In recent years, musou with Omega Force sauce had, through partnerships, found a new direction, a new lease of life. With Hyrule Warriors and Dragon Quest Heroes, the studio's ancestral model has finally started a process of dusting off necessary, even downright vital for a saga caught in the concrete of immobility. With the announcement with great fanfare of this adaptation of Berserk, we therefore expected to see the studio persevere in this direction, try something new, bring a little more modernity to its recipe. Surprise, this is not the case and the title even takes a few steps backwards.
A NARRATION ON THE WIRE
With Berserk and the Band of Hawk, Omega Force sets out to transcribe the story of Guts, from his beginnings as a mercenary to his final endings. Each battle of the scenario, small or large, is therefore the subject of a mission in the single player mode. The narration, meanwhile, is provided between the fights, by fairly long animated pieces in VOST (the subtitles are unfortunately in English), from the trilogy of feature films released in 2012 and 2013, with small 3D effects in addition. If the quality of the animation leaves something to be desired at times, the whole remains of good quality and allows neophytes to discover the saga quietly. On the other hand, two pitfalls are revealed quite quickly: first of all a problem of rhythm in the first part of the game, with cut-scenes much too long when we compare them to the duration of the missions (just about ten minutes) . On the other hand, those who know the series and the feature films in question will know that they only retrace the narrative arc of the Golden Age. As soon as you venture out of it, the anime sequences are replaced a little on the fly with much less sexy homemade cutscenes. And suddenly the narration becomes on the contrary much too light! And it's not the poor events and conversations available in the game's poor drop-down menu that will compensate for this shift.
WEATE BRAINS
But let's get to the heart of the matter and jump into the fray. On paper, Berserk corresponds perfectly to the recipe for musou, with its ultra-nag side. Perhaps there was no need to go back to something so simple. Omega Force thus takes up an ultra-basic system, with two-button combos (quick hit, charged hit) that will have to be crossed at different times to vary the combos. Honestly, the use of the term varied is almost overused as the game is repetitive in its way of understanding the fights. Subtlety out, reflection out. In Berserk, we knock, without even paying attention to it, on hordes of completely harmless mobs. You can stay there, passive for very long tens of seconds before taking a tatane, and you will therefore have to raise the level of difficulty to the maximum to have a semblance of a challenge. We could bet on the boss fights, but these are more like the HP bag policy. Dodge and parry are often useless against their overpowered attacks, with a very wide prism, and Berserk thus empties itself of any ersatz tactic. We then rely on the Frenzy gauge, which can be filled up to five times to boost its stats for a given time. This allows you to collect Souls filling a second gauge, dedicated to a devastating special attack.
The single player mode therefore clings to the player's interest in the story and to this traditional addiction for this feeling of overpowering which emerges from the slaughter of useless soldiers.
But this backtracking also translates into boat objectives, which are repeated over and over again, again without us really paying attention to it insofar as the approach always remains the same, raw formwork . So yes, it will be necessary to make a slight mistake all the same to be sure to collect pieces of artwork, but frankly, the carrot is weak, especially over several dozen chapters. So yes, Omega Force has tried this object crafting system, a bit anecdotal, but which further reinforces the bolldozers side of the heroes. The single-player mode therefore clings to the player's interest in the story and to this traditional addiction for this feeling of overpowering which emerges from the slaughter of useless soldiers. It must be admitted that with its sheaves of blood and its disproportionate blows, Berserk is strong in the matter. But frankly, it's hard to find reasons to come back to it and the technically archaic aspect of the game (bland and generic decorations, clipping at all costs, textures from another age, weird lock) does not work in its favor. As for the additional modes that are Free Mode and Eclipse, they shouldn't hold you back for long either. The first allows you to replay already completed solo missions with different heroes, including those you have unlocked; alas these have clearly not all benefited from the same care in the martial styles and the lists of moves. As for the Eclipse, it is neither more nor less than a “Survival” mode. And the great absent is called the two-player mode, which shamelessly left.
