Fluid and fast-paced gameplay, and a pretty good soundtrack is juxtposed against a severe lack of identity and a lack of interesting level design to tie it all together. The inspirations drawn from Mega Man Zero & ZX are all centered around how cool and actiony it was, while neglecting that the reason why Mega Man Zero's setting worked at all, is because of its cinematic, darker mood that was built up from its more lighthearted predecessors. By comparison, Berserk Boy has its first game and is already trying to eat its cake. Crafting a dialogue-heavy story around its world, while at the same time having little to offer but a set of legally distinct elemental Guardian characters, and some fire puns. Mega Man's initial simplicity allowed it to establish a personality. Berserk Boy's comparative complexity, due to its desire to take as much from Mega Man as possible, instead gives it an identity crisis.
What could've been just one level, is always drawn out into three seperate ones, each relying on the same gimmick rather than introducing a new one per stage. As another review here pointed out, this does very much lead into repetition, and occasional instances of a level going on for far too long. After a while, every decision I've made in the game was a backseat to my mind wandering to other places. Berserk Boy was still fun to play, but it was the sort of mindless popcorny fun that I'd play for 10 minutes on a lunch break, while thinking up what I'd do with the rest of my day. That very idea, that I was playing a Mega Man-like without any desire to commit to beating it over one or two nights - indicated to me that there's something very off here.
Masahiro Sakurai recently posted a video that conveniently pertains to Berserk Boy's dilemma. It's fine to take influences and inspirations from your favorite titles, and try to make your own game with it. That's how evolution happens. Shovel Knight took influences from many NES titles, but ultimately, that game spun things well enough that what people see in Shovel Knight, is Shovel Knight. I don't see Berserk Boy in Berserk Boy. I see a riff on everything I've already played before, with no special element of its own.
What could've been just one level, is always drawn out into three seperate ones, each relying on the same gimmick rather than introducing a new one per stage. As another review here pointed out, this does very much lead into repetition, and occasional instances of a level going on for far too long. After a while, every decision I've made in the game was a backseat to my mind wandering to other places. Berserk Boy was still fun to play, but it was the sort of mindless popcorny fun that I'd play for 10 minutes on a lunch break, while thinking up what I'd do with the rest of my day. That very idea, that I was playing a Mega Man-like without any desire to commit to beating it over one or two nights - indicated to me that there's something very off here.
Masahiro Sakurai recently posted a video that conveniently pertains to Berserk Boy's dilemma. It's fine to take influences and inspirations from your favorite titles, and try to make your own game with it. That's how evolution happens. Shovel Knight took influences from many NES titles, but ultimately, that game spun things well enough that what people see in Shovel Knight, is Shovel Knight. I don't see Berserk Boy in Berserk Boy. I see a riff on everything I've already played before, with no special element of its own.