Topic: Berserk and the Band of the Hawk - Omega Force's "brutal" Warriors game

[Claimh Solais]

Berserker Guts gameplay! Looks reeeeeeeeeeally cool!

[zangetsu468]

Berserker Guts gameplay! Looks reeeeeeeeeeally cool!

Holy shit, I just went from 6 to 12!!

[Claimh Solais]

TGS 2016 trailer! Shows off some REALLY well-choreographed cutscenes, and some decent bits of the story. Unfortunately, the gameplay is all pretty much stuff we've seen before.

EDIT: Replacing TGS 2016 trailer with English version. Game's western title officially confirmed as "Berserk and the Band of the Hawk", and the game's western release was delayed to February 2017.

[Claimh Solais]

Gameplay stream from TGS 2016! The game looks WAAAAAY smoother than I thought it would. This makes me really happy. Also, 15-year-old/beginning-of-Golden-Age Guts is playable in the game. Multiple parts so see spoiler tag for videos. Videos 1 & 2 are of Guts and Video 3 is of Zodd. Corkus is also in video 3 very briefly.

(click to show/hide)

[zangetsu468]

Berserk AND the BOTH? Kind of a strange name like Barney AND friends.
Berserk: BOTH would've made more sense, as "Berserk" is not referring to one group or character.

I'm also surprised that it's not been changed to Band of the Falcon. Miura admitted in an interview that he never knew why the english translation was "hawk" because it has always been falcon. This is both in reference to Griffith's band of soldiers, him being the falcon of light and his kingdom/ castle Falconia.

[Claimh Solais]

Serpico gameplay!

[zangetsu468]

Actually I think I remember reading that the kanji for falcon and hawk were the same.

This game has a lot of playable characters, yowza.

[Claimh Solais]

Actually I think I remember reading that the kanji for falcon and hawk were the same.

This game has a lot of playable characters, yowza.

They are the same, which is why the mistranslation happened in the first place, but Miura stated he always intended for it to be the Band of the Falcon. Not that I'm complaining cuz "Hawk" sounds better.

And really, the game only has 8 playable characters and confirmed as such. Most Warriors games have almost 20 by the first installment (assuming they're not crossovers, cuz the first Warriors Orochi had 77 playable characters). Apparently Omega Force is trying something different with this one and having each of the characters change appearances multiple times over the course of the game, meaning the characters will have a significant amount of character models. Hopefully this means they're also fleshing out movesets more, since I was fine with simplistic movesets because of the huge amount of characters.

[zangetsu468]

If there's 8 characters and they play really differently then this is better than simply having more characters.

I remember Bleach: Soul Resurrecion being a good game but there were only a few characters that really stood out, Stark was my favourite by a mile.

[Claimh Solais]

If there's 8 characters and they play really differently then this is better than simply having more characters.

That's the part there that worries me. So far it seems they play about the same as characters in DW. If they have less moves, then more characters is a must. I'm hoping that the gameplay is more in-depth than other Warriors games cuz the small roster would be disappointing otherwise.

Also, I doubt the "8" that was confirmed during the TGS stream is truly the full roster, since the number "10" was also thrown around during the same stream, supposedly. Plus, we don't yet have the "unexpected" playable character (who many are assuming to be Puck), so I'm leaning more toward that 10 number.

Some ideas:
For simplicity, I'm referring to normal attacks as "N" and strong attacks as "S".

• New combo trees. Instead of just N>S, N>N>S, S>N, or S>S>N stuff, have combos that have you switching back and forth between buttons. Such as N>N>N>S>N. It would add a significant amount of more comboability to the game than just having the regular normal and strong strings (like SW4 or One Piece have).
• Multiple movesets, i.e. Hyrule Warriors. Hyrule Warriors started off back in August 2014 with a relatively small roster, but they made up for it by giving certain characters (like Link or Zelda) multiple movesets. They're on the right track in Berserk with transformations, but it'd be cool if Black Swordsman Guts were more vicious than Band of the Hawk Guts, etc.
• Playable characters later added through DLC. It is true that most Musou games avoid this, instead reserving new characters for sequels or expansion packs. However, both Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage 1/2 and Hyrule Warriors (+ Legends) added new characters via DLC. Several characters like Skull Knight or Pippin might be fun to play as, or even members of the God Hand, as weird as it would be.

[Gunlord]

They are allowing you to play as Femto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdOYAJK-AoI

[zangetsu468]

They are allowing you to play as Femto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdOYAJK-AoI

I was literally thinking that and then read your post.. Spooky

[Claimh Solais]

They are allowing you to play as Femto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdOYAJK-AoI

Awwww yeah! Just gimme Skull Knight and my desired roster is complete!

[Claimh Solais]

New DualShockers interview with the producer. Cliffnotes below for those who don't want to read the article:

-The eight announced playable characters will be the only playable characters in the game.

-There are currently no plans to upgrade the game via a PS4 Pro patch.

-Both Miura and the anime studio oversaw production of the game.

-Omega Force is now unsure whether or not they can restore the graphic violence and gore in the western release.

-There are currently no plans for a PC or Xbox One release, despite the former being listed in multiple trailers.

-The game was developed with PS4 in mind.

-The game will run at 30 FPS on all platforms, with the producer promising a mostly stable performance on all platforms.

-Significant amount of changes to the Musou formula were added to keep it fresh. These include transformations and sub-weapons, among other things.

-While you are able to choose your character in some stages, you will be playing most of the game as Guts.

-Koei Tecmo does not have an extensive DLC plan for this game like they have had with previous Musou games. They said there may be some costumes, stages, and mounts, but not too much.

-Everything they've revealed so far is pretty much all there is in the game. This means the only modes in the game are Story Mode and Free Mode.

-There will be no multiplayer.


...Huh. I'm a little less hyped about this game now. Kinda sucks we're getting another bare-bones Musou game like Arslan: The Warriors of Legend was.

[Gunlord]

Man, that's a shame. I was looking forward to playing as a whole bunch of characters! D: