Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage

"A quality title hampered by major problems."

This is the kind of game I love--a medieval themed hack-and slash game. From Deathtrap Dungeon to Soul Fighter, Sword of the Berserk (SB), is THE medieval game I was waiting for. With a deep story, entertaining gameplay, lively characters, and decent graphics. The graphics are okay in battle, but horrible during cut-scenes. With graphics like Dead or Alive 2 and RE: Code Veronica grazing the DC line-up, there is no excuse for blocky, poppy, in-game models. SB's sound effects, music, and voice-acting are top-notch But some of the voices have so many effects that you can't understand what they are saying (Zoddo). The gameplay is simple, yet fun. Run around a level, and kill a certain amount of enemies to proceed. One of the VERY BAD things about this game is that God-awful sword. Sure, it's big and powerful, but with more than half of the game levels consists of narrow hallways, the sword becomes useless. I couldn't count the times I got swamped by enemies because my stupid sword kept hitting the walls. Sure, Guts has other weapons. But his secondary weapons are either powerful yet extremely limited (grenades, hand cannon), or unlimited yet VERY weak (hand crossbow, knives). ASCII should have included a short sword, a battleaxe, a mace, or anything to Guts' arsenal.

The second VERY BAD thing on this game are the Quicktime events, kinda like in Dynamite Cop. It's a nice feature but has a fatal flaw. If you are not quick enough and still pressed the correct button, the game kinda goes stupid on you, unable to decide whether you hit the correct button or not in time, thus the game is unable to decide which sequence is to be shown. In return, the game FREEZES on you. I had to reset four times already. Not because I died, but because the game kept freezing. This glaring problem could and should have been fixed.

The third VERY BAD thing and the WORST, is the save feature. What's up with the fact that you have to exit the game completely in order to save? That is completely uneccessary and downright stupid. The manual said that there is three automatic save stages, and you could only save at the beginning of stages, not levels. No problem right? Wrong! The game doesn't tell what are the save stages! After I cleared a stage (there's even a stage cleared sign), I saved the game after the cut-scenes and thought that I saved it. After a while, I came back and loaded up the game and was horrified that the game didn't save where I was supposed to be! I was pushed back to a tough Boss battle I have beated before. You have no way of knowing what are the save stages unless you finish the entire game and find out for yourself. And with the stupid feature of Exit-after-you-save, you have no way of knowing if you saved your game or not. ASCII, I think, wants you to finish the game in one sitting. I know that the game is short, but it's not THAT short!

All in all, Sword of the Berserk: Guts and Rage is an excellent game hampered by major problems. Well, at least it's more playable than Soul Fighter...

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/27/00, Updated 03/27/00