The fact that stuff like this can be made and released for the public is probably the second scariest thing about this.

The scariest thing is that someone could play this and go "shit, this is deep."

Horrifying.

Anime is far more prolific and accessible now than it was when I was in high school. That's definitely a good thing, but there was a certain rush to being at the whim of whatever was available at the local Blockbuster that can't be replicated today. Being a 15-year-old and pulling stuff like Appleseed or Vampire Hunter D off the shelf made you feel like you were being exposed to something forbidden and strange. I still remember shoveling snow after watching The End of Evangelion - having not seen a single episode of the show - and just trying to process what the hell I watched. Sure, I could load up Crunchyroll or whatever and spin the Anime roulette, but Anime is of a more known quantity now, it's hard not to have a good idea of what you're getting into, and the charm of physically exploring the tiny Anime corner tucked in the back of the video store can't be so easily experienced today.

The 1990s adaptation of Berserk is one of those rentals that stuck with me, and its cliffhanger ending led to me seek out fan translations of the manga, which at the time was in the middle of the Millennium Empire arc. Unfortunately, enduring the lethargic pace of chapter releases in real time leaves you itching for more Berserk, which might lead you to play games like the non-canonical Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage. Nothing says "Berserk" more like sticking Guts (or Gatts, or Gattsu depending on how far down the alliteration hole you wanna go) in tight corridors where his movement is restricted and his steel girder of a sword constantly bounces off walls. What a great game that's totally not annoying to play at all.

Sword of the Berserk's sequel never came out here. Can't imagine why. But it's a shame, as (deep breath) Berserk Millennium Empire Arc: Chapter of the Holy Demon War - baller name - is not only directly based on the manga, but makes significant improvements over its predecessor. An English patch for the game was released several years ago, but reports that the patch caused issues with playing the game through emulation made me put it off until I was able to put the ISO on a hard drive and play it on hardware. The second Sign by Susumu Hirasawa started blaring through the tiny speakers of my CRT, I knew I was in for a proper Berserk experience.

Guts is perfectly embodied here. His weight, the heft of his movement, the lumbering swings of the Dragonslayer, the force of his arm cannon ripping into endless hordes of demons... it's spot on. Remarkably so given when it came out - not even the more recent Band of the Hawk captures Guts' physicality quite as well, despite the Musou genre being such a good fit for the kind of action present in Berserk.

The level-to-level gameplay typically sees Guts running between set objectives, zipping back and forth in large, labyrinthine stages littered with enemies that spawn endlessly. Tearing your way through monsters feels good for a while but grows tiresome as defeating them rarely comes with an actual win state, they're just an obstacle between you and your goal and you could, you know, just kinda run there and not deal with any of it. So much of the game is this, and it just drags, especially towards the end when the fog of war stars tricking you into running down dead ends, or when the game expects you to hop through portals that might just send you back to the start of a zone.

Conversely, the boss battles in this game are incredible. I mean just look at all the cool shit you can do! Games should let you do cool shit more often!! All these modern games with their precious stagger meters and tight parry windows that make you feel like a weak little frail baby boy, ohhhh please sir, can I do damage now-- a standard counterattack in Berserk Millennium Empire Arc: Chapter of the Holy Demon War lets you chop both of the boss' arms clean off and it rules.

Every major fight of the arc (before its perspective shifts away from Guts) is accounted for, along with some recurring fights against the former members of the Band of the Hawk, who are summoned by a game-only character named Charles that haunts Guts at various points throughout the story. I think this is a pretty smart way to integrate more of Berserk's backstory for less familiar audiences, and it provides necessary context for Guts' growth as a character. Unfortunately, the English patch seems to be a translation of a translation, which results in some goofy and grammatically incorrect dialog that took me out of the story. My brain is usually pretty good about auto-correcting stuff like this but the translation is rough and really only excels at making the game readable enough to be completed by someone who doesn't speak Japanese.

It really is too bad that so much of your time will get eaten up whaling on demonic trees so you can just move forward. Even then, I think it's an easy call that Berserk Millennium Empire Arc: Chapter of the Holy Demon War is the best Berserk game, edging out Band of the Hawk and blowing out Sword of the Berserk for the top spot. But, boy, pulling back and realizing that the best this series has gotten is a middle of the road PS2 game is really depressing.

Maybe Fromsoft will get to take a crack at the license someday, as seems to be the want of anyone who has connected the dots between Souls and Berserk, but for my money the right man for the job is Hideaki Itsuno. I just need more people to internalize this so it happens. Please. Please i need this

Still so, so fascinating. I'm almost always a sucker for the surreal and cerebral, and the more twinpeaksian the better as far as I'm concerned. Now tack on top of that some wonderfully kinetic, action packed and pretty creative, if eventually becoming slightly repetitive gameplay, and you've easily secured a spot in my personal canon.

I will say that it's a little bit disappointing how the main plot thread is genuinely the least interesting thing about Control though. It's far more intriguing just soaking in knowledge of the bureau's past and present than it is engaging with Jesse's manic pixie nightmare brother or her schizophrenia Fibonacci. And since in my first playthrough I'd already damn near 100%'d the game and read/watched every collectible I found, this replay where I focused more on mainlining it was definitely noticeably less enjoyable, revealing some more drawbacks than had previously resided within my recollection of the game. Very much worth anyone's time though regardless, especially considering how cheap it's often available for these days.