I believe it took me approximately nine months overall to finish Tales of Berseria. As such, what I remember of it is kind of smeared across a very long time, but I'll do my best to recollect it.
Tales of Berseria is the latest in the series of Tales games that has spanned 16 games since 1995. As most have not been available on PC (until the rather recent ports) I have only played the previous installment, Tales of Zestiria, and thus lack a good comparison point. Still, I can offer my thoughts on the game as something separate, and perhaps that's a useful viewpoint as well.
Tales of Berseria is a JRPG, and I've had a bad history with such games. They tend to have a massive focus on story, often spending more time on dialogue and cutscenes than gameplay. There is of course the story versus gameplay perspective to consider, where if one is better, you dislike having to do the other. And the final frequent issue of JRPGs is the needlessly complicated game mechanics, which devolve to some small subset of mechanics that turn out to be an optimal solution, leaving you with both a steep learning curve and a lot of unused portions of gameplay. To my dismay, Tales of Berseria is not an exception, not really at least.
To get the comparison out of the way, the previous game, Zestiria definitely had it worse. While it's fundamentally the same, with the gameplay consisting of running around a somewhat open world, entering battles, attacking the enemies until their HP finally drops to zero, leveling up, upgrading your gear, and being interrupted with neverending dialogue and cutscenes at every possible moment, Berseria did it better in pretty much all regards. A better skill system, a simplified (but no less useful) gear progression system, better characters, and a better story, to name a few.
The story was definitely the better half of this game, and what kept me playing. While the gameplay wasn't bad initially, it simply grew stale over time, as I figured out the optimal patterns by which to fight, and combat just became an obstacle. However, allow me to praise the combat for how effective and dynamic it looked. While it could have definitely been better mechanically, it was quite the eye candy.
The reason this game took nine months for me (aside from having a lot to do IRL) is that it took a grand total of 85 hours to beat. While I'm generally all for having longer games and more playtime, the problem here was that what made up the majority of that time were not the good parts of the game. I feel there was only enough story and "combat enjoyment" for maybe 40 hours, and that would have been enough and made for a better game. Condense the story, condense the fights, leave the player with a higher enjoyment per hour, which is what often really matters these days. Past about 50 hours, I was so tired of slogging through the game I considered quitting. The only thing that stopped me was that the game was enjoyable in all aspects at first, and by the time I had gotten to the point I didn't want to play anymore, I kept going just because I was invested in the story.
In conclusion - a good story with mediocre gameplay that drags on for far too long. If JRPGs in general are your cup of tea, then this might be quite enjoyable. All things considered, I would have to say I recommend it, but do be warned that it will take an eternity to complete. Tales of Berseria also earns a spot on the list of the best RPGs I've played, but rather barely. I guess you could say it's on the side of "good", rather than "the best", and might fall out someday. Still, I will await the next installment, and if it's as much of an improvement as Berseria was over Zestiria, I hope I'll be glad to play it.
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