Berserk and the Band of the Hawk - MCM Preview

From the creators of the Dynasty Warriors series and Musou games - Omega Force presents Berserk and the Band of the Hawk - Berserk in Musou form. Having the chance to try it for the first time, I have to say that my concerns of the combat being light and flimsy aren’t my issue - just how fleshed out the content will be.

Having never played or bought a Musou game before, this might be my gateway drug into the series. Any concerns of the combat lacking impact and style died the moment Guts swung his hunk of iron. The style of gameplay felt just right with the response time between hitting the button and the action taking place. Decimating the waves and waves of monsters with the meaty combat could easily become a time sink for me, it never became a slog even after clearing the demo a couple of times at the stand with each attempt becoming progressively more efficient at clearing the hordes of enemies.

However, facing against the boss-like monster in the stage just felt off. Sure it’s large and brutish in nature, but that’s the point my fear of weightless combat crawled back into my mind. Despite landing several horde crushing combos, the monster didn’t even flinch when struck during what looked like an idle state. Maybe there’s some kind of depth in a Musou game that I’m missing, but when I slam my hunk of iron on the ground I expect some kind of reaction. This also extends to the camera being slightly awkward when having to target specific enemies. Furiously bouncing back and forth between me and the target, it becomes increasingly disorientating with Guts seemingly moving like a Gundam between targets with weightless-like maneuvers.

The most poignant moment of frustration with the camera was during the boss fight. Targeting the boss, the camera would bounce and struggle to keep up with my killing spree of the minions to directly aiming at the boss. This meant the camera swinging in a counterclockwise movement as if were some kind of dramatic showdown - great to look at - just not quite suitable for playing as a game. But this is somewhat of a nitpick in a great experience during my hands on it at MCM.

My main concern walking away was how much content there will be. If this is following the Berserk series by Kentaro Miura, how easy will it be for a newbie like me to jump in? Having never watched the series before the 2016 rendition of Berserk, even with my ridiculous nature of jumping into a series midway with no knowledge of the previous content, I struggled to maintain interest past episode 2.

Final Thoughts

Would I pick this up? Maybe, I always find it hard to convince myself to jumping into a new game series without having experienced it before. Due to be released on 24th of February 2017, if there’s more content showcased between now and then, I might pick it up.