Years of experience with all types of video games will give one the impression that Berserk Boy is another indie game that takes its inspiration from the Mega Man series. The ingredients are all there, from the futuristic city setting to element-based bosses to the ability to inherit those enemy powers. Give it a few minutes, and you'll notice that the game is inspired by more than just Capcom's blue bomber, but the actual execution can vary in parts.

It is the future, and you play the role of Kei, a young soldier who's part of The Resistance stopping lifeforms known as Shades from overrunning the world. During a battle where your partner has been sensing a spike in energy readings, you stumble upon a firebird named Fiore who agrees to tag along to help you out. It doesn't take long before you run into Dr. Genos, a former Resistance scientist who has gone rogue due to his obsession with the energy possessed by the berserk orbs. Fiore gets an orb knocked out of him, but before the mad doctor can get it for himself, you dash in to intercept it and absorb the orb's power to become Berserk Boy. With that newfound power, you and Fiore set out to stop Dr. Genos' forces before things get worse.

The narrative in games like this doesn't get too much of a spotlight, and the same holds true in Berserk Boy. There are enough cut scenes to remind you that a story exists, and there's an appropriate amount of importance given to them, but they also don't take center stage compared to the action. There's some cheesy dialogue and other lines that are fine, but overall, it feels just right. The only complaint you may see is that there are moments during gameplay when the dialogue box at the bottom of the screen appears in the middle of the action and obscures some important parts of the battlefield.

Despite the initial comparisons to Mega Man, the game does a number of things that are vastly different from that series. For example, you can't pick which bosses you face, so the game is very linear. There's an active checkpoint system in place with the ability to go back in the level to previously visited areas; you'll do this later on, when you start to get more powers to unlock more areas of the level. The biggest change to the formula is that you rarely fire projectiles. Almost all of your attacks are melee-based, but they're done in a way that promotes movement, so even if you aren't firing bullets, you still don't have to move in very close to an enemy to inflict damage on them.

The one area that the game borrows from Mega Man is in the acquisition of new abilities when you beat a boss. Instead of adding one new power, every element switch acts like a full change of all of your abilities. Select fire, and your main attack is a flaming tornado spin; you can also dig into the ground to go through rock walls and low spaces. Other elements do the same, like ice, which lets you throw kunai but helps you to hold handrails as well. The variety on display when switching to different elements and the fact that you never run out of energy using them since that meter fills up at a good pace means that there's plenty of reason to switch and experiment with them all.

It's also understandable if you try to stick with the main lightning ability for most of the game since it's already so good. The ability to zip around an area to damage and stun enemies before delivering an electric blast is always thrilling, and only one other element (air) lets you get that sort of zippy movement. The fact that bosses aren't beholden to specific elemental weaknesses also gives you a reason to stick to the default element. It's a blessing in that this type of movement usually isn't found in an action platformer like this, but it's also a curse in that the default element is better than most of the stuff you obtain later on.

There's not much else to the campaign once you've beaten it, but Berserk Boy has a few incentives for players to replay levels. For completionists, there are berserk medals that can be collected in some out-of-the-way spots. There are also Resistance members to rescue, and they become important because reducing them in a level opens up the EX version of that level, which is essentially a time trial version. Again, it's not exactly something that everyone will go back to uncover, but its presence is nice nonetheless.

The base elements of the game are good, but there are parts that are disappointing to see. The difficulty, for example, doesn't seem to scale appropriately. Your default ability is powerful enough that you'll mostly use your powers for traversal, and getting some of the later powers means that you can fly through a stage without any worries. Most boss fights can be finished with pure brute force, and it isn't until you reach the final fight that you feel the game finally becomes challenging.

The part of the game that may irk players the most is the ending. The only way to reach the real ending in the game is to go through all of the levels and obtain all of the medals scattered throughout. That part is fine, as most games do that for you to see the best or true ending, but in Berserk Boy, this is the only way to see an ending. Beating the game normally just gets you a wall of text indicating that you aren't getting anything until you get those medals. What's supposed to act as motivation to keep playing ends up having the opposite effect, as many players will stop playing upon learning that caveat.

For the most part, the graphics are good. The characters are rather sizable, and the pixel art used for characters and backgrounds look very nice. The animations are also fluid but not to the point where you feel like animation is given higher priority over quick reactions. The game runs at a fairly high frame rate without the need for expensive hardware, but it is the resolution that may disappoint some players, as the game only supports three: 640x360, 1280x720, and 1920x1080. When you put the game to full screen, you can't tell that a resolution change has happened, as those choices only seem to exist if you're playing in windowed mode. It feels odd for the game to have only three resolution choices, especially as almost every other game on the PC supports a much wider variety.

As for the sound, the big highlight comes from the soundtrack composed by Tee Lopes of Sonic Mania fame. The score matches his past highlights, as it does a good job of evoking the feeling of a Mega Man title without necessarily feeling like it copies any one of those themes. It all sounds excellent and is paired up with some great sound effects. The voices are fine, as they're meant to sound decent while bordering on slightly bad, but it's disappointing that the game doesn't give every scene the full vocal treatment, choosing instead to have only certain lines voiced while others are silent.

The game is billed as "playable" on Steam Deck, and that is spot-on. The game hits 1280x720 with the expected black letterboxing on the top and bottom of the screen, and the game still looks great thanks to the pixel art. The frame rate is locked in at 60fps at all times, and the game features cloud saving, so it isn't a chore to bounce between both devices and keep the same progress as you do so. On a Steam Deck LCD version, the battery life hits just a little below four hours on a full charge, which is a strong showing.

Berserk Boy is a fine side-scrolling adventure that's elevated by its high-speed movement and fast action, which takes it above being another Mega Man-style clone. The inclusion of some light exploration elements also gives the game some legs to make it more than a mostly straightforward adventure. However, the overall low difficulty is a little disappointing, while the need to be a near-completionist to get any ending is irksome. It remains a good game, but it could've been better if some of those quirks had been ironed out.

Score: 7.5/10