YMMV / Tales of Zestiria

Alternative Character Interpretation | And The Fandom Rejoiced | Awesome Bosses | Broken Base | Complete Monster | Die For Our Ship | Game Breaker | Moral Event Horizon | Narm | Player Punch | Rescued From The Scrappy Heap | Scrappy Mechanic | That One Achievement | That One Attack | That One Boss | That One Level | That One Sidequest | The Scrappy | The Woobie

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Main Game and Anime

• Angst? What Angst?: Sorey and Mikleo seem to be pretty okay with the knowledge that they're both from the doomed town of Camlann, with Mikleo in particular not having much focus on the reveal that he was the human baby murdered by his uncle Michael, with his sacrifice cursing Heldalf into becoming the Lord of Calamity and indirectly causing the Age of Chaos. The anime manages to make this even more egregious, as Sorey and Lailah are the only ones who learn of what happened in Camlann, and not only do neither of them react to Mikleo's reveal, they don't even have time to tell him about it.
• Anticlimax Boss: The final form of Heldalf, where he fuses of Maotelus, is laughably easy compared to the form before. In his normal form Heldalf was a Lightning Bruiser who could tear through a character quickly and had several dangerous attacks, and his Mystic Arte was a One-Hit KO. However, his final form is a giant immovable hitbox that only has a few attacks, none of which are super strong and dangerous. Making this worse is that it's entirely possible to hide right next to his arms or far enough back and completely avoid all of his attacks. While he can cast Indignation to instantly kill the party, this arte has a long chanting time and doesn't benefit from Seraphic Artes' usual advantage over Hidden Artes, making it a simple DPS check for the player. Thankfully the Duel Boss against him with Sorey made up for it, though that one automatically ends once Sorey activates his Mystic Arte, regardless of Heldalf's remaining HP.
• Ass Pull: In the Alisha DLC Lunarre is revealed to somehow be alive, albeit wounded, and plotting to kill Sorey. The problem with this is that the last time Lunarre was on screen, he had just been defeated by the party and was being purified only to blow himself up in defiance of Rose. It's never explained how he could still be alive after, and because the characters don't learn he survived, its never explained how.
• Breather Level:
  • If you do the Earth Shrine after the Water Shrine then then you'll be pleased by how easy it is by comparison. The boss is easy and the gimmick of tracking him down is easy to do. The layout might take a moment to figure out but once you do the dungeon is very easy, requiring you to simply destroy some boxes to lower walls. The dungeon itself has a comedic tone to it save for when you beat the Minotaur.
  • The tests of spirit in the water and earth shrines are both fairly simple and straightforward compared to the trial at the fire shrine, where Sorey was given a flaming sword and told to use it to brand either Lailah or himself.
• Cargo Ship: Sorey/Ruins, Sorey/Celestial Record, or Sorey/Goblin Cart are pretty accepted among the fandom. Well enough that there are affectionate memes on them.
• Common Knowledge: It's often posited that after the epilogue Sorey has become a seraph, but this is purely Fanon. Neither the game nor the manga address it, and the anime flat out shows that Sorey is still human when he armatizes with Mikleo.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Due to endgame and postgame enemies having massive amounts of elemental resistances, the E-Union 7 bonus skills tend to be favored by more dedicated players.
• Contested Sequel: Every fan is likely to have a strong opinion on Zestiria. Some love it, and those who do spend a great bit of time defending it from those who hate it or at the very least consider it inferior to previous Tales games due to many glitches and a very badly paced story that does little to improve on the Tales formula.
• Crazy Is Cool: Zaveid can be seen as this. He starts off every boss fight by shooting himself in the head as a means of powering up, has casually chased hellions as powerful as the Dullahan down the walls of a very tall tower, and is generally bombastic while doing it. The awesome part is that he is kicking ass while doing these acts and is implied to have been doing this shtick for a very long time.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The fairy/magic type enemies, They usually come in large group while casting a magic (Which deal a lot of damage no less) at the same time.
