Berserk Boy Review (gnomemobking)
Picked this one up due to the excellent pixel art on display and because it's nice to see indie devs filling niches that major publishers no longer seem interested in serving. Unfortunately, this one really doesn't live up to its predecessors.
Pros:
1) Excellent visuals, the pixel art here is fantastic and I didn't notice any awkward hitboxes or platforms. There's a decent variety across levels and enemies and overall it's just an excellent throwback visually to megaman days of yore.
2) Music is also great, it does a good job of getting you excited and is a great addition to the genre. No complaints here.
Cons:
1) Level design falls short in a lot of ways, particularly once you get flight. Bizarrely the devs persist in putting platforming segments beyond that acquisition, even though the player can just fly over them at their leisure.
2) Similarly to above, the home base is needlessly huge. There a tons of empty rooms and halls that eventually can host a number of useless NPCs who have nothing of importance to say, but you will waste an annoying amount of time dashing through them. Also aggravating is the base is periodically attacked by random mooks, and there's no map, so if one straggler is somewhere you just have to comb over the place until you locate it, which leads to yet more wasted time.
3) Balance of the orbs (classes) is comically bad. The first form is incredible, with an I-frame-heavy dash that deals damage and a seeking projectile, with subsequent forms being no improvement. The final one is particularly bad, as it has the megaman-style gun arm with less range than the dash, limited ammo count, AND the ammo doesn't regenerate when you're in another class. I have no idea how the devs playtested their own game and didn't see how wildly off balance this is.
4) Devs couldn't make up their mind regarding insta-kills so you get both, applied randomly. What I mean by this is that some pits are marked with skulls to show they'll instantly kill you if you fall in, but then there are other unmarked pits that do the same. There are spikes that just deal health damage, and there are spikes that also instantly kill you. This leads to an annoying amount of confusion, particularly if you're trying to hunt for collectibles.
5) The story is pure incoherent garbage. There's some silly lore video you can watch in your room to give a tiny amount of context to the story, but it's still bad and it's clear no serious thought went into it. You can barely even accuse the characters or villains of having genuine motivation or even character at all, they are as bland as can be.
6) There is a bizarre fixation of speedrunning, which is infuriating. Speed is one of the primary things they grade you on, and from what I experienced all secret levels are time trials. I've played my share of classic megaman games, and speedrunning was not a focus of them, so it's getting really irritating to see devs continue to push the genre in that direction.
7) This is the most heinous one, which is why I saved it for last. The game has two collectibles to find in levels, resistance members to teleport to safety, and medals. Medals serve zero purpose whatsoever until you get to the end of the game and find out the last level is gated behind finding 50 of them, and resistance members serve no purpose aside from unlocking tiresome time trial levels, which ALSO give nothing for beating them. In the Megaman series, in Metroid, in Castlevania, exploring and finding secrets is exciting and rewarding because it unlocks new capabilities, new weapons, or even just extra lives. In Berserk Boy, you get NOTHING. ZIP. NADA. I just stopped exploring at all because there's legitimately no point, and I am blown away that the devs could take so much inspiration from the old greats and somehow not parse the value of meaningful secrets.
Overall the game greatly disappointed me, and I saw no reason to slog through finding the remaining medals to go fight the last boss. Even if I had done so, I would guess that the game's runtime would still be quite low, and given the large list of annoyances and missed opportunities above it still wouldn't be worth the price. If you're looking for a much better Megaman throwback, just go pick up Gravity Circuit.