Glorious Golden Axe. This game is a classic beat-em up that sticks out in many memories for its good use of fantasy elements, great villain design, and those little thieves with their quirky music. ?This is a good game which rises above its flaws. The Story is simple, you play as one (or two if using another player) warriors who lost family to a evil bad guy called Death Adder, who wields a big axe. Death Adder has recently kidnapped a royal family and has taken over their castle, so it is to there the heroes seek him, and battle all the friends of Death Adder who are terrorizing the countryside.


The Characters
You can choose between a sword carrying barbarian guy called Ax Battler, an amazonian swordswoman with great fire magic, ?and a dwarf with a really big axe. All of them play the same except for their competence in magic, which deal damage to the whole screen when used. All feature a running attack, a jumping downward thrust, and a throw attack.
Enemies to use these talents on include skeletons, armored knights, medieval brigands and outlaws with spiked clubs. ?They often try to gang up on you, and can sometimes charge or jump attack just like your characters. There are also a few neutral characters- strange creatures to ride on if you can take them from the enemies, including dragons, an odd chicken creature with a long tail. There are also small people who are dressed like gnomes, they carry big treasure sacks. You will kick them if they go by and get magic potions or meat, they do not attack you back, other than sometimes stealing your magic between levels.
The bad guy Death Adder, is an imposing figure, and is as dangerous as the poisonous snakes his name brings to mind.

The Setting

I think the fantasy element is well used in Golden Axe. You use an old map as you travel between stages, you will see castles, and unique things like travelling aboard a giant bird! The odd mounts mentioned earlier seem to indicate this world has semi-domesticated dragons, and each hero commands a type of magic. ?Strangely, the game is called Golden Axe, and while the dwarf and Death Adder use giant battle axes, none of them are golden. So the title is a bit of a misnomer as there is no gold axe. ?The story could have benefited from a bit more, but its pretty standard for these types of games. Bad guy did bad, go get revenge on him and make him stop. I did like the small touch of narrative that came on the main map after completing each stage, and gave a point extra for that small detail.


The Sound
The music at first I couldn't really remember, but playing the game again, I did recognize some tunes that do well to set the stage. The old harpsichord sounding, tingling music of the map screen, the low drums of the battle music, the whimsical tune of the thieves stealing your stuff in the bonus levels, and the foreboding music of Death Adder. Its pretty good. The groans and death screams seem fairly overused. At least the skeleton didn't have one.


The Difficulty
Golden Axe isn't really that hard, but it can be a bit frustrating. ?The enemies, while never more than a handful at once, can gang up on you. The mounted enemies using the dragons or the chickentail can be rough in crowds too, as they add a reach advantage. There is a lot of instant death ledges you can walk off, and some enemies will hit you and you'll fall off from knock back. Fortunately, the AI is pretty dumb, and sometimes will walk off the ledge themselves. You can also use the rushing attack to ram them off ledges behind them. In fact just to get a decent ending you have to play this on harder difficulties, as easy only takes you through part of the game. Death Adder has special moves, so he is a good, intimidating last boss. The genesis went one step further and added a secret stage if you play it on a higher difficult, complete with a harder boss that uses magic fairly frequently.?

Overall
While there is no Golden Axe in a game called Golden Axe, and the enemy AI is either cheap or dumb, this is a blast to play. Golden Axe gets the feel of their setting and offers characters that look like they belong in that world. If you like beat em ups and fantasy, this is the game that gets most of it right.

endings : Nice review I played this game before after my boyfriend recommended it to me and thought it was a decent game. Your review is spaced out nicely and what would help your readers even more is if you put your score next to the category so that readers don't have to scroll back up to the top   Otherwise, you had some good details in there, so keep writing those reviews for the site!

kramer4077 : Thanks, that is good advice!