Berserk Musou/Band of the Hawk

Making a dedicated topic since I'm playing this and looking into the mechanics seriously.

Accessory explanation.


Some quick notes.

*No jumping. Wasn't expecting that.
*Cooldown subweapons.
*Dodge offset (annoying actually).
*Dash cancels.
*4 starting characters are boring. S/T style combos.
*Lock on only seems to work on officers/bosses. Annoying to target single mobs like gate keepers.

Not the greatest, BUT, Schierke is playable and from what I've seen she's a summoner/traps/range type. I'll play until I unlock her and if she sucks I'm deleting.

Overall, the characters are very fast, except for Guts. His T enders often miss because the enemy has moved before he uses them, unless it's his SSST where he does a 360 spin.

That's why I don't like the S/T system that much because every character usually boils down to finding the best T ender that deal with crowds and spamming it.
-----

I'm playing on normal but will try Berserk mode which is above hard. This probably won't end well seeing as even on normal, hit properties are weird. Basic soldiers take hit-stun from every attack but tougher enemies like officers sometimes do and sometimes don't.

They can block, and you can break their guard. Seems to be no more than a certain amount of attacks.

Played Casca a bit. One of her sub weapons is an attack that seems to change depending on the state of the enemy. Mostly it's a grab where she does a spinning kick with pretty huge range, then does some kind of takedown, ending with her on top and stabbing them in the face. Seems completely invincible and immediately reminded me of some of Juliet's grabs. It changes when the enemy is blocking to a sword attack but I haven't used it much and forget exactly what it does.

All I care about is unlocking Schierke so I'm rushing story mode.

Got Zod for Endless Eclipse which is an arena survival mode thing with many floors. Haven't used him yet.

Regarding dodge offset, the next attack must be done immediately after dodging so the dodge itself is cut in half, maybe less. If you leave the input until near the end of the dash your string will reset.

There's also perfect guarding. The game doesn't tell you about this. I noticed a blue flash instead of the usual green effect and it unbalanced the enemy allowing for some free attacks.

Still not sure if guard breaking is based on an invisible meter or if certain attacks break it outright. Some boss attacks are an instant break, and in my command list I just noticed some parts of the string have a purple icon, which must indicate a breaking move, because the break flash is purple too but I've seen guards go down after consecutive regular attacks.

Finally got Schierke, and I'm getting sick of spelling that name and might just call her Shrek soon.

Anyway, she's immediately better than all the previous boring characters, though I haven't tried Farnese and Serpico yet as I unlocked all three at once.

Schierke is indeed a ranged character. Her basic string is odd. It's 4 S inputs, and each fire a different element. First she sends out a small tornado, second a water orb, third looks like a small fire beam, and lastly, makes jagged rocks come up and travel in a straight line. It's all around mid range though the tornado seems to travel much further.

Her charge attacks are interesting because they are essentially casting spells. They take longer than normal charge attacks. S,T strings result in AoE elemental attacks.

Her subs are fantastic and suit my playstyle perfectly.

Golem - Summons a mud golem. Draws enemy attention.
Magic Circle - If you do a charge attack, a copy of it will be made.
Poison field - Seems to slow enemies down and lasts quite a while. Not sure about damage.
Vortex - Sucks enemies into wherever you place it.

Once I figure out how to properly customize accessories, I'll start on possible builds. Range says it increases range, so I guess it means attack range and not ranged attacks. If so, I'm thinking of putting that in at full power and just use the first attack of her basic string which is the tornado.

Sub weapon recharge to have a golem and and poison field out as often as possible, then maybe something that lowers charge time.

Speaking of charge time, in Frenzy mode, her charges are instant.

I don't think I've talking about Frenzy yet. When you have full meter, you can activate and get stronger, more range and enemies will be torn to pieces when attacked. In this mode enemies will drop some kind of orbs that fill up the super meter which lets to do a screen clearing super move.

Once you do the super, you don't lose Frenzy because it's based on the meter draining, so it's possible to kill enough enemies to get another super in, and with the right skills more would be possible.

Interesting read, thanks for sharing! I never really dove into any Musou games, not my cup of tea most of the time. I like the super-system you describe, you can basically have Frenzy permanently if I understand it correctly?

>Musou games
They're pretty much crowd control games. I don't mind them but definitely got tired if the DW/SW games and spin-offs long ago.

Checking out various Musou games now, and there's definitely so much more to them than the old ones I used to play. Those had no dodges or cancels at all and really boiled down to whose T ender was the best at clearing crowds. Now Musou games have tons of RPG elements, equipment and abilities, characters that are very different from each other, offsetting, dodge cancelling. 

Enemies still seem pretty passive. Officers and named bosses attack often but regulars still stand around a bit. Difficulties in these games usually have the enemies do insane damage but nothing else changes. This can still be a danger though, especially with tougher types in the mix so you need at least some awareness of your surroundings. Tougher enemies and bosses barely take hit-stun.

I tried Berserk difficulty and got killed instantly. Not sure what kind of threat this difficulty will pose at level 99 and with top equipment. Deeper levels of Endless Eclipse are supposed to be quite tough.

One big change I'm seeing in these games is there are a lot of different enemy types now like monsters. In old Musou games, it was just humans and they were all pretty much the same.

>Frenzy
Not permanently, but with an accessory customized with the right skills you could make it build faster and last longer.

The reason I haven't updated this is because I only wanted to unlock Schierke and see if she suited my playstyle. She does, so I can leave it alone for a while.

At least one of the Berserk games did a better job with the cutscenes than the 'new' anime did, I'd say. The movie coverage for Golden Age was okay (most of the time). No real hope for adaptations (or even canon at this point). Miura has aged out in both art and his psyche (he isn't the same man he was when he wrote the parts that were best in the series, which bring in the fans *now he just wants to draw little girls peeing in the mouth of his self-inserts*). I don't really care about Musou. If I had gotten Oni into Berserk, that game would probably be ideal for him (being the Dynasty Warriors loving casual he is *uses cheats all the time in other HnS to make them as braindead easy as the normal experience for those titles as stress relief in a shallow power fantasy*).