  • Undead Magicians can be this when you first encounter them. Not only do they cast (unsurprisingly), they also have a pillar-like arte that inflicts Slow, and are one of the first monsters to show up that can inflict status ailments frequently. Ailments are pretty deadly in the game due to that they block all healing on the affected character, but what makes it really bad in this case is that the party cannot buy Panacea Bottles yet and Edna almost definitely doesn't have Healing Circle, so the only way you can deal with it is to use Elixir Vitae (costs 1 BG to use), or stack Earth element-3 (which is pretty difficult at this stage of the game).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Mason, an Elysian villager that gets eaten by Lunarre at the beginning of the game. See Memetic Mutation below.
  • Sergei, for being a Badass Normal Reasonable Authority Figure that can parry what he can't see because he's just that good. He's also voiced by Xander Mobus in the dub.
  • To a degree Muse, Mikleo's mother likely due to her being The Woobie and fans wanting her to live happily with her son has her being featured in quite a bit of fanworks. In fact almost every High School AU or most other Alternate Universe fan fiction for Zestiria will feature her to some degree with varying levels of importance. She is almost always alive by the end of said fan fiction.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The Squires Pact causing Sorey to slowly go blind plot point was heavily criticized for being a poor excuse for why Alisha has to leave the party, since it felt like it came out of no where due to the overly subtle hints that were not given time to be explored, and only came across as existing to justify Rose's inclusion. It didn't help that the twist doesn't get any pay off either, which at least could have made it an interesting plot point to explore.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • The Tainted AU, or the AU exploring what would happen if Sorey succumbed to Malevolence ... even though it's typically used as an excuse for porn. It is sometimes done to Mikleo with most Tainted AU works would either have him dead or a dragon that sometimes is able to change between forms but it is very rare for this AU to feature other characters also corrupted. Though this AU often coincides with Rose being the Shepherd instead of Sorey.
  • What happens after the game specifically Sorey becoming a seraph and either trying to regain his memories or trying to adjust to a different world.
  • Sometimes you'd get fics of what would happen if Alisha played a more proactive role in the game's story. Though this has died off a bit with the anime portraying the concept with varying levels of success. The same happened to fics where Alisha armatizes as it happened to the same degree of success.
  • Although super rare a few fans have written in Sergei's brother, Boris trying to explore his personality.
• Friendly Fandoms: Tends to have this with Yuri!!! on Ice, and Seraph of the End as many Zestiria fans tend to be in those two fandoms, as all three have a male main lead that is Gay or at least perceived to be by a decent chunk of the fan base.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Sorey and Mikleo make a few literature and historical references throughout the game, such as to Julius Caesar and Ancient Rome.
  • The Arthurian references. They are everywhere, and they're not necessarily the obvious ones most people will know from cultural osmosis. Almost every location is named after something from the legends, and more pop up in random places. The forest right after leaving Elysia, for example, is named after Lancelot's sword. Or in Marlind (Merlin), you meet a woman carrying two books: "A History of Monmath Culture," and "The Works of Sir Jeffrey" - a reference to Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote one of the first "modern" versions of the King Arthur legend, the Historia Regum Britanniae.
  • And as an extension to the above, the Alisha DLC has some blatant references to The Lady of Shalott, about a princess of Arthurian legend Elaine of Astolat (referenced in the Stolat Mountains and the Elaine Ruins dungeons) who died of a curse and unrequited love for Lancelot. Except in Alisha's case, she overcomes her doom and finds purpose in herself rather than someone else.
  • Inside the Cambria Caverns, a fossil can be found that is described as some kind of strange shrimp. People versed in paleontology will quickly pick up that this is a reference to the Anomalocaris, a creature that lived in the Cambrian period that the caves get their name from, and whose name mean Abnormal Shrimp.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • In its native Japan, the game suffered from major backlash. In the West, it sold a ton of copies by JRPG standards on Steam alone (though, helped by the free preorder copies of Tales of Symphonia), and has an overall rating of Very Positive when it comes to Steam user reviews. While the game still gets its fair share of criticism in the West regarding plot and characters, it is nowhere near as harsh as the Japanese reaction was.
  • It's less love, and more hate less, but, as opposed to being The Scrappy in Japan, Rose is more of a Base-Breaking Character in Western territories.
