Bandai Namco is gearing up to release more remasters in its cult Tales of Vesperia/Berseria/Arise/various-other-words series far more regularly after dipping its toes in the remastered waters with next month’s Tales of Graces f Remastered.
Tales of has been running for nearly three whole decades at this point, but the series’ whopping 17 mainline games are scattered across a bunch of different systems. The JRPG series might have started life on the SNES, though it soon spawned sequels as PS1 exclusives, Nintendo DS exclusives, and even a timed Xbox 360 exclusive – making a full replay of the entire series almost impossible without emulation or spending boatloads of cash on older hardware.
Publisher Bandai Namco has now embarked on a ‘Remastered Project’ to revive those older classics to modern systems – starting with Tales of Graces f Remastered coming on January 17, 2025 to PC, Nintendo Switch, Xboxes, and PlayStations – since next year marks the cult series’ milestone 30th anniversary.
We won’t need to wait too much longer before we see another older Tales game back from the dead, though, because in a recent livestream, series producer Yusuke Tomizawa said that Bandai Namco wants to “provide [remastered Tales of games] fairly consistently” and “intends to continue doing so as much as possible.” He also said he couldn’t say anymore than that since they’re still technically supposed to be promoting Tales of Grace f Remastered’s incoming launch.
Dipping back into the history books is a well-worn tactic to resuscitate older series. Resident Evil is bigger than ever after Capcom remade some fan-favorites in fancy fashion. Square Enix‘s decision to release almost every Final Fantasy on almost every system has worked wonders. Tales is definitely a much smaller series, but having all of them readily available would probably attract players who’ve been waiting for a proper binge, even if each entry is largely disconnected story-wise.
Elsewhere, Bamco announced that Tales of Berseria has sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide, in addition to the most recent Tales of Arise, which sold more than 3 million units earlier this year.
For now, check out the best JRPGs to lose hours to.