Analysis of Tales of Berseria
The Saga Tales of is part of the cast of classic franchises that one can resort to if you want to enjoy classics of the JRPG genre. With a style and a formula well
known to all, and the changes they always dare to make -some with more success than others- in the combat system, the Bandai Namco series has been winning deliveries over the years. Tales of Berseria, which arrives today at the stores, is not only the last of them. It is also one of the most solid and interesting proposals that
these 21 years of history leave us. Neither revolutionizes the franchise nor reinvents practically nothing. But what he proposes does more than good. And it has its own elements that are worth visiting if you are a fan of the genre and / or the saga.
They are already more than fifteen titles in the main saga behind them since the release in 1995 of Tales of Phantasia for SNES, but did not reach our territory until 2003 with the remake for Gameboy Advance. At the time the title was presented with several
elements, especially in combat, which differed and much of the classic JRPG of the golden age of the nineties. In any case, it was not until the arrival of
Tales of Symphonia (Gamecube), when the franchise was introduced. And he did it with a very powerful delivery at the level of content and playable proposal, although time has made a dent in some of its mechanics.
Since then there are several Tales of games that have been arriving in Europe -not all- among them, probably two of the best iterations seen to date:
Tales of Abyss and Tales of Vesperia. Berseria has similarities with the aforementioned Vesperia, in the sense that they shine by doing many things well rather than by being points of inflection in a franchise
that is almost always in motion, touching and changing mechanics. In addition, the game in question has the ability to convince the fans after
Zeristia, which did not quite materialize among many users for certain proposals revamped in Berseria. These are.
Revenge as a vehicle
If you look back and look a bit at the argument of the last installments of the series, you will see that the heroes who star in these stories tend to be characters with a will for peace and a very clear purity. It happens in Zestiria, with the motivations of the protagonists of
Xillia, or with the development of Yuri in Vesperia. In general, there is a certain aura or naive style in the description of both the protagonists
of the series and their motivations and objectives. But this is largely broken with Velvet, the heroine who takes the reins of Tales of Berseria.
The change with respect to other recent deliveries is more important than it may seem at first, and marks the development of the adventure in an interesting way.
Velvet Crowe is thirsty for revenge. In a world in which daemons are growing, creatures that attack and kill humans and that are sowing chaos, and where exorcists exist, knights prepared to put an end to such monsters, Velvet only has in his head to avenge
the death of a being Dear. These facts, which are narrated in the first bars of play, offer a moral dilemma to the interesting player. We are not
before a decision-making title that marks the adventure (Shin Megami Tensei type), but the development of the protagonist generates a series of questions in the user that are not trivial.
The great enemy of Velvet is, precisely, the hero of humanity because he stood up as the reference to end the daemons. He did it at the cost
of a sacrifice, through ritual, of the character that our protagonist wants to avenge. Scenography also plays an important role in creating this
moral dichotomy. The red and black colors, close to what we can understand as evil or demonic, are those that predominate in the design of Velvet, while his enemies are pristine white priest, with angelic auras that come off their eyes, expressions and designs .