  • A video as part of the 25th anniversary celebration of the series revealed the best selling Tales games in each region. Zestiria was revealed to be the best selling title in Europe.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The DLC skit where Sorey and Mikleo are discussing what to do with an apple gel they find in the toilet.
  Sorey: It seems like a real waste! A single gel can make the difference between life and death...
  Dezel: Don't even THINK of using that on me!
  • One of the more hilarious victory quotes involves Sorey being chastised by the ladies for not knowing what a barrette is. Specifically, Rose asks if Sorey was born in a barn and Edna wonders whether or not Sorey was living under a rock this whole time. However, it starts to become less funny once you find out about Sorey's backstory, what with being born in the Doomed Hometown of Camlann right before it was destroyed and living an isolated life with the seraphs for the majority of his life. If anything, Sorey has legitimate excuses for not being familiar with girls' hair ornaments.

• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • When asked if he could use the memory orbs to look at anything that occurred, Sorey answers that he would want to look at all of the history of the world. Mikleo comments that Sorey wouldn't live long enough for that to dream happen. Come the game's epilogue, and Sorey is heavily hinted to have become a seraph.
  • Compared to the game, the anime has plenty and makes it a perfect world. Rose isn't exactly given too much special treatment as a Squire and is shown to struggle with the Seraph stuff and becomes a very likable character with her own personal grudges, Alisha's development greatly expands upon her character, Maltran is one hundred percent behind her pupil's back, both Alisha and Rose do start with a rocky first meeting but both quickly grow to respect each other AND become best friends, Sorey does have the ability to purify dragons, and for once the whole important cast gets to be together unlike being arbitrarily separated by plot points especially in regards to Alisha who does join the journey for the final fight. And Alisha gets two loyal soldiers both of them badass on their own.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The inclusion of the God Eater DLC in the Western version becomes this after it was revealed Robbie Daymond, who plays Sorey, would play the protagonist of the God Eater anime, Lenka.
  • In the game, the seraphim take time bonding with Alisha but are quick to warm up to Rose. In the anime, they do like Alisha quickly, but they are too wary of Rose for being what she is. It doesn't help she had Dezel following her around.
• Ho Yay: So much so that the game has gotten its own page.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Sort of... Soymilk is a popular name for Sorey/Mikleo, though it likely was derived from a misreading of SorMik.
• I Knew It!: Honestly, who didn't see Maltran being evil coming a mile off?
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • One of the game's main criticisms. Most Tales games can be completed in fifty to sixty hours depending on how completionist the player is. Zestiria can be completed in about forty hours by a completionist player. This makes the game's pace feel very rushed overall, and many players feel that those extra ten-twenty hours could have gone a long way in bringing it up to the same level as other games in the series in terms of world-building, character development, and deconstructions. Even compared to Berseria, its script is two-thirds the length of the prequel.
  • It and Berseria also lack the usual end-of-act/arc markers and fakeout ending that most-if-not-all past Tales games have had, which makes the pair feel shorter. Most games have a kind of three-arc structure with clear ends and beginnings, but with Zestiria and Berseria, the end goal and final boss are laid out from very early on. Skits are also only available in certain spots (on save spots, resting at inns, or looking at examination points), meaning you likely skipped more than you saw.
• LGBT Fanbase: The game has a pretty decent sized LGBT fanbase likely due to the fact of Sorey having a lack of interest in girls and seemingly attracted to Mikleo and Rose also seemingly interested in men and women with the latter being treated much less harshly among Lesbians and Bi/Pan women as opposed to the rest of the fandom where she is a Base-Breaking Character at best and The Scrappy at worst. Also quite a bit of LGBT fans tend to have a strong preference for shipping both Sorey/Mikleo and Rose/Alisha or Rose and Alisha with any girl.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Of the Armatus forms, Wind Armatus is considered the most unwieldy. Two of its three combo starters are Neutral elemental, which takes away a major advantage of using Armatization in the first place. Surprisingly few of its Hidden Artes are pure wind elemental, which means most of them won't work well with Vohrtex bonus skill. Most of the third-action Hidden Artes make the user airborne, making it hard to connect these actions to anything else because the combo starters and spells don't have aerial-enabled animations. The spells all have either fairly short range or overly specific hitboxes, and although Cloudburst has decent AOE, it still forces the user to jump in the air and descend, making it hard to follow up with anything else. Overall, this form feels like an incompletely developed aerial fighter.
