Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage

Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage, released in Japan as Berserk Millennium Falcon Arc: Chapter of the Flowers of Oblivion (ベルセルク 千年帝国の鷹篇 喪失花の章, Beruseruku Sennen Teikoku No Taka Hen Wasurebana no Shō), is a hack and slash action video game for the Dreamcast.[2] It is based on the popular Berserk manga by Kentarō Miura and the game is set between volume 22 and 23 of the manga; right after Guts and Puck depart for Elfhelm with Casca (chapter 182), but before Farnese, Serpico, and Isidro catch up with them (chapter 190). The music is composed by Susumu Hirasawa, who also composed the anime series' music.

Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage
Developer(s)Yuke's
Publisher(s)ASCII Corporation, Eidos Interactive
Director(s)Yoshio Togiya
Programmer(s)Tatsuhiko Sugimoto
Hiroki Ueno
Takanori Yoshioka
Artist(s)Kentarō Miura (character)
Writer(s)Kentarō Miura
Tsuyoshi Tamai
Composer(s)Susumu Hirasawa
Platform(s)Dreamcast
Release
  • JP: 16 December 1999
  • NA: 16 March 2000[1]
  • EU: 19 May 2000
Genre(s)Action, hack and slash
Mode(s)Single-player

Released around the same time as Shenmue, Sword of the Berserk is notable for its early use of quick time events (QTE). It used these to determine the different non-linear paths the player would take, depending on whether they succeed or fail in pressing the displayed button quickly enough during a QTE, allowing different ways to complete the game.[3]

Plot summary

After saving a traveling performer named Rita from bandits while on their way to Elfhelm, Guts, Casca, and Puck come to a small castle town to rest. Upon arriving, they learn of a disease that transforms its victims into "Mandragorans", making them go berserk and kill people, even their loved ones, without thinking. The ruler of the castle, Baron Balzac, learns of Guts killing a Mandragoran and brings him to the dungeon where people infected with the disease are kept. Balzac brings Guts to his laboratory while explaining that he is searching for a supposed cure. Guts learns from Balzac that the disease comes from an unusual plant, the Mandragora that grew into a tree located in a nearby village on the borders of his domain. After meeting a group of rebels that abducted Casca and learning the baron is a tyrant to their people, Guts decides to carry out Balzac's request for the Great Tree's heart since the baron's findings might provide a cure for Casca's madness. But while Guts is joined by Rita and a group of rebels, Balzac's men raid the rebels' hideout and capture Casca.

Losing their traveling companions while Guts confronts the Mandragorans' matriarch Erica, who maintained her free will to protect the Mandragora that grew from the remains of a boy named Niko, he and Rita find Balzac's men slaughtering the Mandragorans. Erica, upon seeing the utopia she created destroyed, chooses to destroy herself and the Mandragora Heart rather than hand the latter over with only the pendant she made from Niko's charm remaining as Rita picked it up. Guts was about to fight Balzac's men when Nosferatu Zodd arrives, the Apostle having freed Casca from her dungeon cell earlier, and they have a brief rematch that once more ends in a draw. By that time, encountering a young woman with a similar madness and assumed to be Balzac's daughter, Puck and Casca stumble into the chamber where the fragment of the Madragora Heart that Balzac obtained awakens. This causes all Mandragorans to act up and run amok in the town as Guts and Rita return.

Fighting his way through the Mandragorans and Balzac's forces to reach the castle, Guts and Rita see the mysterious girl and take her with them. When they finally reach Balzac's throne room, Guts demands to know where Casca is, but Balzac only answers that they are too late to save her. Rita asks Balzac how all of these events came to pass; he recounts that he was once a kind and just ruler, but the pressure of juggling his responsibilities as both a ruler and as a husband eventually got to him, and he now finds comfort only in bloodshed. Balzac also reveals the woman to be his wife, Annette. He had preserved her life with a drug extract made from the Mandragora's Heart, making her ageless, but at a steep price - the drug also ravaged her mind, rendering her unable to remember her own husband. Despite this, in his madness, Balzac drinks an even more potent extract of the Mandragora's Heart, transforming himself into a monstrous figure. Guts quickly dispatches him, however, and saves Casca from the fully grown Mandragora. In a cruel twist of fate, Casca's exposure to the Mandragora briefly restores her sanity - with Guts forced to watch her revert to her catatonic state once more. He is given little time to mourn this turn of events, however, as in the confusion of battle, Rita had dropped Erica's pendant - revealed to be a Behelit - and the dying Balzac had claimed it, offering Annette's life as his sacrifice in order to be reborn as an Apostle. Guts finds himself forced into battle once more, but manages to defeat the Apostle Balzac despite his new-found powers. With the town reverting to some normalcy, Guts and his group continue their journey; Rita promising to not forget them. Some time after Guts's group leave, the Skull Knight appears in Balzac's castle and swallows Balzac's Behelit.

