complete. I had to go through all of the NG+ stuff, even skipping scenes it took longer to reach the black mirror challenge than I had expected.

Sorry, I have to give a thumbs down for this game, I have to force myself to finish this game. It’s the most boring game I've ever played. I really disliked the combat system. On and off since 2015, and I’m on the last chapter now. The gameplay is capped at 30fps but there’s a mod for it to get 60fps smoothly, “Fix” but I get crashes during the cutscene. I disliked “Obtain the remaining spiritual powers” mission/quest, it doesn’t tell you where to go but you got to talk to Rose with you where to go or look up Walkthrough on the internet. So, nope, I have to force myself to finish on my handheld device and put on “Simple” Easy difficulty, To get through the combat faster. So, i can play Tales of Berseria after finish the Zestiria. There’s better tales games out there such as Tales of Arise. Tales are standalone.

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Editing my review on this after 100% completion - so these are mostly my "final thoughts" on the game. Story - it's pretty generic honestly. There are a lot of stupid plot conveniences or huge plot holes. If you play this game before Berseria you will be left wondering about a lot of things that aren't explained. Would really recommend playing both together because they make the other better . Standalone Berseria is a much better game, but that game retroactively made this game better storywise. Characters - definitely one of the better parts of this game. I personally like most of the cast and their interactions. Battle system - it's... clunky, to say the least. The camera doesn't work with the player most of the time so you're left struggling to see anything that is going on, or running in some random direction because you have no clue what the heck is going on. Also, the AI loves to aggressively afk for periods of time during fights and will just die. Can be very frustrating at times. Overworld and field maps - they're really bland and empty. Berseria is like this too but at least has Katz souls to make it look like there's more going on (even if there isn't really lol). Dungeons just feel like hallways and are very obviously copy-paste. They don't even try to hide it half the time. OST- Fantastic. By far the best part of the game. Trial themes are just a chefs kiss. Looking at you both fire and water temples. Equipment and skills - A mess is the best way to describe it. It's convoluted for no real reason. I had to consult an outside guide to really get a good grip on what was going on. But it really boils down to certain weapons having 1 main skill (slot 1) and three additional skills (at random, but can be manipulated via normins and merging weapons). There's a skill chart and having skills in a horizontal (same element) or vertical (same group) would trigger different skills. Stacking skills also provides its own unique additional skills. Skills also can have multipliers (x2 and x3) but what they don't tell you is that you need to have a majority of your battles on either hard (for x2) or chaos (for x3) for these skills to even start showing up. Meaning if you play 1000 battles on normal mode, get ready to do 1000 battles on hard to chaos so you can start getting chances to trigger x2 or x3 skills. That's not even diving into things like having to farm 1000 items to get a +99 weapons (good luck lmao) or the drop rates being bad without Lord of the Land boons. I think that I will have a soft spot for this game because I really liked Berseria, and these just go hand-in-hand with the world building. I don't think it's a good game but I enjoy it, and that's really all that matters I guess. We're all allowed to like bad things. That being said, I wouldn't really recommend playing this game if you aren't a Tales of fan, or if you do get it on sale (this goes on sale for like $6 and at that point I think it's worth it lol).

My favorite Tales Of game! My top three jrpg of all time are depressive and have themes of death while here Sorey is a classic hero in a classic JRPG adventure. I definitely needed this!

Story and characters are nice....that's about it for the good things. The combat is insanely boring and dull, the overworld is big and empty and you move at a snail's pace even with speed buffs. The equipment/skill system is overcomplicated and grindy.

Install the 60FPS TZFix mod, and watch Swillo's video, "Battle System Guide (Basics to Intermediate Stuff)" - particularly the bit on spell cancelling while armatized. The game does such a poor job explaining key features through bland walls of text, which will make anyone's head spin. Doing the two things above made this game go from a 6/10 to a 9/10.

I had heard all the negative comments about this game, but after finishing Tales of Berseria and loving it, I decided to give it a try. Since Tales of Berseria is a prequel to this game, despite being developed afterward, I thought, How bad could it be? Well, long story short—it was a letdown. The characters feel half-baked, and the story wasn’t very engaging. I played through to the end, but I ultimately felt like I had wasted my time. While it was nice to see some characters from Berseria appear in the story, it wasn’t enough to redeem the game for me. I don’t recommend this game. Just play Tales of Berseria instead