I was expecting way worse for the first Berserk game, but honestly this ended up being pretty solid. The gameplay is nice and simple though I do wish there was a bit more meat to it. Like I would've liked to be able to use the arrows outside of one spread attack, but still does the job well enough. I do like how the levels don't exactly have a set path, it should make going back and replaying it interesting. And the original story isn't bad either. It's not much but still it's an enjoyable filler arc and does fit nicely in the Millennium Falcon arc. If I were to have some grips with the game it's that I think a good deal of the levels don't really compliment Guts's move set with a lot of them being crammed spaces. I also think the Zodd boss fight needed some adjustment as the only way to really effectively damage him is to do a jump slash and even then that'll take a while. Which leads to what should be a cool boss fight becoming dull.
Anyway I do think this game is worth playing for any Berserk fan as it's fun filler and can easily be cleared in a single sitting (It's only like 3 hours long).

Short little game with goofy voice acting but better than people give it credit for, it's crazy how well it recreates the atmosphere of Berserk, i liked the story cause it feels just like an arc of the manga and i liked how the villain and his wife mirrored Guts and Casca.
The gameplay is alright, the sword feels pretty good but i feel like it should oneshot every base enemy for it to be really the Dragonslayer, the bouncing off walls can be annoying but positioning can prevent this and the charged and jump attacks aren't affected anyway, but really you're supposed to use the unarmed moveset or your other tools, my favorite of them is the damn arm cannon, it feels good like a cannon should.
Bonus points for using qtes in an inventing way cause succeding or failing a qte changes the part of the level you're gonna face.
The lives system is pretty annoying though, i used savestates ngl.

Wow did this game surprise me. I went into it expecting a whatever-game.

Gameplay was fun, the story was interesting, and the music was incredible. As a huge Berserk fan this game satisfied my itch for more Berserk content.

Only issues were the amount of Quick Time Events in cutscenes that can give you game overs, and the length of the game being so short.

Guts' Rage is a really faithful addition to the story of Berserk. It doesn't feel out of place a single time. I wouldn't even be surprised if these events were considered canonical. The music is produced by Susumu Hirasawa, which by default is the greatest thing about this game. Just listen to 'A Sister's Story', it is such a captivating and hauntingly beautiful song; one that perfectly fits in this game and confirms that this truly is a Berserk game. It's bit on the shorter side when it comes to the content of the story, and especially due it being very linear, it's quite noticeable. But hey, as long as the game is enjoyable from beginning to end, that's all that matters. There's not much to do, hack and slash (which is not very interesting). There's no real progression in terms of upgrading Guts or his gear, but you got his trademark hand cannon, throwing knives etc. Boss battles are alright; and of course it's a blast to get your ass beat by the legendary ZODD. Now that I've mentioned the boss battles I want to know WHO it was that named the main antagonist 'BALLSACK'? It was hard to take him seriously with that on my mind all the time; anyway, I'm joking a bit. Outside of the story you got a horde type of challenge mode and I mean, it'll keep you occupied for a solid half an hour and then you're done. Not much else to it.

This deserves credit for ambition - I wouldn't necessarily have expected the first Berserk game to have a new story written by Miura, music composed by Hirasawa, etc. Befitting that, there's a strong focus on the characters and cinematics and it actually does a solid job of bringing the vibe of the manga to the somewhat limited medium of a Dreamcast game, with a good localization and all. (They even did Puck pretty well!)

Unfortunately, the game side of things is a bit of a letdown, with simplistic combat, a very short length, one absurd difficulty spike, and a deeply annoying camera. Oh, and worst of all, this game inexplicably goes way, way out of its way to depict the realism of Guts not being able to effectively swing his famous massive sword in tight quarters, deliberately putting you in confined spaces where it'll bounce off walls every time you try to combo, and keeping the ability to swing through them behind your powered-up state. This is authentic to the source material, I guess, but good Lord above is it annoying, and a baffling design choice that seems to exist just keep the fun levels tamped down.

Because it IS fun, obviously, to go full sicko Gattsu mode with the sword and start chopping people to into big bloody pieces five at a time. In its best moments, this lets you do that, and occasionally you'll be hacking away and accidentally realize that you can do something sick like slide dodge into a small enemy to pop them up and then follow with a jumping combo at which point HAIIIIIIII YAI FORRRCES will start blaring in your head like the Kill Bill siren,,,, but then that brief combat encounter will be over and you'll be doing a QTE or watching a lengthy cutscene or be in an idiotic CRASH BANDICOOT run-towards-the-camera stage for no good reason.

Again, I appreciate the ambition here, and it does look and sound and, in brief flashes, feel pretty great, but focusing a bit more on the fundamentals and expanding, you know, the actual gameplay might have been wise.

P.S.: On a personal note, this was in my physical backlog the longest of any game ever - I bought it twelve years and four months ago. The time was finally right!

This game was fascinating. I wouldn't call it a "good" game, but there were ideas in place that were cool enough for me to want to keep playing. I don't regret the time I spent playing it, I guess?

From what I understand, this was the first Berserk-related thing to be officially localized - before the manga was published by Dark Horse Comics, and before the 1997 anime was dubbed into English. Considering it takes place after the Golden Age - after what happened to Casca - the setting must've seemed so bizarre to those unfamiliar with Berserk. And at the time, that would've been a LOT of people, save those that were reading scanlations on late 90's internet.

The game has an original story written by Miura himself, and it has some cool ideas, but its self-contained nature doesn't really give way to anything interesting in the long run. I recall one moment involving Casca that got to me, but I won't spoil it. The cutscenes (as well as the abundance of them) also really make it apparent just how important Miura's detailed, impactful artwork was to the story in pretty much every regard. The animations in this game are so stiff, gliding between keyframes with no tweening and no sense of stillness. It's awkward to watch characters move in this game. I also didn't HATE the English dub... but it wasn't great, and it's inconsistent in how they refer to Guts, sometimes calling him Gatsu for some reason. I guess they didn't feel like re-recording lines?

