This is coming from someone who typically avoids the genre at all costs-- let alone touching a series known for the grinding-- but Disgaea 5 nails its gameplay loops and map design in a seemingly accidental perfect balance. The way you can assess each situation with any given party of characters is hardly comparable to much else, and all of the usual progression mechanics allow for "ways of getting there" to accommodate varying skill levels, rather than necessary time sinks. Overload abilities bring incredible nuance to every situation as you figure out how to apply them on the fly. All of these things come together in such a way that still makes it insanely accessible.
Disgaea 5's art style brings its HD hybrid animation to a peak with smooth transitions between attacks, and each ability doing very much with very little. Environments are fantastic but very readable and attacks are over the top and more insane than you could ever expect.
The game's greatest shortcoming is easily the story, something which used to be the highlight of the other Disgaea games, however it was still terse and effective for changing locales. Even that being said, characters don't ever become stale and always have their fun little moments.
Top this all off with my personal favorite soundtrack of the series, and you have a pretty exceptional game for the genre that is still accessible to even the fresher players.

Look, I love this series like crazy, so it’s hard for these games to disappoint, but even I know this whole series is just loaded with exposition. The world-building is arguably, uh, terrible because it is purposefully made so convoluted as most of the mystery and drama of most of these games’ story scenarios comes from characters unfolding and connecting passages from their respective world’s Book of Genesis, until the cast of characters find themselves twisted into their world’s Book of Revelations. Tales of Berseria’s scenario does well, though, in pacing out their discoveries and exposition so it never feels like you’re being given important information so late into the game. There are plenty of moments of characters going “Ah yes, of course, it’s just like the earth synergy.” “Earth synergy? What’s that?” but it’s never to a point where it feels like it’s too overbearing, or lazy, or goofy. I played a lot of this game spaced out over the last seven months and never forgot the important details of how this world works, as it was given to me, and I think that’s a pretty good testament to how this game doesn’t overload you. Even in the last section, where other ‘Tales’ games might dump a lot of last minute stuff on you, this one feels like it’s trying to stay linear.

I also think expositional dialog works here because each of the main cast are of different backgrounds. Demons, priests, witches, pirates! Everyone has lived a different life and, thus, can bring different knowledge to a discussion about the world! This makes what could be heavy-handed expository dialog a little lighter as the cast converses like a bunch of strangers of different strokes coming together to play ancient history detective. Then, of course, we learn more about these characters that we like as we learn about the world and its mystery.

The characters are all great. The party of six are each hits, all of them just endeared themselves to me so fast and easy, and the perfectly consistent writing of their personalities and how they clash and interact just had me giddy during some scenes. Sometimes a family isn’t a nuclear family of parent and children, sometimes it’s a gay samurai and a gay pirate and a mean lesbian and a closeted youth group lesbian and a quirky trans girl and the cute little kid they all see as a little brother! And the mean lesbian herself, Velvet freakin’ Crowe, is such a great, great protagonist. She and this game’s villain are perfect opposite extremes of what this whole game is about: what is the point of hurting?

This isn’t the first text to tackle this subject matter, of course, we all know what the point of hurting is! It means we’re human! It means we’re alive! It is a quintessential part of the human experience to be met with pain, the hard part is processing it. The antagonist of this game (light spoilers) wants to rid the world of pain; it should be something that no one should experience, as it is only borne from faults that mankind are saddled with. Velvet wants revenge for her pain, it drives an all-consuming (pun intended, as the connection is made obvious in subtext) rage that she plans to use to remove anything in her path. Velvet’s costume, at first glance, seems a bit much; a very revealing mess of tattered clothing that someone might wear to a nightclub’s goth-themed event. Though, I think it serves a purpose. Velvet is also a daemon (sic), a blight on the world, seen as ugly and broken by the church that runs the entire world. Her outfit is just a reflection of how the enemy sees her, and any objectification made towards her revealing outfit just helps the metaphor that not only is the church disgusted by her, but they also see her as a tool.

Her arc is spectacular, and, like most JRPGs, the solution is friends. As a writer, though, I’ve grown less sensitive to the same kinda of stories, especially in games, and to me, what’s important is not whether your message is new, or even if the story beats aren’t familiar, it’s how you write characters and how you take them to where they need to be taken to. The path that Velvet goes on to see her friends clearly as they are is so great and so fulfilling, and so clear and beautiful, and in tandem, Laphicet’s arc and growth is so good. Ugh! I cried folks, I really did. This entire story had me in chains the whole time, and the ending was truly something else, and still has me thinking about it with a massive amount of emotion. I don’t think I’ll ever forget about Velvet Crowe. She’s up there with Guts and Maka Albarn as characters I will cherish forever.

“Your despair… how is it gone?”

Now, the video game part of this game was, well, less spectacular than the story, relatively. The combat in this game is maybe my favorite of the ‘Tales’ games I’ve played. It replaces mana points with a stamina meter made up of five points that get spent during your moves. It, for me, led to a much fluid style of play. High-hit combos are pretty easy, but still fun to land, the system was never too convoluted to the point where I found myself struggling to execute something, or was ignoring entire mechanics because I felt there was no need. The thing was, there were moments where I felt like I could just kind of brute-force a lot of situations. While I think this could be chalked up to the game being well-balanced to the point where, without me ever needing to grind, and I was the level I should’ve been throughout the entire game, I did feel like there wasn’t a whole lot of struggle, or strategizing. I just mapped artes to my buttons well, used the mystic artes when I could, and made it through pretty unscathed.

The struggle in this game, really, is dungeon design. When it’s not boring, it’s annoying, and the fucking two-hour-long final dungeon was plenty more enough for me! The dungeon “puzzles” basically come down to you walking from end-to-end hitting the right switches. I feel like, at least in exploration-rewarding JRPGs with encounters like this, the fun of dungeons can just be figuring out where to go. The final dungeon being this big fucking thing that was so annoying to navigate because of how the in-game map presents itself just drove me crazy, I cannot stress this enough. I detest the idea that the final boss needs this kind of carpet laid out for them, that you need to go through one final challenge leading up to the final battle. Buddy, the entire game was the lead up! Having already stayed up a couple of hours extra to finish the job, only to go to the location where I expected to fight the final boss and see a teleporter that took me to this huge complex with orbs and switches and bridges and doors and switches and warps and the most annoying monsters ever!!! It was a long night.

Though, the dungeons were my only gripe, and the very last one was the only one that was long enough to be a drag, to be fair. This is definitely my favorite tale that the ‘Tales’ series has ever told, though the video game itself didn’t exactly stand out next to other installments that I’ve completed.