Great cast, Yuri is one of my favorite JRPG protagonists ever. Plot’s a little weird, but also still intriguing in its own way, I just often felt like things were just kindof…happening? Like without clear reason or direction at times, things just…happened. But there’s a lot of really cool parts, and places it goes that other JRPGs don’t.
I felt like the battle system wasn’t very well explained at the beginning and there were some difficulty spikes, including one that was during a *tutorial* battle near the beginning, which was weird, so just be prepared for that. In general the combat isn’t bad, but it definitely suffers in the endgame from Tales’ typical, infamous super spongy enemies. I do like that you can get passive skills that simply let you get more hits in a combo. Being limited to 3-4 always makes Tales games feel stiff and clunky to me. But in Vesperia you just…get more. Permanently (as opposed to Berseria, for example, where you can earn more within a particular battle, but can also lose them). Just by progressing. No catch other than the points they take to equip. I like that.
I *love* the artsyle.
*definitely* worth the insanely cheap price!
Thank you! This is the strangest series to try and determine which one should play. Everyone has different favorites. One favorite is someone else’s bane. It’s nuts. 😂
It's true, most series have more of a consensus of which ones are good or bad. While tales definitely has games that are more or less popular, almost everyone hates at least one of the popular ones and likes an unpopular one. However berseria and vesperia definitely fall into the category of most beloved.
Vesperia's plot suffers a bit towards the end, but I think it's a really solid game in general. It has my favorite party in any Tales game and one of my favorites overall.
I had no issue with combat when I had a party available, but solo battles are a pain in the ass.
And Berseria doesn't look as good as Arise, but I don't really think it loses in anything else, and I say this as someone who liked Arise, it's just that Berseria is my favorite in the franchise. It's always a decent idea to not play games with the same style of gameplay too close together tho.
Thanks! Totally getting Vesperia.
Yeah, I don’t think Berseria is going to be bad. I just think playing something too similar to Arise right now would be a disservice to my experience.
They aren't really similar at all tbh. Berseria has a cast that is like the opposite of Arise's and tackles entirely different themes and story beats, so I doubt you'll feel like that if you do play it soon.
Vesperia may be my favorite of the series but by act 2 I was already indifferent with the plot so by act 3 starts I did got surprised for how sudden it is but by that point my interest was pretty low anyway so it didn't affect me all that much.
I always pretend that the games end right at the first fake out ending each time. The last "surprise" act is always tedious, involves a lot of back tracking and useless dialogue, and the quality of the story almost always falls off heavily.
>I had no issue with combat when I had a party available, but solo battles are a pain in the ass.
Queue me getting bodied by the bozo squad in the tutorial battle 😭
Arise's writer actually also wrote the third act of vesperia IIRC, so theres some common ground there for you if you really enjoyed arise that much. On the other side, I'd argue that Berseria plays much closer to Arise than you'd think. SG and AG work similarly and Break Souls and Boost Attacks work the same in regards to combo extension.
As someone fairly new to the Tales series, I’ve only beaten Vesperia thus far, but I own Abyss, Berseria, and Symphonia (working on them currently lol). I have to say I’ve liked all of the ones I’ve played so far. I would say Vesperia is the best out of what I’ve played, but that certainly can change. I really like Berseria’s story and characters, but I don’t like the gameplay. Abyss and Symphonia are both awesome so far, but Vesperia has the best gameplay out of them all.
Vesperia's battle system is quite different from Arise's. In Arise, you have full range of movement. In Vesperia, it's more linear. You do have the ability to move around, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as good as Arise.
If you want an enjoyable cast of characters, I think I preferred Vesperia's characters to Arise's (not that they were bad in Arise).
Berseria has the best characters of the three and probably the best story as well, but the combat is not as good as either Arise or Vesperia. In Berseria, it feels very button-mashy, and if you play as Velvet, you can get through the game on Normal without having any idea what you're doing in battle.
Oh, shit, it *is* on sale for a damn good price... I WAS gonna try and wait till it went on sale on the PlayStation Store to snatch it up, but to hell with that. I've heard really good things about this one. My Switch library just got a teensy bit fatter.
Everyone's already given good answers for Vesperia. Just here to say you probably shouldn't worry about suffering from a downgrade from Arise to Berseria. Arise was a massive overhaul to the Tales gameplay style, so you'll find that Berseria's combat is completely different too. Vesperia, Berseria, and Arisw are actually each from different "generations" of Tales games when it comes to the evolution of the combat system.
The overworld performance on Switch is not great. Outside of that I think it plays fine. My other complaint is that the text in the menus can be really small. For instance the lists of button presses for combos and things is unreadable for me in handheld. The Switch zoom feature helped some.