Soundtrack
Berserk Millennium Falcon Arc: Chapter of the Flowers of Oblivion Original Game Soundtrack
Soundtrack album by
Susumu Hirasawa
ReleasedDecember 15, 1999 (1999-12-15)
Genre
Length42:30
LabelHakusensha, Marine ENTERTAINMENT MMCC-7008
ProducerSusumu Hirasawa, Kentaro Miura

Berserk Millennium Falcon Arc: Chapter of the Flowers of Oblivion Original Game Soundtrack (ベルセルク 千年帝国の鷹篇 喪失花の章 Original Game Soundtrack, Beruseruku Sennnen Teikoku No Taka Hen Wasurebana no Shō Orijinaru Gēmu Saundotorakku)[4] marked the return of Susumu Hirasawa, composer and performer of the soundtrack of the Sword-Wind Chronicle anime. Unlike the anime's soundtrack, Hirasawa composed and performed the game's opening theme, "FORCES II", and ending theme, "INDRA". Coincidentally, Hirasawa started his career as a musician with a band called Mandrake, and they made a song called "Mandragora". Hirasawa did not make all the original material for the game, part of the soundtrack was the work of Yuke's in-house musicians Masaya Imoto and Hiromi Murakami. Besides the songs that were commercially released, 39 other tracks ripped from the game's GD-ROM have been distributed online unofficially. The first-pressing limited edition of the soundtrack included the 2000 Berserk calendar and collector stickers. The soundtrack was reissued in 2012 as part of Hirasawa's Haldyn Dome boxset. Since it is a Hirasawa release, tracks 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10, which were made by Imoto and Murakami with no involvement from Hirasawa, were omitted from it.

Reception

Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage received mostly positive reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings.[5] In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 30 out of 40.[8] In the UK, Official Dreamcast Magazine UK gave it a 73% score.[20]

Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the Dreamcast version of the game for Next Generation, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "It controls reasonably well and looks fantastic – you'll get your money's worth – but the gameplay design is far from perfect, and there's too much exposition for the amount of action."[19]

References
  1. Matt White (2000-03-16). "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage". IGN. Ziff Davis. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  2. "ベルセルク 千年帝国の鷹篇 喪失花の章 [ドリームキャスト]". Famitsu (in Japanese). Enterbrain. Retrieved 2018-07-26.
  3. Patrick Klepek (2000-04-10). "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage". Gaming Age. Archived from the original on 2011-03-27. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
  4. "Music for movies / Susumu Hirasawa". Susumu Hirasawa. Teskalite Online Shop. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  5. "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage for Dreamcast". GameRankings. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  6. Bryan Melville. "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage - Review". AllGame. All Media Network. Archived from the original on 2014-11-15. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  7. Edge staff (March 2000). "Berserk [Sennnen Teikoku No Taka Hen Wasurebana no Shō]". Edge. No. 82. Future plc.
  8. "ドリームキャスト - ベルセルク 千年王国の鷹篇 喪失花の章". Famitsu (in Japanese). No. 915. Enterbrain. 2006-06-30. p. 50.
  9. Andy McNamara; Jay Fitzloff; Andrew Reiner (April 2000). "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage". Game Informer. No. 84. FuncoLand. Archived from the original on 2000-12-05. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  10. "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage". Game Informer. No. 139. GameStop. November 2004.
  11. Kevin Deselms (1999-12-20). "REVIEW for Berserk [Sennnen Teikoku No Taka Hen Wasurebana no Shō]". GameFan. Shinno Media. Archived from the original on 2000-06-14. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  12. Fernando Mosquera (2000-04-11). "REVIEW for Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage". GameFan. Shinno Media. Archived from the original on 2000-06-22. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  13. The D-Pad Destroyer (2000-03-24). "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage Review for Dreamcast on GamePro.com". GamePro. IDG Entertainment. Archived from the original on 2005-02-09. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  14. G-Wok (March 2000). "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage Review". Game Revolution. CraveOnline. Archived from the original on 2015-09-11. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  15. James Mielke (2000-01-24). "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage Review [Import; date mislabeled as "March 21, 2003"]". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  16. Gary Koltookian (2000-03-17). "Sword of the Berserk [Guts' Rage]". GameSpy. IGN Entertainment. Archived from the original on 2002-06-11. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  17. Gary Koltookian (2000-03-20). "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage". PlanetDreamcast. IGN Entertainment. Archived from the original on 2009-01-22. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  18. Colin Williamson (1999-12-21). "Berserk [Sennnen Teikoku No Taka Hen Wasurebana no Shō] (Import)". IGN. Ziff Davis. Retrieved 2019-03-25.
  19. Lundrigan, Jeff (June 2000). "Finals". Next Generation. Vol. 3 no. 6. Imagine Media. p. 96.
  20. "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage". Official Dreamcast Magazine. No. 9. Future plc. May 2000. pp. 52–54.
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