Bandai Namco’s Tales series of action-RPG’s continues to grow in popularity in the West, and if you’re on the edge of your seat wondering if the series’ latest upcoming title, Tales of Berseria, will make it to our shores, then Bandai Namco has good news! Tales of Berseria will release in North America and PAL territories! The game is scheduled to hit Japan first, where it’s due at some point in 2016, though no specific release information is available for Western territories yet, beyond the fact that it’s coming.
There is a slight caveat to the Western release though; It won’t include the PlayStation 3 version. Only the PlayStation 4 version of Tales of Berseria will be released outside of Japan, alongside a Western-exclusive PC version, with the PlayStation 4 version being made available both physically at retail and digitally via the PlayStation Store, while the PC version will be digital-only, and distributed via Steam. This nixing of the last-gen port may not shock Western RPG gamers, as fellow RPG specialist, Square Enix has done it twice already, leaving the PlayStation 3 versions of Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below and the upcoming Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness in Japan, and only green-lighting the current-gen PlayStation 4 versions for release in the West.
The lack of localization for the PlayStation 3 build is also an indicator of Tales of Berseria being primarily designed around the PlayStation 4 hardware, with the PlayStation 3 build being a back-port job. The reason for a PlayStation 3 build in Japan likely comes from the fact that the PlayStation 3 is still a very popular console in the Land of the Rising Sun, where the PlayStation 4 has continued to sell surprisingly slowly, despite its enormous popularity in the rest of the world. Japan’s declining console market is blamed for the PlayStation 4’s slow sales in the region.
Tales of Berseria once again brings the beloved RPG series to a new location, this time to the fantastical Midgand Sacred Kingdom. The game is also distinct for being the first Tales game to feature a female lead hero, that being Velvet, a cold, unemotional pirate who roams the high seas, moving between a series of territories that fall under Midgand’s domain. A core theme of Tales of Berseria will be emotion and rage, with one of the key conflicts behind Velvet’s character being that she appeared to lose her emotions after a mysterious incident three years past.
Keep journeying to Eggplante for all news and updates on the Tales games.