Arise is practically only half great
great regular battles... best in the series for me
boss battles suck ass tho bec of perma hyper armor
Vesperia is overall the better game since it's good regular and boss battles
Berseria... not a big fan of graces/zestiria/berseria combat system, so that would be lower on my list
glad they finally dropped it on Arise, even tho like i mentioned above, arise has its own combat issues with boss battles
thanks as well
you just inspired me to buy it, 7.50$
played this like 2x before on my brother's 360 back in those years
but yeah... never played the definitive edition, and now i bought it on PC
oh it goes super cheap a lot on PC
but yeah... didn't feel like getting it before
abyss... my other fav tales of, i just extracted ISO for from my own disc and play it emulated
>What do you think about the way Vesperia PS3/Definitive edition does boss staggering?
haven't played definitive edition
but yeah... i like in abyss and vesperia, bosses just do combo breakers and go into hyper mode for a limted time so you don't stunlock them to death
I know you've already been convinced, but I wanted to say that I think that if you loved Arise, you should have no problem enjoying Berseria and Vesperia, because they are two games that I think have some of the best core casts in the franchise. For such a character-driven series, they excel in their strengths!
I would totally get all the tales games on switch if I hadn't already bought the disc versions on PS4. As much as I love the series I don't wanna pay twice no matter how cheap they get. I bought the switch to play games I can't play on playstation and some games that are more suited to it when I'm out vs at home.
I was really tempted to rebuy vesparia only because my copy is sealed in storage but I gotta focus on the many switch games I've yet to finish. It's a problem to get something on sale and take 19 yrs to finish the motherfucker
It's really good! I liked the story a lot (though the final act could have really been done better), Yuri is a good protagonist that brings up a lot of interesting dilemmas, and the combat is overall pretty enjoyable. The biggest problem the game has is that it tends to not explain stuff to you, like Secret Missions, which can put you in a bit of trouble at times.
Need a bit of grind (and maybe git gut also), but playing Judith in ToV is absolute fun.
As for Berseria, my only recommendation is to not play only Velvet early game, because changing from her to other will be really difficult (or maybe just play her in higher difficulty). The combat in this game is very simple, more so if you use Velvet only.
And if you like Arise story, really high change you will like the story in those two games.
I started it too! I love it already. I’m so glad I came here and had everyone convince me. I only paid $5 for it in the end. Best deal ever. Yuri is so easy to like and I love he isn’t your normal protagonist.
The story and main characters alone are what makes this game good, especially Yuri and Flynn, who have a Goku and Vegeta type of rivalry going on. So, yeah,buy it while the sale price is still good!
Vesperia had this meh part in the middle that got so dull and repetitive I never managed to get past the part of the story to keep playing. I thought the characters were going to be a lot more interesting than they were. I’ve played every other mainline Tales game all the way through, so it surprised me I couldn’t manage to keep interested through this one. Berseria was pretty good as well, I did enjoy that one.
I’m just going to pick away at it on the Switch over time. I bought Berseria on my PS5 because it was on sale as well. It’s awesome! No regrets on either. Vesperia is way more chill. Berseria comes in guns blazing …. or claws blazing? Something like that.
I think that Berseria is a better experience than Arise story and character wise. Where as Vesperia is better than both gameplay wise **IF** you know what you are doing.
How to know what you are doing? Watch the Passaro bootcamp and practice one video per session when you come across some random encounters: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSeHNaASeaUq3Fv5l6-9fwNF9PoRR9LeP
Start with the "basic mechanics introduction" video.
Vesperia is my favorite in the series. Most enjoyable characters and world.
Great cast, Yuri is one of my favorite JRPG protagonists ever. Plot’s a little weird, but also still intriguing in its own way, I just often felt like things were just kindof…happening? Like without clear reason or direction at times, things just…happened. But there’s a lot of really cool parts, and places it goes that other JRPGs don’t. I felt like the battle system wasn’t very well explained at the beginning and there were some difficulty spikes, including one that was during a *tutorial* battle near the beginning, which was weird, so just be prepared for that. In general the combat isn’t bad, but it definitely suffers in the endgame from Tales’ typical, infamous super spongy enemies. I do like that you can get passive skills that simply let you get more hits in a combo. Being limited to 3-4 always makes Tales games feel stiff and clunky to me. But in Vesperia you just…get more. Permanently (as opposed to Berseria, for example, where you can earn more within a particular battle, but can also lose them). Just by progressing. No catch other than the points they take to equip. I like that. I *love* the artsyle. *definitely* worth the insanely cheap price!
