Tales of Zestiria

The gameplay is...alright, I guess. Graphics and sound are...adequate for the time. The writing is what takes this from "kinda meh" to "avoid at all costs". The characters are all idiots, and what's worse is they're [i]inconsistent[/i] idiots who apparently change their whole personality every five minutes so that they can pick the dumbest possible thing to do at any given moment. Whenever one shows occasional flashes of likeability they immediately turn around and ruin it with the very next thing that comes out of their mouths. The plot is "I am 14 and this is my first-ever DnD campaign!" levels of generic and the humor, well...either something went [i]seriously[/i] wrong in translation or whoever originally wrote those "jokes" is suffering from some kind of serious issues. Possibly both. Verdict: Play literally [i]any[/i] other Tales Of... game instead.

It's called (Zest)iria because of all of the gay tension between Sorey and Mikleo.

Its... okay. There's a lot of things I enjoyed like the characters, equipment system, and the start of the plot before it become kinda mindless. But it becomes very average and the battle system does it no favors, which is a shame because it is cool to transform midfight more powerful. Probably won't finish the rest after this review... Kinda like Soul Hackers 2, its a very MID game that had potential but couldn't stick the landing.

I was a big fan of Berseria and wanted to like this. About 10hrs in I was struggling to find a reason to start the game again. A few complaints: - Locked chests in dungeons with the key located in a different dungeon. Just...why? Backtracking for 1-2 chests is extremely anti-fun. - Camera can be wonky and get stuck in odd spots during combat. - Forced to complete side quests to advance main story. Just a lazy attempt to make the game longer. - Combat doesn't feel satisfying. Different combos and artes really don't make an impact. Pretty much comes down to spamming the same 3-4 attack combos, - Tuned heavily with focus around armatization. Characters later on die to bosses with 1-2 hits if you're not armatized. No ability to be tactical later just armatize and go. Go play Berseria instead. It's the best Tales experience.

If you see this game on sale, just skip it. It's 30fps locked and there's nothing about the game that's good enough to push through. It's significantly worse than Berseria or Arise.

The combat system is terrible, and the character upgrades are completely obtuse. This has one of the best opening tracks to a video game imo, and I think it was part of what kept me coming back, but I just cannot take this game anymore.

Worst Tales of game easily. And the less I talk about the gameplay and the camera, the better. Sorey and Rose's friendship was pretty nice though.

I tried to like this game but sorry I CAN'T! I picked Zestiria coz of Enda-Eizen appearance as optional boss on Tales of Arise, so wanna give it a try to play and understand her backstory. I believe The writer of Zestiria thought of great battles till end of the masterpiece but either the system of the mech are waaayyy too complicated for me to understand. I thought "Simple" mode is just for easy-going route with "No fret" of any battle settlement. I was totally wrong! Ok I list what I do not recommend (contain SPOILERS, please note) : 1. Battle everywhere : In dungeons, in Plains, even inside the city. 2. Semi-Auto and Auto mode of counterparts fighting style truly sucks but they become insanely powerfull once I fight them on one of the sub-event even you choose "Simple" Mode. either I wanna leave the 1st and 2nd person on auto mode battle, they made me dissapointed. Do ask how many "We-die-on-battle" count as high as 23 times in 1 battle. 3. The MAIN CORE of the Game::: Complicated battle mechs : range of Skills on equipment, the Equipments, scarce on Gald/money, Lord of the Lands management (7 Lords, babe. I got headache and heartbreaks to level them up to make the battle easier), Battle difficulties mode that affect Exp, Grade, Money and items drop by enemies. 4. GRINDING is a MUST! You wanna speedrun the game in 15-25H? Forget It! even there is a "LIbrary grinding" achievement that less than 1.5% people achieve it. 4. This game IS FOR freeloaders who seek ultimate challange in Action RPG. I saw a player completed this game 450H++ so for those who has few daily times to play like me or seek appealing plot or character development in RPG, I strongly NOT RECOMMEND this! 5. NOT RECOMMEND for achievement hunter too! many achievements require to replay 2-5 times, unless you play on Hard or Insane Mode till the end, You just go for the 1st and 2nd times playthrough. I reach dungeon to Camlann Village but decided to drop the game as I tried to play on Simple-Normal-Moderate Mode (1st playthrough) but still couldnt motivate to continue in near future.. No wonder less than 1.5% people completed all its achievements. Because of Zestiria and FFVII Intergrade, I decided to delete from Wishlist and cancel buying some of Tales GAME/FF Games that require to play in HARD Mode or higher. Check the achievement list first BEFORE buying any RPG Games. oh yeah, the Good Thing of Zestiria are : THE FRIENDSHIP of Human and Seraph, as well as The SKIT. Better watch their Anime than playing the game.

I’m a long-time Tales fan, so I’m honestly not saying any of this lightly. I’ve loved so many games in this franchise dearly, which is exactly why Zestiria is such a huge failure to me. I tried. I really, really tried to give this game a chance. I played for many hours and got pretty deep into it because I kept thinking maybe something would click eventually. But I just couldn’t do it anymore. The soundtrack is amazing, I’ll absolutely give it that. I also like the cast. They’re likable and their designs are nice. But almost everything around them feels like a failure to me. The world looks shockingly cheap. And please don’t give me the “it’s an old game” excuse, because there are much older games, even from the same generation, that still look far better than this. This is also not some tiny poor studio making a game with no resources. Yet Zestiria genuinely feels like it had an extremely low budget. And honestly, I felt the same way about Xillia. You can see the same cheap assets everywhere. Similar NPCs, empty-looking areas, gloomy environments, everything feeling flat and lifeless. And no, I don’t mean gloomy because of the storyline. A dark world can still feel rich, atmospheric and alive. We’ve seen that many times in RPGs. Darkness is not the problem here. The problem is that this world literally feels like paper to me. Paper buildings. Paper trees. Paper terrain. There’s barely any definition or richness to anything. Everything feels static, empty and unfinished. And then there’s the story progression. Yes, I know everyone says the story is good. Maybe the actual story is good. But the way it is presented completely lost me. It honestly feels like someone collected a bunch of scenes, edited them together in a video and just pressed play. There is no natural sense of progression to me. In a good RPG, you feel like you’re going on a journey. One event leads naturally into another. You travel, discover things, meet people, get distracted by side stories, and slowly the world and story open up around you. Here? Everything feels mashed together. Rushed. Scene after scene after scene. I genuinely felt like the scenes didn’t even flow properly into each other. The game just keeps throwing story at you without giving enough time to breathe, I got bored. That is probably my biggest disappointment with “modern” Tales in general. Somewhere along the way, especially with this whole Zestiria/Xillia era, I feel like the series lost something. Everything started feeling repetitive, cheap and stripped of the personality I loved. I will say Tales of Arise was definitely an improvement for me. But even then, I still miss the classic Tales feeling so much. I miss the vibrant worlds. I miss that wonderful feeling of an overworld map. I miss interesting side quests and little discoveries. I miss in game creative costumes that actually felt like part of the joy of the game. Those little things mattered. They were part of what made Tales feel like Tales to me. I genuinely hope Bandai Namco sees feedback like this, because I’m not writing it out of hate. I’m writing it because I loved this series for a very long time and I know how magical it can feel. I don’t know what they have planned next for Tales, but I truly hope the series finds that feeling again. And on a side note… please, please bring Tales of the Abyss to modern platforms. I’m still hoping.

Game locked at 30fps. Trash