Tales of Berseria Remastered for PS5 improves over the PS4 original in a few notable ways

When I first played Tales of Berseria on Steam almost a decade ago, I loved it enough to want to replay it on PS4. When I started playing it on PS4, I was immediately greeted with notifications blocking screenshots when I tried to use any sort of capture on the console. As someone who takes hundreds and sometimes even thousands of screenshots in long RPGs, this was disappointing. I played it for a few hours and thought it was a fantastic experience on base PS4. I didn't end up finishing that replay though.

When Tales of Berseria Remastered was announced, I knew what to expect when it comes to DLC and quality of life features, but I was curious to see if there would be any visual improvements or if capture would be allowed. I had access to a pre-release version of Tales of Berseria Remastered for this article and it is definitely an improvement over the PS4 release, but I'm not sure if it warrants a double dip for everyone.

Tales of Berseria Remastered PS5 vs PS4 improvements and visual upgrades

For some background, Tales of Berseria on PS4 ran with a 1080p and 60fps target. It had no PS4 Pro support and basically only saw some of the minor performance issues on base PS4 addressed when played on PS4 Pro. Even if you play it on PS5, it is a 1080p game. As for the game itself, it was one of the first two Tales of series games to get a PS4 version with it being built for PS3 in Japan. While the 1080p and 60fps target were welcome improvements on PS4, it suffered from poor draw distance and shimmering for shadows. It also didn't have good anti-aliasing in general and looked a bit raw. Barring those issues, it also blocked screenshots and video capture using the PS4 system capture functionality. 

Tales of Berseria Remastered on PS5 not only renders at a higher resolution with no performance issues, but it loads much faster across the board with some instances of loading on PS4 being replaced by just a fade in and out on PS5. Tales of Berseria Remastered itself also features many quality of life improvements and upgrades like being able to access the Grade Shop in the start, the ability to automatically skip events you've seen, the ability to show a destination marker on the map, and also the ability to to immediately show all areas on the map including locations you haven't visited before. Tales of Berseria Remastered on PS5 doesn't have good anti-aliasing either, but it looks a lot better than the PS4 version when I play them side by side on my 1440p monitor. 

Note: For the comparison below, I captured the Switch Japanese eShop release on my Switch 2, the PS5 Tales of Berseria Remastered, and the PS4 original game played on my PS5. All capture was done with a 4K capture device and cropped to show differences across platforms. 

Tales of Berseria Remastered PS5 vs Switch 2

Tales of Berseria Remastered is a Switch 1 game, but I know many were curious if it delivers a 60fps experience or has any major improvement when played on Switch 2. It unfortunately does not. I would not recommend the Switch version right now. The PS5 version is a much better experience in every way. The Switch version is even capped to 30fps in its menus and the animation culling happens closer to the player at a lower frame rate compared to PS5. Tales of Berseria Remastered was really the game Bandai Namco Entertainment should have released for Switch 2 as well as Switch 2. If you want to play Tales of Berseria Remastered on the go, I'd recommend waiting to see how the Steam version plays. The original game was already almost perfect on Steam Deck. Hopefully Tales of Berseria Remastered's PC port is better and it is perfect out of the box. If I get access to it and have time, I will write about how it scales on PC handhelds.

Tales of Berseria Remastered PS5 vs Switch 1, Switch 2, and PS4 load times

For testing load times, I installed Tales of Berseria Remastered for PS5 on the PS5 internal storage, the Japanese eShop Switch release I bought on the Switch 2 internal storage and the SD card on my Switch OLED, and I had the PS4 original game installed to the external hard drive on my PS5. I mashed confirm to speed up the process. The PS5 is by far the fastest of the lot with some many in-game loads just being a fade in and out. The results below are in seconds:

If you've never played Tales of Berseria before, Tales of Berseria Remastered is an easy recommendation for a fantastic Tales of game at a budget price. If you already played it on PS4, I would recommend getting Tales of Berseria Remastered for revisiting it. The inclusion of almost all the original game's DLC makes it a good deal at its asking price, and I very much welcome being able to actually take screenshots and video clips on the console now. The quality of life additions are good, but not game-changing.