Tales Of Zestiria Review

Tales of Zestiria is the first Tales game to make its way to the PlayStation 4. Does the game make the proper leap into the next generation, or does it fall flat? Check out this Tales Of Zestiria honest game review to help make your choice!

Tales of Zestiria tells the story of the Shepard in his attempt to save the world from Hellions. For the most part you will play as Sorey, the Shepard of this era, as he travels the world quelling malevolence and redeeming hellions. Sorey is joined by Mikleo, his childhood friend and training partner. Mikleo is what is known as a Serpahim and cannot be seen by normal humans. Along the way Sorey will gain the aid of new friends and Seraphims and, of course, make powerful new enemies. Sorey will encounter political turmoil, church corruption and violent wars during his journey.

Outside of the main story, there are side things you will be doing for extra cut scenes and Iris gems. Iris gems are a key part of the game and show you things from the past. You will see what past Shepards did, what your enemies are up to and things your Seraphim did. Other than that there are a few side quests you will be able to do as well. This is one of the problems I have with the game – they are few and far between and it is just a waste. They go out of their way to explain why he can’;t help everyone but it just seems lazy. A good RPG is only as good as it’s side content, collecting Orbs and exploring ruins is fun and all but, I prefer helping NPCs out for rewards.

The combat is pretty typical of a Tales game. You run into an enemy and it will initiate the battle. When you are in the battle you can move around and use various combos to attack you enemies, this is not a turn based combat system at all. You will need to actively dodge, block, counter and interrupt if you want to win some of the tougher battles. Chaining together a huge combo and finishing off a tough enemy is really satisfying. Something new to the series is called Armatization. This is when you fuse with a Seraphim to gain stronger attacks, more HP and new special attacks. When fused you will lose that Seraphim on the battlefield, but you become so powerful it is worth it. It’s an interesting addition but far to easy to use at any time. Anytime you are in trouble you can just fuse and you will be fine, kind of ruins some of the challenge.

One issue I have with this whole Seraphim and Human thing is how it affects your party lay out. You used to be able to just roll with any four members of your team into any battle. You can only have a Seraphim out if you have a human connected with them. This means that if it is just Sorey in the fight, you only have two members you can use. This also means you can’t have four Seraphim out at any time, only two. Thankfully, in combat, you can switch Seraphim really easily but it still limits your party set up which is a bummer.

Another thing I had some really big issues with was the camera. There are a lot of tight corridors in the ruins of the game and fighting in them can be a serious pain. The camera would just zoom up way to far or go at weird angles to try to correct itself and mess things up. This was really an issue when I was playing with a second player. There were times when I just plain off the screen and I had no idea what was going on. In the fields and larger areas it isn’t an issue but any corridor or hallway, you might struggle.

The graphics aren’t anything that impressive for a PlayStation 4 game. I know this one is still going to the PlayStation 3 but it looks like a Ps3 games on the Ps4. I had some issues with enemies just walking very clunky like in the distant until I got up to them, it was weird. I will say that they have a great sound track in this game. It reminds me of classic JRPGs and it feels right at home in Zestiria.

The last thing I want to hit on is the new equipment fusing system. This in theory is a great thing to add, it just gets way to complicated way to fast. Fusing certain weapons with other weapons will need you a stat bonus if you can line up the symbols on the weapon chart. So you will have a weapon that gives you say, a 10% boost to all stats, but then you find a new sword with higher damage that can’t be fused into your old sword. So now you need to make the choice of getting more damage and losing the bonus stats, or keeping the stats and not hitting as hard. I just think being able to upgrade your old equipment into the newer version would of been a better play here.

Overall Tales Of Zestiria is a solid J-RPG but not quite next gen version we had hoped for. They still have some work to do on the series but I still had a fun time playing the game.