Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage

A giant sword sweeping through throngs of enemies, blood spraying across the screen and a dark, bleak atmosphere — Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage brought the harsh world of the Berserk manga straight to the Dreamcast, and it spared none of the rawness.

The game is an action hack-and-slash in which you take on the role of Guts, a warrior with a superhumanly large blade, cutting your way through waves of foes in a series of brutal clashes. The emphasis lies on a fast, bloody combat system where massive sweeping attacks mow down hordes of enemies at once and where a raw satisfaction arrives with every hit. The pace is uncompromising, the atmosphere gloomy.

What sets the title apart is its close bond with the source material. Between the action passages, the game tells its story through extensive dialogue and animated sequences, so it works as an interactive expansion of Kentaro Miura's dark world. For fans of the series it was a chance to experience Berserk's atmosphere with their own hands.

On the Dreamcast the game represented one of the few attempts to bring a popular manga into action form on this platform, thus rounding out the console's diverse library with a title of a distinctly adult, brutal tone that wasn't for everyone.

Thanks to its faithfulness to the source and its uncompromising action, the game found its audience among Berserk fans and lovers of raw hack-and-slash experiences alike, those seeking something darker than the mainstream of the time.

Why play it: A brutal, atmospheric hack-and-slash ride faithful to the dark world of Berserk, ideal for fans of the source and lovers of raw action alike.