NIS America has announced that they are planning on releasing Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony in North America on September 26th and September 29th in Europe for both the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. When released the game will support both English and Japanese voice tracks as well as English and French subtitles. There will also be both a standard version of the game available as well as a special limited edition version.
Set in a “psycho-cool” environment, a new cast of 16 characters find themselves kidnapped and imprisoned in a school. Inside, some will kill, some will die, and some will be punished. Reimagine what you thought high-stakes, fast-paced investigation was as you investigate twisted murder cases and condemn your new friends to death.
After finding the remains of a base plus an AI unit that is willing to fill them in on what they have missed, the crew learns that the Arc is now the base of an overwhelming foe by the name of Atriox. Once a member of the Covenant war force Atriox led a rebellion and established his own force known as the Banished. The Banished were such a powerful force that, as described in a cutscene, the Covenant at the height of their power could do little to touch his forces.
This is primarily due to the fact that story elements only really appear between missions and while there a number of great speeches and outstanding looking moments throughout the story that will keep players hooked to see what will happen next the actual writing is fairly simplistic in nature and might leave some fans disappointed. It also doesn’t help that while twelve story missions does feel like a satisfying number considering the amount of optional objectives and skulls you can unlock to increase the challenge, the ability to see the Banished’s story in some form would have been a boon to the game.
When commanding units they will move with the press of an X button and will immediately begin to attack any enemies that are within range. Certain units will have special Y abilities that may have to be researched beforehand at base but these abilities work on small cooldowns and consist of everything from throwing grenades, firing a gauss cannon, and more. The actual units come in quite a few varieties, especially outside of story mode where both sides of the conflict can be controlled, but each unit breaks down into a triangle formation of strengths and weaknesses such as vehicles being weak to air support and infantry being weak to vehicles.
Most units in the game require some of these resources and doing things such as researching upgrades for your soldiers, upgrading the base or a unit, and even building defensive turrets will rely on resource management. This can be especially true when it comes to troops as players will usually be limited to 80 at a time with some special types costing far more than a simple unit of marines/grunts. Taking part in combat players will also acquire leader points that can be used to unlock leader specific abilities that range from being able to call in healing drones, an airstrike, specialized units, and more at the cost of resources and can occasionally turn the tide of a pitched battle though you will want to use these cautiously as they also feature long cooldown timers.
The real standout mode in this section comes in the form of Blitz mode. Unlike the other modes players are not tasked with managing a base of any kind but instead use a hand of cards that can be built for all of the commanders available in the game. These cards require supplies to summon and can instantly warp units or trigger leader powers wherever the player is targeting that isn’t limited by the “fog of war.” This is a quick paced game mode that tasks players with holding control points and is a blast to play with friends or even against the AI in what turns into a horde type of mode.
The soundtrack features plenty of great musical tracks that fit with what fans expect from the Halo series and the voice work is also managed nicely. This is even true when it comes to ordering troops around as there is enough variety to their command lines to prevent them from sounding repetitive unless you choose to spam orders in quick fashion.
Infected and transformed partially into a demon, Velvet is locked away in a prison to keep her away from the rest of society. After being imprisoned for years, Velvet manages to escape with only one thing on her mind, bloody revenge against the man responsible for her tragic loss and anyone else who gets in her way. Seeing an anti-hero as the main character is nothing new for the genre but is something fresh for the Tales series.
Speaking of the rest of Velvet’s group, they are almost entirely made up of other misfits and miscreants who join with her. This includes a man also infected by the demon plague who is eager to slay his elder brother, a carefree sorceress, an old pirate captain seeking his missing captain, as well as a few more innocent members of the party in the form of a younger child and an exorcist named Eleanor. Eleanor works as something of a foil against Velvet as she offers one of the most virtuous viewpoints in the party often placing her at odds with the rest of her group.
While the story does take a bit to get going, in fact far longer than past Tales titles, Tales of Berseria’s darker tone and vengeance-fueled lead character help create a memorable storyline that is hard to walk away from. Combine that with its colorful cast of party members that are all given time to shine and plenty of development, players will walk away from this title remembering them for quite some time, something that I haven’t been able to easily say since Vesperia was released years ago.
The Soul Gauge will feel familiar for fans but does have limitations and perks. Any skills utilized will require a certain amount of souls but players will also have the ability to steal souls from their opponents by knocking them out or stunning them, allowing players to mix up their move sets, with custom made combinations, in an effort to work in some status-effects to keep the flow of combat moving smoothly. The counter here is that those who choose to spam will find that their soul gauge will drain too quickly and an empty gauge allows for your attacks to be blocked easily and enemies able to steal back their souls.
Unfortunately outside of combat players will find that Tales of Berseria is lacking in quite a few ways as most of the areas you will explore are incredible simplistic. Not only are the various landscapes the most generic styles that you’ll find in a JRPG, even the dungeons are uninspiring. Most simply consist of basic corridors with simplistic puzzles that often feel like nothing more than busywork to help pad out the time. This is especially true when some dungeons require backtracking and while players can eventually obtain a faster travel method, it does little to really help.
As far as the soundtrack is concerned, the game features some great background music as well as the option to choose between both the English and Japanese voice track. While both serve as a great option, there are multiple times that the English subtitles do not match the actual English dialogue, meaning that the localization text tends to either be incredibly stilted or, in rare cases, barely comprehensible so to avoid this type of confusion the English voice track results in being the best option.