• Magnificent Bitch: General Maltran, the Blue Valkyrie, succeeded a family of knights and molded herself into the pinnacle of knighthood, elegance, and spearmanship. When attacked by jealous fellow countrymen turned into hellion, Maltran lost her faith in humanity and pledged allegiance to Heldalf, becoming a hellion herself strong enough to retain her sense of self. Taking up an apprentice in Princess Alisha Diphda, Maltran used and manipulated her as a means of stoking the flames of war between the Hyland Kingdom and the Rolance Empire. An esteemed military advisor, she also incited actions within the Hyland council to push the war into an earlier start. Nihilistic yet manipulative, Maltran helped brew the malevolence her master needed, impaling herself upon Alisha's lance and going out on her own terms without a shred of regret.
• Memetic Mutation: "He ate Mason!"^Explanation The people in Elysia, in the anime special only, made a firework party to Alisha right after Mason was killed and eaten by Lunarre. It looked like nobody remembered him, and thus this meme was created.
  • Alisha costs 1300 yen.^Explanation Since Alisha leaves the party before halfway the game and never returns, Namco Bandai offered a post-story episode of her as DLC. The fanbase immediately took that as "playing Alisha again" by paying for her (story).
  • Alisha with E-rank Luck. ^Explanation Alisha uses a lance and a a whole bunch of crap happens to her throughout the story. The anime cut-scenes were animated by ufotable, who are most well-known for their Nasuverse adaptations in which Lancers have godawful luck and bad things always happen to these characters. This meme picked up even more steam after The X anime adaptation of Zestiria began as it attracted a lot of viewers who weren't even fans of the Tales franchise but had seen ufotable's most famous anime and related it to the Lancers in those series.
  • Mikleo is the heroine.^Explanation Since neither Rose or Alisha are the main heroine, people have instead labeled Mikleo the main heroine thanks to the Ship Tease he gets with Sorey, Interviews with the staff, and his spot on the game's cover, plus the advertisements for the game frequently putting him in that position.
  • Many have noticed that Zaveid using his Siegfried gun to power himself up resembles the Evoker from the Persona 3 series. Thus, it's not uncommon to see people talk about Zaveid and his "inability to summon a Persona".
  • "Is that a monolith!?!"^Explanation Sorey's excitement over seeing monoliths and ruins has earned love from the fandom.
  • "Zaveid, put on a shirt."
  • Mikleo being compared to or depicted with Alola Vulpix and Ninetales popped up soon after the Pokemon were announced with a few people joking with "Welp, Mikleo's a Pokemon now."
  • Mikleo is a grill! ^Explanation  This is a typo from one of the many fights on whether or not Sorey is gay on a gaming forum where sormik fans, primarily on tumblr, took to making crappy photoshop pics of Sorey falling in love with a grill with anime eyes drawn on it
• Moe: One thing that most players can agree on is that Sorey is absolutely adorable.
  • Lailah has her moments as well, thanks to her cheerful and sometimes flighty personality
• One True Pairing: Sorey/Mikleo is the most popular ship for the game by far, to the point that on Archive of Our Own, it makes up 67% of all fanwork for Zestiria as of February 2022, and by consequence is the most tagged ship in the entire franchise nearly three times over due to Zestiria being the most represented game on the site.^Reasoning Archive Of Our Own didn't break into mainstream fandom until around 2014, but the preceding Xillia games localized during that time were PS3-exclusive, making them much less accessible than Zestiria was with its PC release. This, combined with the underrepresentation of older Tales titles (even those that have seen Western release) due to their age, and the Archive's overall preference for Slash Fic, explains Zestiria's sheer prevalence.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • Tales games have always been fairly popular with both genders, but the manga adaptations have always been in shounen magazines. In comparison, Zestiria's official manga is published in Comic Zero Sum, a josei^Explanation Manga geared towards older women. magazine.
  • The anime has a big chunk of its audience being people who've never played a Tales games before, but are watching the show solely because of ufotable's reputation, especially when it comes to adapting fantasy action series.
