A short demo of the game for Playstation 4 was available for me to play. The demo took place in a beach area, where I was free to roam around and kill monsters. My party consisted of six characters: Eleanor, Eizen, Velvet, Laphicet, Rokurou and magilou. Each of the characters had their own unique special abilities and skills. Visually the game hasn’t changed much since Zesteria and as far as I am concerned the game is running completely in-engine. The beautiful anime style cutscene skits are back and chock full of great high quality voice acting.

The new combat system in Tales of Berseria is called the “Liberation LMBS,” due to the amazing amount of customization it offers players this time around. You can have four characters participate in battle and the remaining two are able to switch out at any time. Players will only directly control a single character in real time combat while the rest are controlled via AI. The combat system has been known for making customizable combos and chaining them together, and this is where the liberation system comes into play. Each character has four combo tiers that can be assigned. You can assign an attack to each face button and do a combo with any four-button input resulting in endless possibilities for combos.

But things go deeper. Each character has their own Soul Gauge, which will deplete when attack in combat, but will refill when an enemy falls, or over time. When your Soul Gauge is filled with three or more marks (out of a possible five), the character can use a special powerful Soul Blast ability. Each characters Soul Blast is different and can range from offensive attacks or defense abilities. You can use Soul Blasts as often as you want, although you will want to monitor your Soul Gauge during the tougher battles so you don’t use it recklessly. Combat is and fluid and I was easily acclimated to this new battle system. Switching characters on the fly was very simple and I had a blast trying to come up with different combos for each character.

Tales of Berseria launches in Japan August 18, 2016, and is currently scheduled for “early 2017” North American and European releases. If you are a fan of tales or just looking for a JRPG to lose yourself in definitely check this one out.