This review covers both seasons though I will count my pseudoreview for the first season herehttps://joyousmenma93.livejournal.com/326778.html as well which I wont post here for the sake of brevity. I was first introduced to the world of Tales of Zestiria through the anime when I kept seeing commercials for it on Daisuki.net whenever I watched episodes of Mama Is a Fourth Grader. Since that anime series was testing my patience and getting more and more aggravating I place the blame entirely on Izumi Shinohara for being such a terrible character I decided to kick that show to the curb after ten episodes and watch Zestiria The X hoping itd be better. The first half of the series was definitely good. Although I didnt play the game at the time As of this writing I have I was impressed with what I saw. The characters while not the most developed had really subtle aspects about them that really go against their archetypes and had more personality than just being the generic hero the tsundere the peppy girl etc. The storyline was very interesting and while Im not a fan of politics in anything the political tensions here were easy to understand. The storyline was pretty basic but it was still very compelling and intense. The battles were epic but they knew not to go too over the top. The animation was stellar the character designs are great Even if some of the characters outfits are plain stupid. Alisha and Symmone anyone? the music is great and from what I heard the anime tried to go in a different direction from the game since the game has a lot of flaws and managed to improve on things that the game was criticized for which I wrote about in my original review for it. Oh how I wish I could sing these praises for the rest of the anime. Unfortunately the good parts were only in the first season. The second season...really didnt fare well. Derailing is a big word. However now that I have more knowledge of the game thats exactly what the anime does after the end of the first season. Im seriously not kidding. Few anime Ive seen have ever gone from good to so utterly messed up in a short amount of time. Trust me I want to like Zestirias anime adaptation. I really do because both season do have good qualities about them though there are far less of them in the second season. However aside from the animation the music and some occasional cute scenes I honestly cant bring myself to say anything positive about the completely unbalanced and complicated mess that the show devolves into. The storyline is where the second season really suffers because not only does it completely deviate from the game in ways that make absolutely no sense at all it could have been written well if the execution hadnt been so ridiculously stupid. By ridiculously stupid I mean that many of the games rules such as dragons being unable to be purified even by the Shepherd are completely ignored for the sake of simplifying things. Because of this while I generally try to avoid talking about spoilers in my reviews I cannot avoid doing so here as I simply must talk about them in order to convey just how badly the anime messed up in terms of adapting the game for the screen. They will be hidden though. In doing so the characters are either pushed into the background not able to do much of anything or are wildly inconsistent. Rose cant seem to decide whether she wants to be an assassin or not even though shes lived among assassins her whole life. Alisha is given far too much spotlight. Now dont get me wrong I like Alisha. I really do. Shes a good character. However I think the anime creators shot themselves in the foot with giving her so much spotlight. By giving Alisha so much screentime they wound up giving the other characters the shaft and not allowing them to shine especially Sorey whos THE FUCKING MAIN CHARACTER. Lunarre is just as pointless as ever still having zero purpose other than to eat Mason and give the characters a hard time. And dont even get me started on how they completely butchered Symmone and Mayvin. For the record though Id still watch Alisha over someone like Tagiru from Digimon Xros Wars 2 or Shinji/Paul from Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. At least Alisha is NICE and ISNT a raging abhorrent dickhole However personally I think Zestiria The Xs biggest flaw is the fact that it tried to shoehorn in Berseria into its plot. Because this is Zestiria NOT Berseria. Yes Berseria is the prequel and thats fine. But the creators could have made more of an effort to integrate its lore into Zestirias storyline more gracefully than it tried to do here. One of the common complaints against Zestirias game is that it didnt do enough worldbuilding and many of the games lore was left unexplored which Berseria expanded upon without feeling like you needed to play Zestiria in order to understand it. Both Zestiria and Berseria even with their connections were able to stand on their own as individual games and didnt need to suck on each others dicks in order to stand out. The anime tried to mash them together and wound up adding too many ingredients therefore overcomplicating the dish. This is clearly a case of too many chefs spoil the soup. The fact that the series was restricted to two 1113 episode seasons only amplifies these flaws even more in that theres so little balance that the pacing is completely shot and the creators clearly threw in stuff just for the sake of throwing stuff into the anime which doesnt work. Tales of Zestiria the X is a prime example of how execution can either make or break a show. The reason people arent too fond of Sailor Moon Crystal is that it stays TOO close to the source material not letting itself breathe or try anything new. Zestiria The X has the opposite problem where it completely deviates from the game and makes changes that make no sense. I get it adaptations have to make changes but those changes also have to make sense not only in the context of the story but in the format it takes as well. Obviously video games are no stranger to adaptations especially bad adaptations. But there are genuinely good adaptations of media out there: The liveaction Sailor Moon series did its own thing while improving on the flaws of the original even if it did have its own flaws but the positives more than made up for it. The manga adaptation of Zestiria from what I hear tells the story MUCH better and with it having come out I intend to see for myself. I really dont want to complain about Zestiria The X. I really dont. Honestly if you tried to make me choose between this and something like Breadwinners or Kanokon Id gladly take Zesty The X any day. However its many flaws cannot be ignored and had it been given more episodes more leeway and had more competent staff behind it the anime could have been genuinely good. Its a shame. I will say this though: Its still far better than every single ecchi anime that has plagued the anime industry over the past several decades and I still watch it sometimes.