Berserk. La Edad de Oro II: La Batalla de Doldrey

Took me longer to watch the whole thing than expected. Kept stopping after about :40 to do something else.

"Was it interesting?" I was expecting a darker story. The character motivations felt a little hollow.

1.5 out of 3 "Was it memorable?" The worst flaw is the movie trying too hard to be pretty. The attempted mesh between different animation styles was so distracting that it almost ruined some of the action scenes. Luckily there were enough action scenes to make up for this.

1.5 out of 3 "Was it entertaining?" It just felt long and badly paced, like 3 or 4 episodes spliced together. It progressed the story just enough to be adequate.

1.5 out of 3 Starting with 1 (because), 1 + 1.5 + 1.5 + 1.5 = 5.5 I'm rounding down to 5 because I feel that a :40 special with more traditional animation would have been find. They tried too hard.

The second part of "Berserk: The Golden Age Arc", "The Battle for Doldrey", picks up where the first left and continues with the business: fights, war and blood. And "The Battle for Doldrey" delivers, because it makes for a really engaging one hour and a half where, even if almost all the running time is dedicated to blood and guts, it has spare time to develop the characters and make them relatable.

A story depends on many things. Here you won't have to care about plot. "The Battle for Doldrey" goes for 100% action and does a great job at it. The action scenes are great, with an amazing direction and the animation very dark and gritty, down to earth. It is thrilling. And even if the action does not stop, it has more than enough moments in which the viewer gets to know more about the characters and their motivations. Even the voices match perfectly with the characters.

And there is a third part to end this very interesting story.

Better than Part - 1

In this opus, we are getting a lot more character development and answers than in the first one. Another good point is that this movie isn't sacrificing any aspect that I liked from Part - 1. The pacing is also much better.

The animation is pretty fluid, making it easy to enjoy and follow the amazing battle sequences. If you have seen the film you probably know that I'm referring to one particular battle, but anyway. This movie is as violent, as ambitious and as shocking as the first one.

In conclusion, if you liked Part - 1 more than me then you will surely love this movie, and if you were disappointed, I still suggest that you give Berserk - Part 2 a try before you abandon this franchise.

The only real problem here is the CGI, which is on the same level as your average ps2 game. This is made even worse by the fact that there are moments where it swaps from the bad CGI to the honestly great looking traditional animation, which makes me wonder why they didn't just keep it all traditional. Aside from that, it's an entertaining watch that held my interest.

I really liked the animation style of the OG berserk series but the 3d animation style on this movie especially on action sequences made me feel abit uneasy. Not a fan of the animation approach but i do enjoy the gores, and it was far more gruesome than it was on the series. Totally not for younger audiences. Tremendous improvement in the sounding department - Great scores and good intro song that was very reminiscene of the series.

Apart from the quality improvement and changes in style as well designs, nothing much of differences in the storyline (similar to the series, just few changes in the flow/pace). They even get rid of few important back stories that are supposed to be crucial for the whole franchise especially on guts, casca and griffith characters' development. Liking the feature changes on nosferatu and other demons.

Recommended.