Bandai Namco’s ‘Tales of Berseria’ Has Been Delayed Until Next Year

Previously thought to be out this year, Tales of Berseria is now releasing in early 2017 in North America and Europe for PlayStation 4 and PC, Bandai Namco announced today.

On the Tales of Blog, two new playable characters, Eizen and Eleanor, were detailed:

Eizen, nicknamed “The Reaper”, is the skipper of Aifread’s pirates and he always makes his own decisions. Though he is a malak (a spiritual being that can harness the power of nature), he sails the Van Eltia pirate ship on the open seas to follow his own creed. While looking for the missing Captain Van Aifread, he meets Velvet and joins her to fight their common enemy, the Abbey.

Conversely, Eleanor defends the Abbey against Velvet’s repeated attacks. As a praetor, Eleanor always scrabbles to release the world from daemons threat, but fate will eventually make her join Velvet’s party. The young girl tries to be reasonable as much as possible but she can sometimes be overcome by emotion, because she is honest with a great compassion for others.

Bandai Namco also talked about the skit system, which introduces a “cut-in” effect in Tales of Berseria, where character illustrations are inserted in various ways depending on their conversation. “Sometimes a skit describes a single character’s facial expression, sometimes it shows a conversation among multiple characters,” they added. “Expressions really change depending on the cut.”

As for the Switch Blast battle system, Bandai Namco explained that it allows you to switch characters during battle and choose a back-up character to replace someone in the battle. The back-up character has one more soul than usual, and each character has a unique attack when they join the battle through Switch Blast.