Berserk Boy, released earlier this year, is a game I enjoyed moment to moment, but I wish I enjoyed it more. As it stands, it's overall a pretty good game that I hope did well enough to warrant a sequel to refine its ideas further, but it isn’t quite a must-play. It did, however, drive me a little insane for one specific reason, which is why when I sat down to write a review for my Backloggd account it turned into all this.
Here’s the thing: I love Mega Man ZX and Mega Man ZX Advent, the tokusatsu-flavored, Metroidvania-ish successors to Mega Man Zero released on the DS in the '00s. They’re some of my favorite Mega Man games, and I'm perpetually sad that Capcom never let Inti Creates make a third ZX game to follow up on Advent’s post-credits stinger. So it was a pleasant surprise when I started Berserk Boy and realized it wasn't just “Mega Man-inspired,” as it’s generally been called by the press in various positive-to-glowing reviews, but specifically Mega Man ZX-inspired. The ZX influence and the banger soundtrack by living legend Tee Lopes should be more than enough to make me love this game.
However, there's a difference between homage and unoriginality, and you couldn’t make a more blatant “homage” to the original Mega Man ZX without getting a strongly-worded letter from Capcom. I’ve played and loved a ton of indie spiritual successors to older games before, platformers especially, but I’m genuinely not sure I’ve ever seen one replicate the details of one specific game so closely with so few new embellishments or twists before. It doesn’t feel like a game inspired by Mega Man ZX, or even like a fan-made ZX 3 in all but name, so much as it feels like a romhack remix of ZX 1 that tweaks a few of the player character's forms and gives it different level design. And in some ways you could definitely argue it improves on its inspiration, but it’s harder for me to appreciate that when the game seems to actively deny giving itself its own identity.