Review | Berserk Boy - Buster Boys Break Out
Opening in the futuristic vista of New Hope City, Berserk Boy boldly asks the question: what if a new Mega Man Zero game was made in 2024, with all the knowledge gained from the previous games taken into account? The answer is an absolutely fantastic platformer that respects its players’ skills while also bending to them if needed, as it knowingly wears its inspiration on its sleeve in a way that is not derivative, but instead respectful and celebratory.
With its vibrant colour palette, smooth pixel animations and impressively unique variation in character and enemy designs, Berserk Boy is a gorgeous game that feels like a deliberate evolution of its inspirations’ art styles. Although its characters - even Kei - can often feel like fairly two-dimensional heroes and villains, the warm tone and earnestly tongue-in-cheek writing keep any cynicism at bay, reminding you that the game is written with heart first, and depth second. As such, the story itself is a simple affair, leading Kei to collect the Berserk Orbs, the plot’s MacGuffin that acts as both narrative devices and mechanical upgrades for Kei, that will help Kei take down the cartoonishly evil Genos. Thankfully, the dialogue and voice acting of Kei, Genos and the element-based bosses is charming enough to somewhat make up for how barebones the story actually is. To combat the writing’s general simplicity, the game is filled with small personal touches that demonstrate how much love was put into it. All of the Resistance members in the home base - who are actually permanently added to the originally empty base after being saved - are interactable, offering knowing references to Berserk Boy’s inspirations or endearing one-liners that grant much-appreciated personalities to background characters that could have simply been non-interactable.
Assisting with this overall charm, the soundtrack is a brilliant fusion of hard rock and electronica, reminiscent of the musical style of the PS1’s Mega Man X titles. The music is provided courtesy of Tee Lopes, who once again brings the same degree of high energy and memorable melodies that he infused into Sonic Mania. While all of the tracks are a pleasure to listen to, special mention goes to the Frozen Temple area theme, which almost singlehandedly implored me to revisit its levels more than any other just to listen to it again and again.
Despite the lacking story, Berserk Boy’s core gameplay loop is stellar, drawing the best parts from its inspirations in the Zero series. Warping from the Resistance base will take Kei to five distinct areas, each with its own distinct atmosphere from a lush jungle populated by waiter robots to a frozen tundra laden with torii gates. These levels follow early Mega Man X level design, being set along a fairly linear path littered with enemies to defeat, rails to grind and walls to climb, but also encourage a little exploration off the beaten path to complete optional objectives such as rescuing fellow Resistance members or collecting Medals. Some of these collectables are also only accessible upon returning to the level with later upgrades and Forms in tow, giving a genuine reason to replay earlier levels; in addition, each level’s EX time-trial variant is unlocked by rescuing every Resistance member within.
While these completionist objectives often run the risk of being forgettable and tiresome in action platformers, the time trials are where Berserk Boy shines, offering a higher degree of challenge than the mainline levels which require careful and skilled play under strict time duress to obtain the highest ranks. It never stops being exhilarating to clutch out a perfect, no-damage run in some of the later EX levels and watch that golden S rank fade in during the post-level summary. Speaking of challenge, the game’s offering of two gameplay styles - Modern, a more forgiving experience granting infinite lives, and Retro, limiting Kei’s lives and buffing enemies to be more of a threat - gives players the agency to challenge themselves to their preferred degree, appealing to both players looking for the classic difficult retro platformer experience and those wishing to enjoy the game without too much stress.
To traverse these levels, Kei is equipped with his Berserk Form, the titular armour granted by the Berserk Orbs which grants him a snappy eight-way air dash, which grants a freedom that takes the pace from the standard high but careful speed of modern Mega Man series’ to absolutely breakneck. The dash acts as both his primary movement option and attack (in the Berserk form, at least), which is the key to the game’s incredibly satisfying sense of flow. In addition to dealing damage, impacting enemies with the dash will cause Kei to bounce off, maintaining momentum ala classic Sonic and regaining a dash charge, encouraging you to chain dashes together without hitting the ground. Once you’ve got the distance, speed and cadence of your dashes down, Berserk Boy opens up to be a speedrunner’s dream, rewarding optimal movement with lower times and thus higher ranks at the end of each level.
Outside of just the Berserk Form, Kei’s defeat of each boss grants him their respective Berserk Orbs and thus new Forms and abilities. Kei’s five Forms are refreshingly varied, including a kunai-throwing ice ninja, a free-flying jet-powered exo-suit and one of my personal favourites, a visor-clad suit armed with a cannon capable of locking onto enemies and destroying them with a single shot. In addition to often being necessary to access optional areas and collectables, each Form gets several moments in the limelight to encourage conscious swapping between all five, rather than just sticking to Berserk Form. To this end, you can simply use the left and right triggers to cycle through forms, but you’d be missing out on one of Berserk Boy’s best quality-of-life additions to the Mega Man formula. Rather than having to cycle through or open a menu to switch to a specific form, simply holding the right stick will open a Form selection wheel, freezing time and making specific Form switches almost instant, once again working towards maintaining a consistent feeling of speed and flow throughout gameplay.
Berserk Boy is not the longest or most complex game in the world, but it doesn’t need to be. It successfully delivers exactly what it sets out to - an exceptional action platformer designed for Mega Man fans, by Mega Man fans. With the franchise seemingly in purgatory once more, Berserk Boy is an excellent indie game that’s more than worth your time.
