Beyond Oasis is the equivalent to Zelda on Genesis.
Story: The
story of Prince Ali who gets the golden Armlet and has to fight against
the Silver Armlet is ok and is getting told well. But it doesn't really
caught me.
Gameplay: Beyond Oasis (BO) is played like Zelda
which means you control your character, in this case Prince Ali,
discover a big world, find items and fight against enemies.
Unfortunately it's not as big as Zelda. The map seems to be big (posted
screenshot) but in the end you just walk from one place to the other
without discovering anything interesting. And you also don't have as
much freedom as in Zelda. At the beginning you decide where you want to
go but later you lose this freedom and you go from one location to the
other without any junctions; you have to follow a path and you can't go
next the path you have to stay on it every time. Another unfortunate
thing is that you don't have much weapons. You just get knives and
crossbows and that's it. The fights are cool especially because of the
combos you can deliver but you can win them always the same way. Later
you get 4 spirits (one of them on posted screenshot) with different
elements you can and have to use. These spirits are a cool idea and fit
perfectly into this world. You also get food to heal yourself (HP or
SP).
Graphics/Dungeons: The graphic of BO is probably the best
on Genesis! Unfortunately they developers haven't made much with it.
The enemies are well animated but there are just a few different ones.
The same thing with the dungeons: you get in different dungeons but they
are dark and separate each other just by the colours. And the riddles
within the dungeons are easy and boring.
Sound: Yuzo Koshiro
made the music for this game and it's definitely his worst. He made some
cool music for games like Streets of Rage and Shinobi but for BO he
must have tried something that hasn't worked. The tunes are awful and
annoying and almost the same.
Conclusion: Beyond
Oasis is supposed to be a Zelda-like game and it is but a very light
one. There's a small world, just a few weapons, not many things to
collect and an ok story. The biggest strength is the graphic but it's
not well used and the world looks kind of boring. Another big weakness
is the bad sound by Yuzo Koshiro who has made some of the best after
this one. At the end you can say that Beyond Oasis is an ok Adventure
with some negative points but because there are just a few Adventures on
Genesis you won't regret it that much when you've played it.