Sword of the Berserk: Guts Rage
Sega Saturn
This is a game that I bought over 15 years ago, despite not knowing anything of what it was about. I just so happened to see this game in a bargain bin at a used video game store. It was dirt cheap, like in the 3 or 4 dollar range. My Dreamcast collection was looking sad at the time, so I bought the game for shits and giggles.
I played it and had a decent time with the game. But it was short and I was through with it in one night. It didn't leave a big impression on me. Looking back, all I can remember about it is that there were lengthy cutscenes and a lot of sword slashing battles. The game got shelved, and little did I know it would be 15 years before I ever picked the game up to play it again.
A lot has changed in my life since I last played this game. Back in 2000 or 2001 I was living with my parents. Now in 2016 I am married and on my own. Older and wiser.
My standards apparently have raised because while I recall liking this title back in the day, I didn't enjoy it playing it again 15 years later. The game really hasn't aged well. Graphically, it looks fine. Yeah this is an early Dreamcast title, but things don't look too awful. There are nice environments, detailed characters.
The voice acting is decent. I recognized several famous voices from other video games. For example - both Colonel Campbell and Liquid Snake are voices in the game. The music is fine. The sound effects are fine. Everything is fine yet unspectacular. Where the game stumbles in my estimation is in its gameplay.
This is a hack n slash title like God of War or Heavenly Sword. Normally I like these types of games, but Sword of the Berserk feels broken. There are no lock on attacks, so unless you are facing in the exact direction of your enemy, you will miss with your attack. This happens a LOT over the course of the game, and it is very annoying because it takes your character a second or two to recover from swinging his sword, and this leaves you vulnerable to attack.
Combat isn't terrible deep either. It is mainly just dodging enemy attacks and mashing the attack button over and over again. The game does give you items to use in combat. There are potions that restore your health, guns that do massive damage, and smoke bombs that cause moderate damage and help you break away from enemy attacks. One of the few bright spots in the game for me is the fact that you have a meter that fills up as you dole out damage. When the meter hits the top, you go into a rage where your attacks are extra powerful, and nothing the enemies can do will hurt you. When you think about games like God of War and Dante's Inferno that have this feature, it doesn't seem like anything too original. But when you realize that this game came out long before any of those titles, you realize that Sword of the Berserk is a little bit of a trend setter.
I mentioned that swordplay feels broken at times, and one area where it feels especially broken is in close quarters combat. Your character uses a big ass sword as his main weapon, however this sword hits the wall when you are fighting in close quarters. While your character recovers from the brief after shock of hitting the wall, again the game leaves you vulnerable to attack from your enemies. There are areas in the game where you must fight hordes of enemies in tight quarters, so this can be very, very annoying.
There isn't much variety in the gameplay. Most levels consist of big fights where you must destroy giant respawning swarms of enemies to move on. As I played the game, I learned that in some places you don't even have to kill all your enemies. You can just run to the end of the stage and move on to the next area without swinging your sword even once. Seeing as how there is no incentive to staying around and fighting the enemies (no experience points, weapon upgrades, etc) I ended up doing this quite often to save time.
At least boss battles are interesting. Each boss requires you to use different strategies and techniques to beat them. Some of these require a little trial and error, which I didn't mind. There is one boss in particular - this giant black dragon cat thing that is really, really difficult to beat. I wanted to chuck my controller at the wall several times while fighting this son of a bitch. Eventually I found the winning combination needed to beat him and move on, but it took quite some time.
Those are your three basic stages. Running from enemies, fighting swarms of them, and battling bosses. There are some quick time events thrown in to keep things interesting, but these are few and far between, and none of them are difficult. Towards the end of the game, there is a stage where you must run through a corridor while it collapses behind you, avoiding obstacles along the way. This is very frustrating to pass and feels poorly designed. If you run out of lives, you must fight the game's previous boss over again. This happened quite often to me. Once again, this game made me want to chuck my controller at the wall.
Speaking of poor design, the save system here is abysmal. The game saves automatically, but you really have to pay attention or you won't even notice it happening. And if you happen to turn off your game when it hasn't saved in a long time, you will find yourself having to play through old stages to make it back to where you left off. The game is about three hours long give or take, and it only saves about 3 or 4 times throughout the entire duration of the game. The worst thing in the world is dying during a boss battle and then having to replay long chunks of game to get you back to the boss fight.
The game is very story driven, and I find that I enjoyed the story more than I did the actual game. It's about a swordsman named Guts who is traveling with a magical fairy and a seemingly autistic woman. On their travels, they encounter a kingdom infested with a sickness that turns people into violent zombie like creatures. Guts is enlisted by a seriously evil dude who is in charge of the area to go retrieve an item which supposedly will eradicate the Mandragoran scourge. But in a twist surprising to no one, the evil dude wants the item for himself to turn himself into some kind of all powerful super being. At least, that's the basics I got out of the story. Some of the cutscenes are quite lengthy, and I found my attention drifting on more than one occasion.
As I said, the best part of the game is the story - and even the story isn't that great. I read after the fact that the game is based on a Japanese manga series, so it looks like this is just a small chapter out of the adventures of Guts and his traveling companions. Even though I wasn't that crazy about the story, I am sort of interested in checking out this manga now. Just out of curiosity.
I think it is a fair assessment to say that I got what I paid for with this game. It was a bargain bin title. I only paid 3 or 4 bucks for it. I don't think I expected it to be great when I bought it. And its not. Was it worth the money? Sure. I played through it twice. Put about 6 or 7 total hours into it.
I don't think I'll ever play this title again. In fact, I feel as if I am probably going to trade this game in now that I am done with it. Usually I like to hang on to my games when I finish them because I never know if I am going to feel the urge to play them again. But I just can't see myself ever wanting to play this again. I'm good with letting it go.
This is an occasionally fun, mostly sloppy and annoying game. I was able to derive a little bit of entertainment from the title, so it is not a complete failure. And I think back in 2000 or 2001 when I played this I enjoyed it and had a good time. So there's always that. But yeah, this game is not for me. At least not anymore.
Overall:
D
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