Various Thoughts

Finally got around to seriously playing the game and just finished it.

Turned out my earlier annoyance regarding the multiple resource pools was mostly an over-reaction; once you get a point or two of Edge it becomes practically impossible to deplete them. I only ended up resting 3-4 times over the course of the entire game, and could’ve probably got by doing it just once if I had used those full-heal cyphers. That said the game isn’t very large by RPG standards… maybe about the size of Tyranny (perhaps a bit smaller).

It certainly is Planescape: Torment revisited though. Much like its predecessor, this game rewards high Intelligence values on the PC, heavily promotes exploring every branch of every dialog tree, and allows most confrontations to be solved/avoided without engaging in combat. That last one is particularly good since (also like PS:T) combat is kind of a pain.

However it’s the gameplay as a whole that’s holding it back rather than just the combat: The character building system is lacking, with many skill/ability choices being either useless or redundant, and you never really feel particularly powerful or godlike even at max level (which is Tier 4). Attack abilities don’t do all that much damage and companions who aren’t in the party not gaining experience certainly doesn’t help either. Equipment ends up being the main source of combat effectiveness, and the variety in that department is notably lacking (while there are tons of cyphers/oddities, there are only a few interesting weapons and a highly limited armor selection). There’s not really anything to collect either aside from merecasters.

Which all adds up to this being the perfect game for people who love replaying the exact same scenario while making slightly different choices (since those choices do actually tend to affect things here). Anyone looking for a more physically engaging or mechanic-based experience however will most likely be disappointed.

This game is indeed the second coming of Planescape: Torment.

Which raises the question: If the above statement is true, why exactly have I spent 40+ hours backtracking and grinding random things in Tales of Berseria (a game which by all appearances I’m not very fond of)? Several reasons.

The first and largest is resource management. Resource management in an RPG, especially a story-driven RPG, is a terrible idea pretty much 100% of the time. Each of the three attributes in this game consists of a separate resource pool which you can spend to increase your chance to complete various related challenges/checks. These pools do not automatically refill; rather there are three separate item types that can restore them. That’s atrocious. The one-time-use unique items system is a lesser issue, but also pretty bad. Having unique consumable items is an awful enough idea on its own, but to take it a step further and restrict how many you can carry? Shameful.

A more subjective reason for not playing it much right now is the lack of guides/walkthroughs. I can play RPGs without them (I did so for Pillars, Tyranny, and most recently Staglands after all), but would prefer not to. Generally speaking I only play most games once, so I’d like to make sure I’ve seen/done everything in the first playthrough and not missed anything. And this seems like the kind of game where it’s incredibly easy to miss things.

The final reason being that (comparatively) Berseria is a known factor, where you can just sit back and grind/collect whatever without having to really think about anything or worry much about missing a chunk of the story/characterizations. This game however requires more of an active investment.

I do indeed eventually plan on making that effort, as from what little I’ve seen so far it looks like it rewards such many times over, but it will have to wait until after Berseria‘s finished… and may end up getting sidelined again in favor of the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda.