Tales of Zestiria the X anime review starts with the obvious truth that nobody wants to admit at first. Ufotable threw absolutely ridiculous amounts of money at this adaptation and you'll see exactly where every single yen went within the first five minutes. The animation quality is so high it makes other fantasy anime from the same year look like they were drawn in crayon. Every frame has this glowing painterly quality to it that shouldn't be possible for a weekly TV show. The water effects alone could carry a lesser show through twelve episodes. But they didn't just make it pretty in the first episode and then slack off like most studios do. They made it consistently pretty for twenty-five episodes straight. That's almost unheard of for a television production and it makes you mad because the story falls apart so badly in the second half that you're left wondering why they bothered.
The real problem is they spent all this budget on making Sorey's hair bounce perfectly while he runs through meadows but apparently forgot to hire writers who understood the source material beyond a surface level reading. By the time you reach the second season you'll be scratching your head wondering if the script writers played the same game you did or if they just read a plot summary on Wikipedia and called it a day. The changes aren't small adjustments for time constraints or budget reasons. They're massive lore-breaking decisions that directly contradict the rules established in the original game. Some people online will try to tell you the anime is better than the game. Those people are mostly right about the first season and completely wrong about the second half where it turns into fanfiction.
The Visuals Carry This Show Hard
Let's talk about the animation for a minute because it's literally the only thing everyone agrees on without argument. Ufotable has this reputation for making things look expensive and they absolutely didn't hold back here even for a second. The fight scenes use this blend of 2D characters and 3D backgrounds that shouldn't work on paper but looks incredible in motion. When Sorey armatizes with Lailah the fire effects look photorealistic. Not anime real but really like someone filmed a fire and put it into the show. You'll see sparks and embers that dance around the screen while he swings his burning sword through hellions. The camera moves during battles too. It swings around the characters in these wide arcs like you're watching a big budget movie instead of a TV series.
The landscapes are just as ridiculous and detailed. Elysia looks like a fairy tale come to life with all those floating islands and waterfalls catching the light. Rolance has these massive cathedral interiors with light streaming through stained glass windows that cast colored shadows on the floor. Every new location gets the VIP treatment with unique architecture and weather effects. Even the hellions look cool with their corrupted designs that mix animal parts with human shapes in gross ways. The CGI stands out sometimes when they show crowds of villagers in the background. Those models look weird and plastic compared to the hand-drawn main cast. But the dragons look amazing with every scale shining and reflecting light. When they roar you believe they're massive monsters that could crush buildings underfoot.
The opening themes absolutely slap too. Flow did the first one and it gets you pumped every single time without fail. The ending songs by fhana are these mellow atmospheric tracks that contrast with the action perfectly to give you breathing room between episodes. They reused a lot of the game soundtrack which was a smart move because Go Shiina's music was already perfect for this setting. You get those huge orchestral battle themes that make simple sword fights feel like they're deciding the fate of the world. The sound effects have weight to them. When Sorey hits something with his sword it sounds like metal hitting bone or stone. It doesn't have that hollow anime hit sound that plagues cheaper shows. Some folks on IMDb gave the animation a perfect ten and I can't argue with that score even if the plot doesn't deserve it.
When the Story Stops Making Sense
Season one starts out okay for the most part. It follows the game pretty closely for the first four episodes. Sorey meets Alisha in the ruins and she shows him the outside world. He becomes the Shepherd by pulling the sword from the rock. They travel to Ladylake and deal with the first major hellion. It's standard fantasy setup that works fine for establishing the world. Then episodes five and six hit you like a truck and everything goes sideways into confusion. Out of nowhere you get a two-episode flashback to Tales of Berseria. Velvet Crowe shows up with her demon arm and you're supposed to care about her revenge plot against Artorius. If you played Berseria this is cool fan service that ties the games together. If you didn't play it you're completely lost and confused about why the anime abandoned the main character for two weeks to focus on someone else.
This isn't clever world building or necessary backstory. It's a commercial that got wedged into the middle of the show to sell another game and it kills the momentum dead. The worst part is Velvet's story is darker and more interesting than Sorey's whole deal. You get this revenge tale full of blood and betrayal and morally gray choices. Then it cuts back to Sorey being nice to everyone and trying to make friends with the bad guys. It feels boring by comparison. People on Reddit have pointed out that those Berseria episodes are the best part of the series. That really says everything about how weak the main plot of Zestiria is when a two-episode ad for another game is the highlight of your show.
Season two is where the train really derails into fanfiction territory that ignores established rules. The anime tries to fix the game's ending but breaks everything else in the process to do it. In the original game you absolutely cannot purify a dragon once it's fully corrupted. Once a seraph turns into a dragon they're gone forever and it's tragic. The game hammers this home with multiple story beats about loss and sacrifice. The anime has Sorey purifying three different dragons like it's no big deal and requires no special effort or cost. This ruins the stakes completely. If he can fix everything with no consequences why were we ever worried about the dragons in the first place. The Pendrago arc replaces Cardinal Forton with a dead dragon as the source of the endless rain. In the game Forton was the source because she was corrupt and angry. The anime just makes up new rules that contradict the magic system as detailed in this breakdown.
Character Changes That Break the Lore
Alisha gets way more screen time in the anime compared to the game which is genuinely good and fixes a major complaint players had. In the game she leaves the party after the first major arc and you barely see her again until the ending. Here she sticks around and gets real development as a princess trying to hold onto her ideals in a world of dirty politics and war. She struggles with being a leader who believes in fairy tales and old legends in a cynical world. When she finally sees the seraphim for the first time it's a great emotional moment that hits hard. The problem is the anime lets her armatize with Sorey during battles later on. That shouldn't be possible according to the lore. Only squires can armatize with the Shepherd. Rose is explicitly the squire who made the contract. Alisha lost that connection when she stepped down. The anime just shrugs and says sure why not let's give the fans what they want. It's fanfiction level writing that ignores the magic system for cool visuals.
Sorey himself is boring and there's no nice way to say it without lying. He's a nice guy who wants humans and seraphim to get along and that's his entire personality for twenty-five episodes straight. He doesn't grow or change in meaningful ways. He starts the show wanting peace between the races and ends it wanting the exact same thing without any real development. The game had skits and side conversations that gave him more depth and quirks and humor. The anime cuts most of that to focus on the plot. He just wanders from place to place fixing problems with no real struggle or personal arc beyond deciding to sleep for a few hundred years at the end.
Rose is confusing too as a character. She's supposed to be this assassin who kills bad people to stop wars before they start. But the anime never explains her guild's rules clearly or why she picks certain targets. One minute she's killing dudes in dark alleys the next she's best friends with Alisha and giving up her whole lifestyle. The transition doesn't feel natural or earned. Dezel hangs around being edgy and whispering about revenge then dies without much impact on the story. Edna has this whole arc about her brother Eizen being a dragon that gets rushed through in two episodes without proper resolution. Lailah just explains the plot and makes fire puns about burning things which gets old fast. Mikleo spends the whole show saying Sorey's name and looking concerned while holding his spear and that's about it for his character.
The Malevolence Looks Cool At Least
The visualization of malevolence is one thing the anime gets right. In the show it's this purple black smoke that crawls up walls and corrupts people and seraphim alike. When someone gets possessed you see the smoke crawling into their eyes and mouth like a living thing. It's gross in a good way that sells the threat level. The hellions all look unique based on what emotion created them. Greedy people turn into these bloated frog-like things with gold embedded in their skin. Angry soldiers become wolf monsters with armor grafted to their bodies. The show gets creative with the designs even when the plot stops making sense around episode fifteen.
Zaveid shows up late in the season and he's supposed to be this flirty wind seraph who hunts dragons for revenge. In the game he has this whole tragic backstory about a woman he loved who died because of a dragon. The anime cuts most of that so he just seems like a weirdo who hits on women and shoots guns at monsters. He gets one cool fight scene against a dragon early on then does nothing useful for the rest of the series. Dezel gets more screen time but his whole deal with being a vengeful spirit who possesses Rose makes no sense in the anime version. They skip the explanation of how he died and why he's stuck with her.
