I don’t like Berseria’s Mystic arte system.

I’m at the end of the Palamides temple, and people are finally getting their level 2 mystic artes. I tried to execute them to no avail, and had to look up how to specifically activate them. Now understaning how it work, I have a lot of issues with this game’s battle system overall.

So Berseria introduces the Soul Gem feature, which is a lot like the CC/AC system from Graces and Xillia. It also has the BG sustem for mystic artes, a lot like Gesperia’s overlimit system but more like Grace’s Eleth mode at the same time.

In order to pull off a Lvl 2 MA, you need to combo an enemy with 8 actions or less. Keep in mind, you need at least 4 soul gems to even attempt this with Velvet, and you have to hope her therion mode doesn’t drop the combo randomly. But enemies can just break out at random, stun you, deplete your soul gems, and your fucked.

Or they can just block one of your actions and then you’re fucked.

Or they can force you to use BG early to gain a Soul Gem, but then say goodbye to your mystic artes.

Or you can easily lose count of your actions because the game is so chaotic it’s easy to lose track of where your character is and what action counts as theirs versus another party member’s.

This execution makes the game feel incredibly limited, unlike Graces, Xillia, or Vespria, I don’t feel rewarded for gaining my new super move, I feel like I’m being restricted into a hyper specific playstyle. In my multple attempts to do Velvet’s Annihilating Crash one time, I have met failure after failure.

I had a similar issue in Graces trying to do Sophie’s secret Ablaze mystic artes.

Is this a problem for anyone else playing Berseria? Because nothing in the game’s battle system makes this easy to understand or achieve.