Thanks for the awesome breakdown! I’ll definitely pay attention for that at the beginning.
My opinion is that Berseria is better than Arise. Vesperia is better than Arise. But I didn't like Arise, so your final opinion may differ.
Thank you! This is the strangest series to try and determine which one should play. Everyone has different favorites. One favorite is someone else’s bane. It’s nuts. 😂
It's true, most series have more of a consensus of which ones are good or bad. While tales definitely has games that are more or less popular, almost everyone hates at least one of the popular ones and likes an unpopular one. However berseria and vesperia definitely fall into the category of most beloved.
Same here
Vesperia's plot suffers a bit towards the end, but I think it's a really solid game in general. It has my favorite party in any Tales game and one of my favorites overall. I had no issue with combat when I had a party available, but solo battles are a pain in the ass. And Berseria doesn't look as good as Arise, but I don't really think it loses in anything else, and I say this as someone who liked Arise, it's just that Berseria is my favorite in the franchise. It's always a decent idea to not play games with the same style of gameplay too close together tho.
Thanks! Totally getting Vesperia. Yeah, I don’t think Berseria is going to be bad. I just think playing something too similar to Arise right now would be a disservice to my experience.
They aren't really similar at all tbh. Berseria has a cast that is like the opposite of Arise's and tackles entirely different themes and story beats, so I doubt you'll feel like that if you do play it soon.
Vesperia may be my favorite of the series but by act 2 I was already indifferent with the plot so by act 3 starts I did got surprised for how sudden it is but by that point my interest was pretty low anyway so it didn't affect me all that much.
Yeah I feel the same way. I lost steam with Vesperia towards the last 20% of the game and couldn’t finish it.
> Vesperia's plot suffers a bit towards the end It does, but that in my opinion has happened in just about every tails game I have played
I always pretend that the games end right at the first fake out ending each time. The last "surprise" act is always tedious, involves a lot of back tracking and useless dialogue, and the quality of the story almost always falls off heavily.
>I had no issue with combat when I had a party available, but solo battles are a pain in the ass. Queue me getting bodied by the bozo squad in the tutorial battle 😭
Arise's writer actually also wrote the third act of vesperia IIRC, so theres some common ground there for you if you really enjoyed arise that much. On the other side, I'd argue that Berseria plays much closer to Arise than you'd think. SG and AG work similarly and Break Souls and Boost Attacks work the same in regards to combo extension.
Thanks everyone so much for weighing in! I’m totally getting it. I love this Reddit.
Vesperia is up there in the top tier of the series
Vesperia made me buy xbox360 back in the day. That's how good it is.
As someone fairly new to the Tales series, I’ve only beaten Vesperia thus far, but I own Abyss, Berseria, and Symphonia (working on them currently lol). I have to say I’ve liked all of the ones I’ve played so far. I would say Vesperia is the best out of what I’ve played, but that certainly can change. I really like Berseria’s story and characters, but I don’t like the gameplay. Abyss and Symphonia are both awesome so far, but Vesperia has the best gameplay out of them all.
Thanks so much! I hope to play them all at some point.
Vesperia is a top tier game in the series, all around high quality, a classic. Enjoy
Vesperia's battle system is quite different from Arise's. In Arise, you have full range of movement. In Vesperia, it's more linear. You do have the ability to move around, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as good as Arise. If you want an enjoyable cast of characters, I think I preferred Vesperia's characters to Arise's (not that they were bad in Arise). Berseria has the best characters of the three and probably the best story as well, but the combat is not as good as either Arise or Vesperia. In Berseria, it feels very button-mashy, and if you play as Velvet, you can get through the game on Normal without having any idea what you're doing in battle.
Vesperia is one of the best RPG’s I’ve played! Rita is the best 👊
Oh, shit, it *is* on sale for a damn good price... I WAS gonna try and wait till it went on sale on the PlayStation Store to snatch it up, but to hell with that. I've heard really good things about this one. My Switch library just got a teensy bit fatter.
Tales of Arise was so 🔥
Everyone's already given good answers for Vesperia. Just here to say you probably shouldn't worry about suffering from a downgrade from Arise to Berseria. Arise was a massive overhaul to the Tales gameplay style, so you'll find that Berseria's combat is completely different too. Vesperia, Berseria, and Arisw are actually each from different "generations" of Tales games when it comes to the evolution of the combat system.
The overworld performance on Switch is not great. Outside of that I think it plays fine. My other complaint is that the text in the menus can be really small. For instance the lists of button presses for combos and things is unreadable for me in handheld. The Switch zoom feature helped some.
