Thanks to Berserk Boy Games for the review code

Title: Berserk Boy
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 03/05/2024

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Story

In this action platformer, you take control of Kei, a young boy who sets out to uncover the mystery of the Berserk Orbs after they’re unleashed upon the world by the evil Genos! Using the power of the elements, Kei can shift between various forms, and with the help of one who knows the power of the orbs, it’s up to the two of them to save the world!

A fairly enjoyable plot, all things considered. It starts off strong, and slowly adds little nuggets with new characters every so often to keep the story going. It isn’t anything hyper in-depth or a plot that will grip you to find the next story bit or anything, but the character writing is decent and what you get here helps move the story forward.

Presentation

After a gorgeous looking animated intro and title screen… You also get bombarded by some of the most energetic, god-tier intro music I’ve ever heard from a video game. Seriously, this starts off incredibly strong with a theme reminding me of PC Engine CD titles, and a bunch of the soundtrack in general keeps that top tier quality going; so, so many stage themes are just constant bangers and songs I gladly left idle on purpose just to hear them loop several times.

Needless to say, the audio is outstanding, and it comes from Tee Lopes, and I argue it’s easily his best original soundtrack to date, no contest whatsoever. Yes, even better than all his non-remixed Sonic Mania stuff. The exceptional music alone would be enough praise, but the visuals look pretty darn good too. You have lovely sprite work, very colorful stage layouts, and some neat cut-ins when unleashing your special berserk attacks.

A few visual aspects echo the Mega Man Zero/ZX vibes very well, but Berserk Boy stands out more distinctly than those games, and I hate to admit that several stages already ended up as more memorable setpieces than most of what the Zero series has to offer. They’re still your typical elemental biomes, but there are a lot of cool layouts and enemy designs to encounter in these levels, and the game runs fantastically on Steam Deck.

Gameplay

Berserk Boy is an action platformer, mostly consisting of going stage by stage, defeating enemies with your elemental powers, and making it to the end of each level. Pretty typical stuff, though your main gimmick are the Berserk Orbs, and you start out with a pretty handy Electricity ability that gets you into the flow of the game a lot quicker than your average tutorial.

Right off the bat, Berserk Boy is a joy to play, and the tight controls are apparent right away. You have a dash that can be used to tag enemies in your electric form, and this immediately gave me vibes of both Gunvolt and Pulseman, with the speed of the dash being much better for me than Gunvolt’s typical combat.

You jump, you dash, you attack, and can even pull off a Berserk Move if your purple meter is full enough to do so. A rather simple structure that gets you into the game pretty quick, and before long you’ll be zipping through levels, tagging enemies, dealing electric damage to them, and noticing branching paths in the stages. These take you to a variety of goodies including Berserk Medals and lost resistance Fighters, which both unlock extra stages if you collect all of them. You also have a ranking system for each stage, and like in the Sonic series, they’re determined on how fast you clear a level without dying and while racking up as high of a combo as possible, which gives some fun extra replay value alongside the optional routes.

However, what makes Bereserk Boy a little different from most typical stage-by-stage games is that you can’t really fully 100% the stages on the first go around. The further in the game you get, the more Berserk forms you unlock, and each of them completely change up the play style. A speedy Ice Ninja, a drilling Fire warrior, a Wind Flight technique, and an Earth Lock-on all eventually become alternate forms for you to switch between, ala Mega Man ZX, of all things.

While you can keep going level by level and just push on ahead, going back to the older stages with newer forms is actually a lot of fun and provides a slight metroidvania element. Early on, you may notice an obstacle you can only get through by drilling or using an Ice Kunai, and thus returning with your new powers can unlock a new path leading to a medal or resistance fighter, usually accompanied by a tough set of enemies or a platforming challenge.

And yeah, when the forms start unlocking, the future levels make great use of them. At first I was a bit worried the Electric form would be the primary one through and through, mainly because the first extra form you unlock is pretty terrible for combat purposes, but as soon as I unlocked the Ice and Wind abilites, making use of them in different situations became a lot of fun. You’ll still have to use certain ones to clear obstacles that require their element, but for the most part you can stick with your favorite form and have a good time playing through these stages, which are incredibly well designed.

There are a few things thrown into the levels to shake up the typical platforming, however. Every now and then you’ll get an autoscroller where Kei’s friend joins him to shoot down some enemies, and these are a fun diversion that I worried at first would feel like a tone shift for the worse, only for these segments to fit snugly within the stages they’re in, and the pacing remains great throughout.

Unfortunately, there were a few moments that dragged the levels down a little for me, but not enough that I’d dismiss the greatness of the stages entirely. The bosses are a pretty mixed bag, with some of them being really drawn out and rather frustrating until you get the hang of them, and then when you do, it’s still a waiting game to attack them. Even when replaying stages with later forms, I found some of the minibosses or bosses to be a slow pain. That being said, a few of the bigger fights, mainly the Berserk Orb battles (the one for the Earth orb being my current favorite) keep you on your toes and have great patterns, so this gripe mainly applies to the bosses in stages before the final one of each world.

The other irritant is that every time you clear a world, you have to defend the base from dark energy. At first it seemed like an exciting way to test your new abilities, but when this gets repeated after every new form it becomes an irritating pacebreaker as I just wanted to get to more levels already and these defense segments barely felt different enough for my liking. At least they’re over relatively quickly.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I really dug Berserk Boy for the most part. If the sound track was all that I had to score, this game would get a 10/10 with no hesitation whatsoever. (Seriously, I’ll be there day one for a vinyl release!) But we’re here to review an overall package, and on that end I found the game to still be a great joy to play. Still, I felt a few spots were weaker than others, and while blazing through levels and learning to perfect them was immense fun, dealing with slower miniboss fights or awkward pacebreakers later in the game brought down the fun a little bit.

But when you’re focusing on just pure platforming action in the stages, and try to beat your best times or discover the hidden goodies in a level? Wow, this game is outstanding, and it feels like Pulseman, Gunvolt and Sonic combined into one being. The EX stages being focused on really hard challenges are almost more than enough bank for your buck and to satisfy your speedrunner needs, and each stage has a bunch of hidden things to find.

Definitely a great action platformer worth playing, and I know I’ll sure be grinding my way to 100% with this one, even with those rocky boss fights slowing the flow a bit. It may be coming out in a sea of other ranking-based platformers, but Berserk Boy’s tight level design and outstanding music are enough to make it still worth a buy if you’re craving more.

I give Berserk Boy a 8 out of 10.