• Polished Port: The PS4 and PC versions cut out the infamous slowdown issues (mostly because of superior tech to its native PS3 hardware). On top of that, while it's locked to 30 FPS (which was fixed by a badass group of modders with this fix), the PC version promises greater draw distances than the PS4 version (as well as support for 4K resolutions).
• Portmanteau Couple Name
  • Sorey/Mikleo: Sormik, Suremiku, Mikurey
  • Rose/Dezel: Rozel, Dezerose
  • Rose/Alisha: Rosali, Rolisha
  • Sorey/Alisha: Sorali
  • Zaveid/Lailah: Laivied
• Scrappy Mechanic: In open areas, the battle camera is fine and works great. In enclosed spaces, it has a high chance of getting stuck on the geometry, which is probably why the game prefers to emphasize the open areas to begin with. Switching targets during this is likely to give you a headache with the camera jerking around so violently across every wall, and objects like trees or rocks also count; the most claustrophobic spaces will be the hardest to fight in, and a few boss fights happen to be in them. Don't even think that the local co-op camera will be one ounce better.
• Surprise Difficulty: You DO have to upgrade and play with your stats a lot in this game, so there's another level of thinking involved, removing the simplicity of an endless bash-and-go gameplay.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Maotelus. Set up and mentioned frequently as the Big Good, he's a no-show for 99% of the game. There're two characters in the game with any sort of information on him beyond "He's the Big Good": Lailah, who is bound by an oath to never speak of him, and Heldalf, the Big Bad. When he finally does put in an appearance, it's in the final boss battle, on Heldalf's side. No explanation is given for how Heldalf acquired his assistance, whether Maotelus is intentionally aiding him or was imprisoned or anything. Heldalf even manages to perform a pseudo-armatization with him which is also left unexplained. Berseria would fix this heavily, but within Zestiria itself, Maotelus is barely even a character due to how its handled.
  • As little information is present about Maotelus, his four compatriots, Musiphe, Amenoch, Hyanoa and Eumacia are even less discussed beyond having their servants give out the Armatized Mystic Artes. Like with Maotelus, Berseria would address this, but nothing in Zestiria does anything with them.
  • Mayvin is a recurring NPC who shares his fascination with ruins like Sorey. Later, it's revealed he's a badass immortal who is suppose to chronicle events without getting involved. He then acts as a mentor to Sorey in order to make him realize he will need to likely kill Heldalf in order to save the world, putting Sorey through the ringer to hammer this point in. Almost immediately after all of this is revealed, you fight him as a boss, and he dies with a very anticlimatic reason.
  • Much of Lailah's character revolves around her being a Secret-Keeper, and since the major twists aren't revealed until 75% of the game is completed, we don't get to explore the aspects of her relationship with Shepherd Michael. Also, many of her conversations involve her purposely diverting conversations to tangential threads, so she doesn't get as much characterization as the rest of cast. She's also the only party member without a subplot of any kind, and by the games end she gets the least development of the entire cast despite being one of the most important characters. Sadly she doesn't appear in Berseria, leaving her character underused and unexplained by the games end.
  • Lunarre ends up being the main antagonist of the Alisha DLC, but is relegated to being a Non-Action Big Bad because of his injuries from the main story. As a result, there's no conclusion to the conflict between him and the Shepherd's group, despite his potential to become the next Lord of Calamity. There is also further lost potential due to his evolving powers throughout the main story, since it would have been cool if he could unlock a One-Winged Angel form to serve as the final boss. The main story's stinger implies that he will at least fail to kill Mikleo and Sorey, but the player will never get to see the final conflict between him and the party.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Sorey learns that the only way to truly defeat Heldalf involves him using Siegfried to shoot the party Seraphim at Heldalf so they can sever the connection between Heldalf and Maotelus, and then perform a Mercy Kill on Heldalf. While hesitant, Sorey ultimately made up his mind and did so after he and Mikleo were forced to kill Zenrus/Gramps when Heldalf absorbed him. The game makes a point about how this will certainly kill the Seraphim as well, but they all agree to do it because its the right thing to do. The problem is that when Sorey kills Heldalf, the Seraphim are revealed to be alive and none of them are real affected by the outcome. To some, this ruined a otherwise noble sacrifice for both Sorey and the party as a whole, as well likeable, them all coming out perfectly fine ruins the emotional moments Sorey has leading up to it.
