While Japanese game development has shrunk significantly in the past few years, there’s more than just a new Final Fantasy every half-decade to keep your JRPG dreams alive. Bandai Namco announced last year that we’d be seeing a new Tales game in 2016, and today they offered up some details.
Joining Tales of Berseria’s protagonist Velvet (ugh) on her quest will be the young swordsman, Rokurou. He carries a large sword on his back, but in an only in anime twist, refuses to use, preferring to do battle with a pair of short blades. Opposing our heroes is Eleanor, a praetor of an organization of exorcists, but whose honesty and compassion are sometimes at odds with her mission of justice. Conflict! (I suspect it will turn out more happily than Les Miserables.)
There are also some added details on the combat system, which has naturally evolved from the series’ Linear Motion Battle System. Characters will have attacks and special abilities called artes that can be assigned to the face buttons of a controller, and these attacks can be linked together into combos. The size of those combos are dictated by the Soul gauge, which essentially acts as a limited ability point system. Doing moves depletes the gauge, but it restores over time, and you can steal points from the enemy.
You can see more details on the characters, the world, and the combat of Berseria on the official website. The game is due out this year on PC and PS4, but there’s nothing more specific than that.
Hopefully Berseria will fare better than Tales of Zestiria did on PC, with its limited framerate and lack of configuration options. Namco Bandai titles in general have been poorly received on PC, though modders have turned around both Tales of Zestiria and titles like Dark Souls, restoring expected features and generally making those games more pleasant experiences.
