Board 8 > Tales of Berseria is pretty great

(+) Yeah! (+)

Final character rankings that are totally not the same as my previous ones:

Velvet > Laphicet > Eleanor > Eizen > Magilou > Rokurou

Velvet is a pretty clear #1. She's the soul of the game and what the entire plot is based on. Has the most emotional scenes and gets the most development.

Laphicet is really good too. Starts out as an emotionless husk and becomes a little badass with a full sense of self. Acts as a good foil to all the other characters. After Velvet, I feel like he's the character that the game could not do without the most.

I really like Eleanor's arc. She goes from being a dog of the Abbey to thinking and acting for herself. She also provides a very important contrast to the rest of the party, being the one that adheres to stricter morals and tries (and fails) to keep the rest in check.

Eizen is just cool and fun even though the Reaper's Curse plot point is iffy at best, He has a pirate ship and his side quest with Zaveid is great. I also like how he's secretly a huge dork. The plotline with Aifread is pretty predictable though.

Magilou is entertaining but her plot relevance is nearly zero. I'm generally not a fan of comedy relief characters (I hated Pascal) but Magilou is the best possible version of that in that her comedy is all about purposefully aggravating everyone else. While she's still a great character, she didn't leave a huge impact on me.

Rokurou has the unfortunate situation of his main character arc being a revenge story when a bigger, better revenge story is the main focus on the game. Although his plotline starts to differentiate itself later on, which is nice. The final fight versus Shigure is great. Rokurou also has the blandest personality in the game - his response to basically everything is 'sure, whatever'. I like him but if you removed him from the game it wouldn't change too much.
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KamikazePotato posted...

I also like how he's secretly a huge dork.

yes, this

serious Eizen doesn't do much for me - there's only so much you can repeat "Reaper's Curse" and "I chart my own course" before it gets old

but I love Eizen nerding out over stuff (underground tunnels!!)
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One of my favorite skits in the game is when Eizen tries to explain some lore/explanations about the world and Eleanor keeps correcting him with new updated findings. Eizen gets really sulky and essentially goes "no, it's fine... :("
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Magilou with the best sidequests
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Eizen and Rokurou arguing about the beetle is one of the best skits in recent Tales. Dork Eizen was amazing.
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Excuse you, but it's a rhinostagros
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Watched some more Zestiria cutscenes, and man Zaveid is incredibly annoying. I much prefer his Berseria counterpart. Edna seems cool.
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Edna and Lailah are the only Zestiria party members that are fun or interesting at all, unfortunately.
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Zaveid is pretty solid in the anime. You should just watch that.
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Yeah, I'll definitely get to the anime sometime. Want to see how that world continues even if it's literally 1000 years in the future. I did read up on what happened to Eizen though....damn. Not surprised, but damn.
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The worst thing about it isn't what happens, but that it's a total throwaway sidequest in that game.

Forget that though, the most important cutscene I'm Zestiria:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOiTlulglCE

"Laugh...at the weak will of a sad, broken man..."
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If you wanted the definitive proof of how much more effort was put into the Zestiria's soundtrack than Berseria's, here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qSoLwky5Gw

After hours of the game jumping the shark, I can't even begin to properly express how fucking awesome everything about this fight was.
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I've heard that song, yeah. It's really good.

I don't think extra effort was put into Zestiria's OST, it's just that they were done by two different composers and one is a lot better than the other.

P.S. That hot springs scene..........
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up?
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up
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down
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Oh damn this topic was bumped. Uuuuuh random thought: while the OST was overall underwhelming I liked some of the later boss themes!
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I like the first regular battle theme
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Every day I intend to start the Zestiria anime, and every day Stormblood gets in the way. Maybe tomorrow !
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Watched the first two episodes of the Zestiria anime. That was kind of confusing. A bunch of stuff just...happened. I'm okay with being sparse on exposition but I wasn't given room to breathe.

Princess hotpants has had a bad few days. Shame that she gets put on a bus eventually.
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She doesn't, in the anime. It's very different from the game.

I didn't think the first couple eps were that confusing (I haven't played the ToZ game), but I can see that.
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Watched up to Episode 6. So far it feels...hmm. I don't know. The characters are certainly much less memorable after Berseria. I'm not sold on Mikleo's voice acting either. The overall conflict seems kind of generic. The animation, however, is extremely good and is my main drawing point at the moment. Those action scenes!
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ufotable always a good time
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