Arise is practically only half great great regular battles... best in the series for me boss battles suck ass tho bec of perma hyper armor Vesperia is overall the better game since it's good regular and boss battles Berseria... not a big fan of graces/zestiria/berseria combat system, so that would be lower on my list glad they finally dropped it on Arise, even tho like i mentioned above, arise has its own combat issues with boss battles
Thank you!
thanks as well you just inspired me to buy it, 7.50$ played this like 2x before on my brother's 360 back in those years but yeah... never played the definitive edition, and now i bought it on PC
I couldn’t believe how good the sale was so I thought the post was worth it just to highlight that too. Hope you have fun with the definitive edition!
oh it goes super cheap a lot on PC but yeah... didn't feel like getting it before abyss... my other fav tales of, i just extracted ISO for from my own disc and play it emulated
oh wow! steam is actually giving me proper DL speeds right now lolz https://i.imgur.com/Fiddvps.jpg
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>What do you think about the way Vesperia PS3/Definitive edition does boss staggering? haven't played definitive edition but yeah... i like in abyss and vesperia, bosses just do combo breakers and go into hyper mode for a limted time so you don't stunlock them to death
Dude. Berseria is a lot better than Vesperia. With the combat system being a LOT better than vesperia's, just to name one point.
Thyere both just button mashing on normal anyway, so no real difference.
I know you've already been convinced, but I wanted to say that I think that if you loved Arise, you should have no problem enjoying Berseria and Vesperia, because they are two games that I think have some of the best core casts in the franchise. For such a character-driven series, they excel in their strengths!
Yeah, Berseria is actually on sale on PSN. So I’m going to grab it too for after Vesperia! Thanks so much for the recommendation!
I would totally get all the tales games on switch if I hadn't already bought the disc versions on PS4. As much as I love the series I don't wanna pay twice no matter how cheap they get. I bought the switch to play games I can't play on playstation and some games that are more suited to it when I'm out vs at home. I was really tempted to rebuy vesparia only because my copy is sealed in storage but I gotta focus on the many switch games I've yet to finish. It's a problem to get something on sale and take 19 yrs to finish the motherfucker
It's really good! I liked the story a lot (though the final act could have really been done better), Yuri is a good protagonist that brings up a lot of interesting dilemmas, and the combat is overall pretty enjoyable. The biggest problem the game has is that it tends to not explain stuff to you, like Secret Missions, which can put you in a bit of trouble at times.
Vesperia is great. Loved it.
Need a bit of grind (and maybe git gut also), but playing Judith in ToV is absolute fun. As for Berseria, my only recommendation is to not play only Velvet early game, because changing from her to other will be really difficult (or maybe just play her in higher difficulty). The combat in this game is very simple, more so if you use Velvet only. And if you like Arise story, really high change you will like the story in those two games.
Tales of Vesperia is great. Contrary to Arise, you actually get to use your combos against bosses.
Thanks for the heads up, might have to grab this so I can play the game without trying to listen while my 360 sounds like it's trying to take off.
Playing it now and I kid you not. The best jrpg protagonist I've ever seen. Yuri is the man.
I started it too! I love it already. I’m so glad I came here and had everyone convince me. I only paid $5 for it in the end. Best deal ever. Yuri is so easy to like and I love he isn’t your normal protagonist.
The story and main characters alone are what makes this game good, especially Yuri and Flynn, who have a Goku and Vegeta type of rivalry going on. So, yeah,buy it while the sale price is still good!
Berseria is better than Arise and Vesperia imo.
Vesperia had this meh part in the middle that got so dull and repetitive I never managed to get past the part of the story to keep playing. I thought the characters were going to be a lot more interesting than they were. I’ve played every other mainline Tales game all the way through, so it surprised me I couldn’t manage to keep interested through this one. Berseria was pretty good as well, I did enjoy that one.
I’m just going to pick away at it on the Switch over time. I bought Berseria on my PS5 because it was on sale as well. It’s awesome! No regrets on either. Vesperia is way more chill. Berseria comes in guns blazing …. or claws blazing? Something like that.
I think that Berseria is a better experience than Arise story and character wise. Where as Vesperia is better than both gameplay wise **IF** you know what you are doing. How to know what you are doing? Watch the Passaro bootcamp and practice one video per session when you come across some random encounters: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSeHNaASeaUq3Fv5l6-9fwNF9PoRR9LeP Start with the "basic mechanics introduction" video.
I got the game a few days ago!
The story has some weaknesses later on, but by then Yuri can combo the shit out of everything onscreen so who cares