  • The game implies that something happened to Lunarre that made him become a Hellion before the events of the game, and that whatever it was, it was strongly linked to the Scattered Bones. However, the game never actually goes into why Lunarre fell out with them nor what made him a Hellion. The closest we get is him lashing out at Rose about being a liar of some kind, but the game never gives any insight into what he is talking about. Worse, there are some vague implications that he has a past connection to Dezel on account of looking like Dezel's deceased Seraph friend, setting Lunarre up as a character with a lot interesting connections to Rose. This could have been resolved when it was revealed that Lunarre somehow survived into Alisha's DLC, but the game never does anything about it save for implying Lunarre will become the new Big Bad, which doesn't amount to much when the player knows the heroes ultimately survive in the end.
  • The fact that Sorey and Mikleo are both from Camlann, with Mikleo not only having been human, but was outright murdered by his uncle Michael as a means to curse Heldalf to eternal solitude. Furthermore, that their adopted grandfather Zenrus basically decided their fates for them by raising them to be the Shepherd and a Sub Lord without considering the implications behind it or even giving them a say in this decision. You'd think that Sorey and Mikleo would have quite a bit of angst about these things, or even that the game would give them an entire arc dedicated to how they cope with these Earth-shattering revelations and have them go through some potentially amazing Character Development that would really flesh them out and make them more three-dimensional. But nope — the whole thing is treated as little more than a footnote, and Sorey and Mikleo barely react at all to it.
  • The game hammers home the point that Sorey cannot fall into Malevolence or else the Seraphim would be turned into Hellions as well, and it would likely spell the end of the world. Despite how much the game talks about the subject, and the Seraphim all work hard early on to help Sorey out, the plotline never goes anywhere, and Sorey is never pushed to the point of falling into Malevolence. While some of this is because, again, the Seraphim work to help him, Sorey doesn't ever come close to despair despite being mentioned as a potential risk multiple times, which contributes to why some feel he doesn't develop.
• Too Cool to Live: Dezel sacrifices himself. Depends on how you view the scene, it was all his fault to begin with.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Dezel routinely possesses Rose without her knowledge or consent while she's unconscious. The game treats this as a gesture of affection that Rose should be grateful for and none of the other party members think it's a good idea to tell Rose about what Dezel's been doing to her.

Anime-only

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Episodes 5 and 6 suddenly switch to the opening stages of the plot of Tales of Berseria. Velvet's story bears no direct influence on Zestiria's plot, and her plotline receives no closure in the anime.
• Complete Monster: Lord Bartlow of the Ladylake City Council pushes for war with the neighboring nation, Rolance, and tries to assassinate his princess, Alisha, when she advocates for peaceful resolution. With Alisha later sent away, Bartlow has his troops stationed to launch a full-scale assault on Rolance. Branding Alisha and her allies traitors when they stop his plot and killing many of her allies, Bartlow later crucifies her mentor in the hopes of luring out Alisha and her companions. When Alisha instead goes to the palace to warn her father of Bartlow's treachery, Bartlow arrives and mortally wounds the king while trying to kill her, then nonchalantly decides to pin the crime on Alisha.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • To those who felt Alisha was sidelined in the main game, she gets a bigger role in the anime, addressing the mundane threats in Glenwood alongside Rose instead of being relegated to sidequests after leaving the party in the game. She's even able to Armatize and directly aids in the final fight against Heldalf, as opposed to the game where she's largely Locked Out of the Loop on the game's events by Sorey and Rose.
  • In general the anime attempted this for Rose's entire character. For starters, the anime acknowledges the idea that Rose being an assassin isn't as noble as the game painted it, and she is shown being more troubled by her actions as one. The Seraphim are more cautious around her because she's an assassin, and she has to adjust to being able to Armatize alongside Alisha, unlike in the game where it is almost instant. While Rose is still polarizing, it at least made her more tolerable for some that the anime gave her flaws.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: It's a ufotable anime, so it's to be expected.

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