This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
I recently came into the possession of a plethora of Dreamcast games. Not quite in time for Dreamcastiversary, but hey, it’s Horror Week! So I figured now is the perfect time for a review of: "Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage"!
When I first saw Sword of the Berserk nearly ten years ago running on a TV at my local Gamestop (Funcoland at the time), I thought the game looked pretty badass. The game is based off of a manga, which I know absolutely nothing about. I’m sure I could’ve gandered at its wikipedia page, but that would have required effort. And reading. Two things I’m too cool for.
So I start up the game and a realization slaps me in the face like a drunken uncle; this game is fuckin’ goofy. What I saw ten years ago did not prepare me for the naked fairy-time that this game provides within the first five minutes. Luckily, though, as a huge Metal Gear fan my body has gradually developed a tolerance to “bat-shit insane” over the years.
The plot involves some nonsense about a screaming baby-plant that’s infecting the townsfolk with Las Plagas which is all explained to you in the beginning by some guy named “Balzac”(which is terribly mispronounced on at least one occasion in the game).
Your quest begins with Balzac sending you off to retrieve for him something from the forest in exchange for the magic potion that will cure Gatsu’s (I’m assuming) lover of her ADD, or whatever it is that her problem is. The game doesn’t really explain her relationship to Gatsu too well in the beginning, but you can basically think of her as the Dustin Hoffman to your Tom Cruise.
Also, her name is “Casca”, which sounds an awful lot like “Caca” if you ask me.
So Gatsu, Caca and Puck (the aforementioned naked fairy, who acts as the games neurotic comic relief) set off into the forest in search of Marcellus Wallace’s soul, or whatever it was that Balzac wanted from the forest corner store. They reach their destination, only to encounter a Nun that seems to have befriended the Las Plagas that you so kindly have been exterminating along your journey thus far.
The Nun proceeds to give a five minute speech on the true nature of the Las Plagas infectees: they may look like mutated hideous beasts on the outside, but they are vicious only when provoked and are all beautiful butterflies on the inside. She also goes into some babble about the nature of humans that I either can’t remember or just spaced out on.
In any case, I’m guessing her speech had the same effect on Gatsu as it did to me, because his reply was something to the effect of “Yeah, that’s great, but I don’t really give a shit. Give me what I came for and I won’t have to cut your head off too.”
This is where I realized that maybe Gatsu isn’t the brooding diaper-wearing baby I initially thought he was and that he is, in fact, kind of cool. Needless to say, the encounter ends in fire.
I won’t bother you with a full summary of the rest of the game but, in the end, it’s safe to say that Gatsu learns something about himself, murders a gigantic vegetable-baby and cuts the Balzac off of a four-headed plant monster.
The story may be crazier than an alcohol fueled Gary Busey-Nick Nolte joy ride, but in all fairness the cut-scenes are cut together wonderfully and the voice acting is splendidly done. I’m sure fans of the manga appreciated the care that was put into the narrative for this game. Technically, SOTB is still a visually impressive game, even by our photo-realistic tainted minds. The lip-synching feels a bit slow, but to have lips moving at all was quite a feat back at the turn of the century.
The core gameplay is satisfying enough, if a bit mindless. You’ll spend most of the game berserking around areas, swinging a big sword at whatever bad guys the game deems appropriate. It’s pretty standard fare for a game of the action adventure genre, although I’m not positive if anything here was considered “revolutionary” at the time it was released.
You have two attack buttons, a jump button, a block/dash button and the ability to put away your sword. As well as your standard-issue giant sword the game arms you with a crossbow, throwing knives and the ability to go in with fisticuffs. Of course there is a block button but it seemed rather unresponsive at the most inopportune times and when it did work only served to slow down the pace of the gameplay.
For my time with the game I ended up mashing different sequences of the two attack buttons with the sword. The whole game is basically variations of “A, A, B, A, A, B” and so on and so forth.
Lather, rinse, check hair in mirror, be mad that you’re balding, cry yourself to sleep, repeat is the standard fare here.
Except on occasion, you’re forced to wash your hair with your head inside of an elephant’s ass. You can do it if you try hard enough, but it’s counter-productive and you’re just going to end up hurting yourself.
See, someone over at YUKE’s (the developers) came up with the brilliant idea of making it so that whenever you swing your sword too close to walls, pillars or anything else in your path Gatsu reacts to this by bouncing back and momentarily becoming stunned. While this is a slightly amusing affect, the game seems to go to great length to put you in the smallest possible corridors with as many enemies as it can handle on screen.
The mechanic doesn’t break the game entirely; you can usually flee to an area with enough room for you to swing your manliness about as free as you please, but it’s certainly enough of an annoyance to garner serious criticism.
The game can be slightly unforgiving at times, but the only time I seriously considered giving up was during a sequence near the end that has you running away from what I can only assume are the limbs of some sort of strange tentacle monster as it breaks through castle walls in an attempt to skewer you.
The game uses a credit system, and you’re only allowed to die 10 times before you have to reload from a save point. It feels a little too arcade-y for this sort of game, but the only time I ran out of lives was during the tentacle-rape escape scene.
All in all, I can recommend SotB for the gamer who’s willing to punish himself a little bit in exchange for some hilarious dialogue and overly Japanese bizarreness.
I rate SotB 6.78 out of 10 neurotic androgynous fairies.
