Tales of Berseria Remastered was an odd announcement. After the chance to replay Tales of Graces f and Tales of Xilia, I fully expected the next game to be either Xilia 2 or perhaps a modernized version of Tales of the Abyss. Berseria is the second most modern Tales game and is still available on the PS4, so a remaster felt almost unnecessary. In practice, Tales of Berseria Remastered is less of a remaster and more of a Game of the Year edition, a chance to get the game and all its DLC with a few mechanical upgrades. Does that make it worth it? That depends on whether you already own the game.

For those newcomers, Berseria follows the story of delightful edgelord, Velvet Crowe. Velvet's idyllic life was turned upside-down when her village was inflicted with a demonic curse that led to her brother-in-law slaughtering everyone — including Velvet's own brother — in the name of salvation. Velvet was cursed by the power and sealed away in a dungeon. Years later, she discovers that her brother is hailed as a glorious shepherd who saved the world, and Velvet's a tad sore about that. She breaks free of her bindings and sets out to get revenge on the "hero" who saved the world, even if it means becoming a villain herself.

At its core, Berseria Remastered is pretty much identical to the first version of the game that we covered almost a decade ago. Pretty much everything we went over in the original review remains true. The game is still a ton of fun and a great entry point for newcomers to the franchise, which suffers because of its ties to Tales of Zesteria and the combat system occasionally being too straightforward. It's an excellent game, and in the time since release, I've only come to like it more. It's easily one of the games I'd most recommend to those who want to see the high points of the franchise.

Berseria Remastered contains a number of small but rather nice mechanical upgrades, similar to the other remasters. You begin access with the Grade Shop, which allows you to purchase a number of upgrades, such as increased experience gain, half-price shops, specific bonuses, and titles. These are all optional (in most cases, they can be toggled on and off at will), so it's more of a nice extra than anything else.

Likewise, general exploration has been smoothed out. Movement speed has been given a general 20% boost overall, and the map now shows the locations of objectives, side-quests, hidden scenes and collectible items. The Denore and Inoph bottles, which allow escaping from dungeons and teleporting to previous locations, are given to you much earlier in the game. In general, it's much easier to explore and harder to miss things. Most of this can be toggled, so if you want an experience that's more faithful to the original experience, it's possible, but the quality of life improves are quite nice.

Also included in this package is the majority of the DLC for the original game. This includes an absolutely massive amount of costumes and accessories for customizing your character and some bonus skits and a few oddities. The missing DLC is limited to "cheat" DLC (pointless, since the Grade Shop starts unlocked) and the Idolmaster collaboration costumes, which follow the recent Tales trend of not having the licensed tie-in costumes. This is a good value, since most of these packs cost $7 each.

In the long run, that's the bulk of the changes to the game: a handful of QoL improvements, some minor bug fixes, and the DLC being packed in. The biggest problem Tales of Berseria Remastered has is the fact that the original game exists. Remastered has QoL and DLC, but the original game is already available on the PS4 and is remarkably cheap on sale. Unlike Graces and Xillia, Berseria is already generally available, and there's not much in the way of graphical updates. It's the best version of the game to play, and if you intend to buy all (or most) of the DLC, then it's significantly cheaper than doing so for the original version. However, if you already own the original or don't care much about some costumes, it's difficult to justify a purchase when the PS5 version costs twice as much as the PS4 version.

This especially stands out with the visuals, which I struggle to see any improvements on. It's not like Xillia or Graces, where the muddy textures were notably cleaned up. It's close enough to the original that you'd need to do side-by-side comparisons to notice a significant difference. The good news is that Berseria aged fairly well. The bright anime-style visuals still look very nice, even if some of the character model work is a touch stiff, and the voice acting and music remain top-notch. It's a good game through and through.

Tales of Berseria Remastered is an odd duck. It's a barely necessary remastered version of an absolutely excellent game that PlayStation owners can already purchase for half the price. It's easily the best version of the game with some fantastic QoL improvements and all the DLC packed in at a much lower price than buying them separately. However, if you're already a longtime fan who already owns the game and has purchased the DLC, Remastered is probably not worth the extra cost. If you're a newcomer to the game and don't mind shelling out a little more for bells and whistles, Remastered is the version you should get.

Score: 7.5/10