The core combat is pretty solid, even if it IS a little janky and lacks the depth of something like Devil May Cry in hindsight. I was definitely more forgiving, seeing as the game was released before all of the defining 3D action games were released. Combining light and heavy attacks feels pretty good, and Guts has a few moves that can juggle enemies and spice up combat. His Arm Cannon feels AMAZING to use. It completely decimates enemies you hit it with, but you have to use it sparingly. I'm not a huge fan of how the iconic Dragonslayer feels somehow both weightless and stiff to swing around, but I eventually got used to it. I also find it ambitious how the results of the quick-time events can lead to branching paths in levels; apparently, this was one of the first games of its kind to do something like that. Gotta give credit where credit is due.

My biggest issues with combat stem from the claustrophobic level design and the unbalanced difficulty. It seems obvious, but swinging a giant sword around in a corridor results in you smacking it against walls a LOT, unless you're in your special mode. I have no idea why they designed the game like this. The difficulty is a huge issue as well when it comes to boss fights; this game clearly lacked extensive testing.

The game is also paced very strangely, being a 2-3 hour game comprised of 50% cutscenes and 50% game, with save points only being after an episode ends, NOT when the game says "clear." It's a little unclear how saving works when you want to beat the game over multiple sessions, and could potentially result in you losing progress if you try to load your save. Saving itself just sucks in this game; you have to quit the game to save, and then load your game from the options menu when you come back, and I sure hope you know where you are ACTUALLY allowed to continue from, otherwise you're gonna be replaying a few combat sections.

It's hard for me to really enjoy this game as a whole. I appreciate elements of it for sure, and I had some fun tearing enemies apart for a while, but I don't consider it worth anyone's time other than EXTREMELY curious Berserk fans.

Protip: Hit Zodd until he dies.

I wish I could praise the care that’s been taken into replicating Gut’s moveset, from the way you have to consider the space you’re fighting in, lest your sword bounce off a wall, to the almost-juggling you can perform by sliding into enemies and then attacking, but it would all be disingenuous. Really, just mash “A,” heal as needed, hope that your rage mode triggers, and (if needed) use your mega buster. It sort of flattens the difficulty curve for combat once you realize that’s the strategy for the the game, but I almost want to say that’s the point: shirking most of your arsenal in favor of the most efficient (and brutal) approach, embodying Guts's single-minded ferocity in the process.

Or maybe the game is a repetitive mess of killing the same few enemies over and over, I legitimately don’t know.

Marginally better than the Musou kusoge we got on modern consoles. It's interesting how the story is canon to the manga because it really fits with the overall themes, Susumu Hirasawa composing for the game also made the atmosphere a lot better than it had any right to be.

It's weird how they made a devil trigger mechanic that makes the sword go through walls, which is the game's biggest impairment, it's like you're playing dark souls stuck with the heaviest load and constantly fighting on hallways. In a way it's realistic, fighting as a giant, heavy armoured guy with a large hunk of metal as a weapon would stop any combos as soon as he did a full swing against a wall, but realistic doesn't mean fun, and the fact that they build a mechanic that lets your sword be empowered and go through walls makes me think that they realised that this would be cumbersome, but didn't feel like redesigning the game around it. Would be good for you to press a button to release it since often times it activates against the last enemy and you're burning bar while just walking around.

At least it's 3 hours long so whatever inconveniences in the game won't bother you for long but whoever designed that level with the mandragora running sequences should get a carrot shoved so far up their ass that whoever takes it out and manages to listen to the painful screams of the game dev should consider him a real life mandragoran.

It's the first Berserk game to be released, and honestly, despite being the only one to have an original story, it's bad.
The gameplay consists of "run to the end of the hallway, see if the door lets you finish the level. if you end up running into an open door with nothing happening, slaughter everything alive, then proceed again. fight a boss maybe. repeat until end credits". That is also paired with the combat where your huge sword hits every wall (which while is pretty obvious to why doesn't nake it a good design choice) until you fill your DT and it doesn't. The items also never felt like being of any use, you will only be healing yourself with elf powder to tank more hits, the rest were pretty much pointless.
The story itself felt like it's just one exposition dump paired with the devs going "oh, remember this thing from the manga? we have it here!". Because of this it never truly offers anything new and unique to the world, the whole conflict and themes are essentially Lost Children arc, minus the bug loli. Zodd appears out of nowhere just to remind everyone that he exists and to have one fight without bringing anything of value to the narrative, the behelit is pulled out of the ass at the last moment just to have yet another underwhelming boss fight. And the cover art girl is here to do nothing and gasp at the ongoing events.
The only good thing here is the soundtrack, and the fact that thanks to the fan retranslation I didn't need to sit through the horrible English dub.

Surprisingly bad, i mean, i enjoyed some of it, but not only plays very janky and the level design is garbage, but the history, being written by miura and all, is a masive mediocrity, is more or less a combination of the lost children arc and some plot points from angels of desire from black swordsman, but with massive exposition dumps and very poor substance in actual history content, only great part when guts got in the town with the mandragora people, beacause it remembered me of the themes of escapism in lost children with the priest that said those people were happy being monsters.

Also, its me or the zodd fight feels like a prototypical dark souls fight? I mean, the fact that he can crush your ass very easily, you have items that regenerate most of your health and you need to carefully attack him in his openings to win... Really cool stuff is this design was intentional.

But yes, the game is bad, expected a decent repetitive hack n' slash like the ps2 game, but no matter how low your expectations for this game are, it really sucks.