Welcome to EXPlay, (Explain & Play) the review series where we care not for scores but tell it how it is when it comes to every game we get our hands on, whilst also taking the time to include some lengthy gameplay, to give you the reader, the chance to shape your own impressions and views whilst watching and reading. In this installment, we’re covering Berserk Boy by developer BeserkBoy Games.
Berserk Boy: (The Explanation)
Berserk Boy is an 2D action platformer developed by BerserkBoy Games. It is inspired by the likes of retro Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man games and blends the mechanics of the two game series into a singular experience. It boasts both modern and classic controls, and difficulty levels so you play the game in a way that suits you. Don’t want to worry about how many lives you have left? Go with the modern difficulty. Want to chance it with a set amount of lives and stronger enemies? Go Retro!
The game takes place in a futuristic world and follows a young lad named Kei who, after absorbing energy from a mysterious Orb, transforms into Beserk Boy and gains incredible powers. Kei helps The Resistance against a mad scientist and his army of darkness who desires to enslave all of mankind.
Much like the games it takes inspiration from, Berserk Boy will have you traverse through multiple stages through several distinct worlds, fighting through enemies, jumping over perilous pitfalls and navigating your way through labyrinthine stages. Each world is made up of three stages with miniboss in some stages and a end of world boss in the last stage. Upon defeating the end boss for each world, you will gain their powers and transformations.
These transformations grant Kei special skills that he can use to fight enemies and overcome certain obstacles. The first transformation Kei finds for example, grants him the power of electricity. He can use it to dash through foes at lightning speeds and electrocute them with a discharge. The second transformation allows Kei to spin like a tornado and burrow underground to reach new areas, or sneak attack enemies from below.
It takes some inspiration from Mega Man in the use of powers but there are no elemental advantages of using certain transformations on bosses. More often than not, you will resort to the very first power up for its useful dash attacks and follow up attacks. All transformations have a special attack that allows you to GO BESERK! when you have a full boost meter. The boost meter can be filled up by activating and revisiting Teleports, and by collecting gold boost coins.
Of course, what good are attacks if you don’t have any upgrades to make them more powerful or the ability to unlock better attacks? Well, you can. In between missions, you can spend coins that you find in stages to unlock upgrades by talking to the scientist in the Lab. You can also unlock passive upgrades to increase your health which should take some priority, especially when later levels can become particulary frustrating with more hazards and obstacles between checkpoints.
Berserk Boy is not avery long game and can be beaten within 4-5 hours or so. It does have some replayability to it though for anyone wishing for 100% completion. There are resistance fighters to be found within each stage and finding them all will open up a time trial on that stage so you can beat it in the fastest time possible. However, you may have to replay a stage several times in order to find them as some are hidden in areas that are only accessible once you have found a particular transformation.
Another thing that adds some replayability is that you can rack up a score on how well you play through each stage. You can increase your score by beating the stage as quickly as possible, with minimal deaths and by chaining attacks on enemies. Depending on how well you did, you can get a rank between E and A with E being the lowest and A being the highest, at least, that is the highest rank I managed to get. It could be possible that an S rank could be achieveable but I am not quite good enough for that yet.
With all said and done Berserk Boy can take a little getting used to but I’m sure fans of action platformers may get some enjoyment out of this game. It may not quite have the finesses of classic Mega Man games but I find it a reasonably solid platformer with some fun and challenging elements at times without being overly difficult once you learn the enemies’ behaviours and their attack patterns.
Berserk Boy: (The Gameplay)
Game Specifications:
Developer: BerserkBoy Games
Publisher: BerserkBoy Games
Platform: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Category: Arcade. Action, Adventure, Platformer
No. of Players: 1 player
Release Date: March 6, 2024 (EU & NA)
Price: $20.00
File Size: 1.3 GB
Nintendo.com Listing
