Been playing Tales of Berseria lately.
Its a solid game , and its on PC (on sale when I got it) which is a huge plus for me since my consoles are all very old and only somewhat functional these days.
It has a pretty visual novel type of storytelling - the gameplay is present and decent but for the most part the focus is on the story told through a great many fully voiced cutscenes and vignettes, plus a whole tonne of voiced side discussions you can interact with and then a pile of unvoiced discussions. Certain fights are woven well into storytelling but most fall under the banner of "random battle bullshit".
The game is played the usual way with all your allies neatly packed away inside your butthole until such time as a battle or visual scene calls them forth. It caught me off guard that during the voiced side conversations that occasionally an allies voice would slip out of my tightly clenched rear end to contribute to the conversation, but it does help keep the illusion that there is a party present, even if you can't see them, and it makes the game feel a little more narratively dynamic. I've played much older Tales games where you barely heard from your party outside of acted scenes and on the rare conversation you did hear from them they would extract themselves from your forlorn fartchamber, walk to a speaking position and talk, and then reinsert themselves. It really broke up conversations and enforced the idea that there was a clear negative space between "story" and "playing". Here its much more smoothly meshed even if the necessity of keeping an uncluttered screen runs up against the desire to keep whole party engaged in the narrative.
Gameplay is... ups and downs. I'm dead certain there is a way to skillfully play the game, but the way the ability system is set up its hard for me to do anything but mash buttons. Skills are bound to each of the four face buttons, and they are contextual depending on order you press them in. Basically, you can set up 52 combinations plus additional skills activated mid combo, and ultimate moves. Your ability to use these depends on how many pips you have. You start each battle with three pips (so you can use 39 moves, up to three moves in a row) and stuff happens that either knocks a pip out of you or into you as the battle progresses. This... sounds awesome. But there's no way I can keep all this shit in my head, and I'm not interested in trying to be frank. I effectively have to set up four start points, four third points (the most common end point of a combo until you get good at gaining more pips) and then just hammer those buttons. I know where I'm starting and where I'll probably end but everything else is magic baby. It turns fights into a button mash jamboree for me because I don't see any point in trying to memorize optimal combos with so many choices.
If you lose too many pips then a fight becomes a godawful slog. With only one pip your options for getting pips back are punishingly slim, and in a chaotic arena pulling off the moves you need to do to gain them can be pretty hard. Certain areas specialize in enemies that use status effects to knock down pips very quickly so its easy to get combo'd.If you die then your party is likely boned - cool on one hand as it enforces the idea that you are indeed a critical part of the team, crappy on the other as you watch for a couple minutes as the remaining team gets beat down.
All that said, its a decent game. The story is a little predictable and I think after about the third point I've pretty much figured out the end, but its well communicated, the characters are fun and complex, and have good banter with eachother. I particularly like interactions between the two lead male characters because instead of being hotheaded and at eachothers throat as is often the anime way they basically get along but occasionally get wrapped up in the arguments a pair of ten year olds would have (something like four vignettes and counting revolving around whether a beetle is a stag or a rhino). (And which is better.) The fights are satisfying if shallow at my level of play, and the numbers go up. The menus are well made and intuitive, althought the mass collection of gear for breaking down and enhancing equipment can be dull.
Its fun, I'll finish it.
