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

A solid sequel to the Dreamcast game that adapts roughly the first half of the manga's Millennium Falcon arc, with tons of crazy monsters to butcher with the Dragonslayer and even more intense boss fights. This one's actually more fleshed-out and polished than its predecessor and certainly longer. It was only released in Japan but luckily an English translation exists for those interested and it plays reasonably well in PCSX2 (but you'll have to hit F9 to get the subtitles to show-up during FMV cutscenes) or you can just burn an ESR-patched disc for your actual console if you got FMCB.

An interesting mix of extreme highs and intense lows. The core combat system is pure, simple, but oh so incredibly satisfying. The game absolutely makes you feel like you're playing as Guts. Guts' sword swings feel absolutely incredible, with an intense, weighty feel, excellent SFX and feedback, a decent variety of moves to utilize, and incredible momentum and feel on every swipe, allowing you to use the momentum of the blade to bring yourself across the battlefield to help trim down the enemies. It's genuinely impressive how well they got the game feel down. The boss battles are also rock solid, with fun movesets with solid tells that make landing hits inbetween counters and blocks oh so satisfying. The game also animates like a dream, with incredibly detailed and fluid animations for both standard combat animations, but also the more cinematic attacks and counters in battle. The game is also rather technically impressive for the time as well, it includes a detailed dismemberment system when fighting the bosses that when combined with the excellent game-feel and fluid animations is just a blast to tear enemies to pieces in. The game also has a solid soundtrack, a good and faithful retelling of the Millennium arc with some interesting and non-intrusive additions, and is aesthetically pleasing overall.

However, to counteract those staggering highs, the game has some extremely strong faults. The level design sucks ass, with levels dragging on way, wayyyyy too long, and being way too meandering with long, extensive hallways and the majority of levels being semi-mazes with long straight paths from point to point making exploration flat out not fun. Several levels just flat out can be boring as shit to play, and when they drag on so long it can get borderline agonizing. The combat, while stellar, can also get extremely repetitive, as its the majority of what you'll be doing in the stages, as the game CONSTANTLY shits enemies out at you. They literally ceaselessly spawn 24/7 the entire time you explore, and when you're running across long, winding maze hallways as 26 quadrillion enemies spawn and chase you the entire time, it gets a bit repetitious.

Lots of really repetitive objectives in this one and an unforgiving save system when faced with bosses with multiple phases, but the core gameplay and faithful adaptation of the manga's storyline make playing through it blast most of the time.

The core combat is absolutely phenomenal, translates the heftiness of that large slab of iron so beautifully, and I love trying to rack up combos and get experience with it. The combat flows so damn well, especially when you throw reversals, counters and context-sensitive actions into the boss fights. So much fun.

I don't know if I'll replay the game ever again because of how repetitive a lot of it feels, but I do get a huge kick out of the bosses, so I might at the very least revisit them. That core combat system was so beautifully crafted, man. By far the best Berserk video game (of which there are only three, but still).

MUITO BOM PRA QUALQUER FÃ DE BERSERK

porque apenas sendo muito fã pra aguentar o quão chato esse jogo é, eu amo as boss fights, o jogo tem animações lindas pro ps2 e provavelmente é o melhor jogo de berserk feito, mas é intankavel o quão esse jogo tem inimigos repetidos que não são minimamente perigosos pra você, a gameplay fica simplesmente chata depois de você passar 2 horas matando bonecos de neve agora vão ser bonecos de neve e arvores do mal, oque mais me irrita é que nem ao menos tem sentido, se fosse pelo menos demonios fracos, mas não é literalmente boneco de neve do mal.

3 words:

Griffith Boss Fight

(ok this game actually has a lot of cool little mechanics and things to learn, I was also playing on the day the news broke about Miura so I'll always have a special place in my hearts for it)