This is a Tales of Berseria Remastered Review for PC, and as the title of it implies, I can barely see that “Remastered” thing they are talking about. Much to the like of many remastered versions in the catalogue of Bandai Namco, Tales of Berseria Remastered is merely a barely noticeable next gen update with a price tag on top. This review took a long while, not because the game was that long, but because I was also comparing it with the original release and on my personal opinion, the lack of pretty much anything makes this version pointless if you already have the original game.
I will start with the good points about it, as there is some very minimal things that might make people want to buy this instead. First of all, Tales of Berseria Remastered is cheaper than the currently available original release for PC. Second, it also comes with an included cheat mode and its overall way easier compared to the original release, there’s even a point where you can get fast travel way earlier, which kinda implies that the developers didn’t like the map of this game that much. And maybe third point, unnoticeable graphic updates.
And that’s pretty much it, like really, this could have been a free update dropping for the original game instead of its own thing, it is baffling when we are talking about the same company who did a Next Generation update for one of its Dragon Ball games. You may see me ragging on this release, but that does not mean that the game is bad, the original Tales of Berseria is pretty good and while it is not my favorite there’s merits behind it. I personally played it with this release for the first time and on the game side of things I have to confirm that its neat.
Now, when we enter the territory of reviewing a Remaster we often just have to analyze what the pack brings to us, and I pretty much just said everything this update brings. Now for the bad stuff, there was some censorship issues with the original release when it came overseas, apparently the Remastered decided to accept this changes to appeal to the global audience and implemented them even in the Japanese version of Tales of Berseria Remastered. This is egregious and yet another display of Japan’s self-censorship in action.
Perhaps a minor win is the addition of being able to finally read the game in Japanese and pretty much have the Japanese experience barring the censorship, very useful for those who are learning the language and want to do some immersion methods. However I’m just giving it too much credit, this shouldn’t have a price tag in it, this release should be an additional free patch for those who already bought the original game way back in 2017. Not to mention that doing Tales of Berseria Remastered feels like a waste when there’s a ton of other Tales games that deserve it more, it feels like a slap to the face.
The story beats are the same, the action is the same, the gameplay feels even easier, if this were the 90s and it released on the SNES, there would be no excuse to call this game Tales of Berseria Easy Type cause I just had a snooze fest went it came to playing it. Perhaps this contributes to the thoughts of other people saying that this should have been an anime instead of a game, and since I wasn’t able to play the original release back then I’m not entirely sure of the original version is as easy as this. Bandai Namco is known to severely tone down the difficulty of re-released games.
Aside from some graphical touch ups that can be achieved with mods and other freely available tools, if you don’t care about graphics and you already bought the game way back, don’t bother picking up this “Remaster”. Remasters often rebalance the game, making it better than it already was, sometimes even adding new content to it that didn’t make the cut on the first version. This feels more like just slapping some new bloom filters on top of an already pre-existing game, erasing every semblance of difficulty, and at the same time it makes you feel like you just wanna skip the game altogether to watch the story unfold instead.
I’m disappointed but this is expected from a company like Bandai Namco, .hack//G.U. Trilogy had a similar treatment to it, the difficulty was gutted compared to the PS2 release and only the graphics were updated. Yet, unlike Tales of Berseria Remastered, the .hack//G.U. Trilogy added an extra chapter that allowed us to know the fate of the characters we enjoyed our time with, giving a proper closure to their stories, there’s nothing like that in Tales of Berseria Remastered, aside from a justification to not buy remasters unless you didn’t get to play the original.
And before I put a final score on this I want to clarify this isn’t against the game itself, the story of Velvet and the crew hits an emotional chord on me that gives me some reminiscence to the time I used to play the original Tales of Phantasia with a fan-translation since it wasn’t available in English. Velvet has to be one of my favorite main characters in this series right now, but this does not justify the fact that Bandai Namco is charging a ton of money for a barely retouched version of a rather recent Tales game when there is other games like Tales of Destiny that deserve some love.
Tales of Berseria Remastered Review – Verdict
Tales of Berseria Remastered: Tales of Berseria Remastered left me genuinely confused, a remaster for such a recent game is quite weird, and it also adds nothing of value to the game itself. This feels like a free update with a price tag, called a "Remaster" for the sake of marketing, so if you already own the original game there's zero reasons to get this one. But if you don't, its cheaper at least. – Hiro
[Editor’s Note: Tales of Berseria Remastered was reviewed on PC and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.]
