Berserk Boy Review (Servant_HolyKnight)
Berserk Boy has the potential to be great, but I've seen more love and appeal in other MMX clones on this very storefront with maintenance.
In Berserk Boy, you have your basic stages where you go around fighting evil robots, possibly collecting scattered soldiers and medals, and trying to do so to get a high score. Dying is a detriment as not only do you return to base if you lose all your spare lives (on retro mode) but your score suffers a 5000 point penalty, so you're better off just leaving and restarting if you want a perfect S run. So long as you also bash as many enemies as possible and not just blitz to the end ignoring them or blue energy balls for points. It'll take some time and memorization, but each level is possible to win with high marks. Usually.
Every last stage in a three tiered area has a boss fight. When you beat the boss, you get a new power that makes traversal a little easier. Digging through earth, hitting barriers, even flying and hovering through spiked floors. Some powers are easier to use than others in fighting, but you can upgrade them with points you accumulated at your home base. And by the time you finish Stage 12, you have all you need to really explore a level's secrets.
Incidentally, you can upgrade your powers with money you earn, but all you really need is to upgrade the last power, the Mine Buster, to trivialize all battle segments. There is such an imbalance of not just boss fights (in which Mine Buster can kill them in less than a minute) but also ability utility that you will likely not use Flame Drill for combat or anything but Soaring Wind for going across gaps. Though there are some places you HAVE to use a power to get through (Flame Drill under a low tunnel of spikes for example), this game is less about fighting and more about speed-running and you'll likely switch back to the faster base Berserk to spam the dash attack.
NORMALLY, each level also has an EX level that you can unlock by saving all the soldiers in a level, and do a bonus speed run course. But as of this writing, Stage 5 (the second ice level) has a bug where if you rescue 100% soldiers through a mob robot rush, then you can't officially unlock the EX level tied to it. Which is egregious as that last batch of soldiers are gated off in that you have to find 60% of them in the level first, and all of Berserk Boy levels have hidden secrets meant to stash away soldiers or medals to collect. While Medals need to be brought to a teleporter/check point to count before you die (and thus lose them), soldiers automatically add up to the total regardless. It feels dumb that one progression checklist has the potential of getting lost and the other doesn't.
To reiterate, this game has a problem with maintenance as it's been a year since it came out and there hasn't been any sort of bug patching at all. I've seen other games get these semi-regularly in that they iron out performance and lag or glitches. For completionists that like to earn everything as near perfect as possible (and even has a few achievements tied to doing EX levels either to completion or to S rank status), this is inexcusable.
The levels are quick, and the basic electric Berserk power where you use dashing and Gunvolt-like electric zap when "locking" them is satisfying. The art is stylish, the music is banger, and even the story while barely there is short and sweet and to the point. Like an old 80s/90s saturday morning cartoon you can play. I just wish the game didn't have problems that prevented you from doing all it had to offer short of "starting over".