Golden Axe III

"You can't play as Gillius, but it's still a great import game."

Golden Axe is after Streets of Rage the best beat em up series on the Sega Mega Drive. The first two Golden Axe games was almost the same game, the only difference was the enemies, the stages and the villain. However in Golden Axe III, Sega decided to take the series one step further. I have no idea why this game didn't get released outside of Japan. But if you can read this review then you don't have to worry about the language, because it's still in English.

The Prince of Darkness Hellbringer (Now that's an evil name) have taken the Golden Axe (which explains why our favourite Dwarf Gillius Thunderhead can't take a part in this journey) and put a curse on four of the strongest warriors. I don't know when Gillius learned this spell, but he manages to lift the curse of one hero. (or two heroes if you want to play this game with a friend). Your mission is to get back the legendary Golden Axe.

I'm not sure how many years this game takes place after the previous two, but according to Wikipedia all the four characters are new characters in the series, even two of them really reminds of two of the heroes in the original Golden Axe.

The first one is the barbarian Kain Grinder, who looks like if he's the same barbarian as in the previous games. His strength is his big sword which both have a great distance and is very powerful. If you haven't played many beat em ups, then Kain is the best character to start with.

The second character is the amazon Sarah Barn, which looks just like Tyris Flare from the previous games. Her big advantage is her special moves, one is a sword dance which pushes every enemy away from her, another special is that she uses her sword as a boomerang. She's also really fast and is a good character to begin with.

The third character is a big giant called Braoude Cragger. He is the type of character which have never been seen in any of the previous Golden Axe games, the big tough guy which is really slow but can also do a lot of damage. I would much rather have seen Gillius Thunderhead as a playable character instead of this guy, but he's still a great force.

The final character is a humanoid panther called Chronos "Evil" Lait. His the weakest of the characters but also the fastest. The trick is to never ever try to stand still with him, and he has a deadly move after he have double jumped, but he's still considered to be the worst character to choose in this game.

In the previous game all characters needed a different number of magic points to use their strongest magic, but in this game every character have three different levels of magic, and each character can carry up to 6 magic pots, and if two players have ten or more pots together it's possible to do a combination magic attack. You get more magic pots by punching the small gnomes who are all over each stage. It's important to choose the right time when you want to use magic, so most people prefers to use it on the stage boss.

Golden Axe II had a total of six stages, plus an extra final stage where you fought the final boss. Golden Axe 3 has up to 12 different stages, which are all bigger than the stages in the previous Golden Axe games on the Sega Mega Drive. Since it would take many hours to play through them all, Sega was smart enough to make it possible to choose different paths at some times when you play this game. You come to different places depending on which path you choose to go to, and some stages are more difficult than others, so make sure that you explore each path if you don't complete this game in your first try.

Just like in the previous Golden Axe games it's possible to ride on monsters and use them to attack your enemies. But unlike the previous games where the monsters could look really different, they all look like dinosaurs in this one, and are not even half as useful as they where in the previous games. However if you are a character with a short range, then maybe it's a good idea to quick find a dinosaur to ride since they usually have a good range.

Except for the 1 player and 2 player mode there's also the duel mode which was also included in the two previous games on the Sega Mega Drive. In this mode it's either possible to battle the other heroes which are CPU controlled, or if you have a friend playing with you it's possible to fight each other to death. as you might have guessed this mode is not as fun as the other mode and if you want to fight with a friend it's better to play a vs fighting game instead. However there's another playable character in this mode which is just a boss in the other mode. The Falcon-Man is also playable in the VS MODE. You get nothing special if you complete this mode while you are playing alone.

If you thought that Golden Axe 2 was hard to complete than you will have a lot of trouble with this game. The easy difficulty does not exist in this game and even the normal mode is a tough challenge in this game. My advice if you want to complete this game is that you play with another person who also likes this type of games. Hopefully your teamwork will save you from allowing the horrible GAME OVER screen to appear. However if you want to play with a friend, than you won't have as many credits as you would have if you played alone, and there will be more enemies.

Speaking of the enemies I think it's about time that I mention the few flaws this game have which is why I couldn't give this game more than just an 8. First of all one of the biggest problems is the enemies. I have no problem with colours swaps of enemies which usually means that some colours are stronger than others, but there aren't many kind of enemies in Golden Axe III, considering how big the game is. It's almost the same enemies all the time.

Another thing that can be a pain is that some of the enemies also can block attacks, just like the player. While I guess it's better that the enemies can block instead of using an ultra cheap counter attack, it makes some enemies really hard to hit.

The third thing that I personally don't mind is the graphic, it's doesn't exactly look like it's the best the Sega Mega Drive can handle, and some of the backgrounds looks really boring. However I have never understood why people who write reviews of games that are over 10 years old cares about the graphic.

Even if it's unforgivable of Sega that they have made a Golden Axe game where Gillius Thunderhead isn't a playable character, this game is still my favourite of the three Mega Drive games in the series. Since this game is more difficult and have different paths to choose, I think that this is a great game to add in your Sega Mega Drive collection if you can play Japanese games. Personally I have no idea why nobody released this great game outside of Japan.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/11/07