The four shrine trials from the game get condensed into quick montages that last five minutes each. In the game you visit four elemental shrines to gain power and each one has a full dungeon and a boss fight. The anime rushes through these so fast you forget they happened. Sorey just shows up with new powers and you're supposed to assume he did something important off screen. It feels like checking boxes on a list instead of telling a compelling story with stakes.
Heldalf's backstory gets changed too and not for the better. In the game he was a general who ignored his family and got cursed with immortality after a previous Shepherd stabbed a baby he was holding. It's dark and weird and explains why he hates humans and seraphim both. The anime softens this and makes it about a failed experiment with Maotelus. It removes the personal tragedy and makes him a generic evil dude who wants chaos. It wastes what made him interesting in the source material.
The Finale Makes Weird Choices
The ending changes everything from the game in ways that divided the fanbase immediately upon airing. Sorey beats Heldalf but then decides to seal himself away to purify the world's malevolence from the inside. He goes to sleep for what might be centuries based on how much the world changes around him. Mikleo waits for him the whole time. The final scene shows them reuniting in the future with Sorey looking the same but Mikleo having grown and changed. It's bittersweet and some fans absolutely love it for the emotional payoff and subtext. Others hate that the anime spoiled Maotelus's identity early in the opening credits instead of saving it as a twist for the final episodes.
The Camlann flashbacks are handled differently too and not for the better. The anime sidelines Sorey and Mikleo during these important historical scenes about the previous Shepherd. It focuses on Michael and his mistakes. This makes Sorey feel less important to his own story. Like he's just repeating history instead of making his own path forward. The final battle has him armatizing with all four seraphim at once to become super powerful. That looks incredibly cool visually with all the elements mixing together into a rainbow knight form. But it's impossible according to the game mechanics where he can only fuse with one seraph at a time. The anime prioritizes looking awesome over making sense with established rules.
Is It Worth Watching
If you haven't played the Tales of Zestiria game this is a solid fantasy action show with great music and pretty pictures. You won't notice the lore breaks because you don't know the rules yet. You'll just see pretty magic effects and cool sword fights with dragons. The pacing drags in the middle episodes but the animation quality carries you through the boring parts. If you played the game you'll probably be frustrated by the arbitrary changes that don't improve anything. The anime changes character motivations for no clear reason. It removes the weight and tragedy of the dragon encounters by letting Sorey save them all with the power of friendship. It turns the Lord of Calamity into a less interesting villain with a weaker motivation that makes less sense.
Some people claim this adaptation fixes the game's story problems. I saw reviews on MyAnimeList where folks said it's the definitive version of the tale. They're mostly referring to Alisha getting more scenes and the ending being happier. That's fair enough if that's what you wanted from the story. But the cost is a second season that feels like it was written by someone who skimmed the wiki page for the game. The Berseria connections are forced in at weird moments. They don't add anything meaningful to Zestiria's plot. They just complicate things with backstory you don't need to understand the current conflict.
The English dub is solid though and worth mentioning. Robbie Daymond plays Sorey with this earnest energy that helps make the character more likable than he is on paper. The casting for the seraphim is good across the board with distinct voices for each element. You can tell the actors cared about their performances even when the script got weird and contradictory around episode twenty.
Tales of Zestiria the X anime review scores depend entirely on what you're looking for in an adaptation. If you want pretty pictures and don't care about staying faithful to the source material it's a solid seven out of ten experience that looks like a movie. If you care about the lore staying intact and making sense it's probably a four or five. Ufotable proved they can make anything look like a cinematic masterpiece regardless of the script quality. They also proved that pretty visuals alone can't fix a story that doesn't understand its own characters or rules. Watch it for the dragon fights and the pretty landscapes. Skip it if you want the real story with consistent internal logic. The game is cheaper now anyway and holds up better than you'd think.