Darkest day

Berserk And The Band Of The Hawk provides a supernatural take on a natural phenomenon

The Eclipse is the culmination of the Berserk manga’s Golden Age arc, the point at which it shifts starkly from medieval war drama flashbacks to dark fantasy brutality. Anybody familiar with the manga has this unsavoury event marked in their calendar from the moment they start the game.

Featuring one of the most frustrating boss fights in the game and a tricky collectible Behelit, as well as some of the most disturbing scenes drawn from the anime

movies, Berserk And The Band Of The Hawk gives this cataclysmic moment the emphasis it deserves.

The Nexus stage is stripped back yet ominous, with walls of shifting, horrified faces and the ground pooled with blood, under a moody red light. Soldiers are swapped for demon warriors, and towering monsters pop up as regular enemies to make squelchy nuisances of themselves. It’s easy to lose sight of Guts in the mess of bodies!

The battle isn’t split into subquests and there are no real optional objectives. Your primary goal for this level is simply to search for your friends as you cut through swathes of monsters, and each checkpoint is marked by a movie cutscene showing various members of the Band Of The Hawk meeting a grisly end. It’s a straightforward path in the same way that diving off a cliff is, but with more forced slow-mo and hurricanes being slung at you. It’s a battle that’ll stay with you on its own merit, even if Femto’s such a pain to fight he’s memorable enough on his own.