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.