Regular blog readers (all eight of you) will remember that
Golden Axe was the last game I finished, and that it took me 21 years from
first playing it to beating it.
The sequel didn’t take me quite that long.
As was the case in sequels of the time, nothing much had
changed about the nature of the game. It was still a fantasy-based
side-scrolling beat-em up. The plot was more or less identical; it just had a
different antagonist. The levels were slightly different – there was a little
more variation to the backdrop this time around – but still a fantasy based
setting. And it was still the same three characters: Ax, Tyris and Gilius. And
why not? The formula worked so well the last time, and it wasn’t all that
common to mess with it in those days.
So what has changed? Well, I saw two main changes from the
previous game:
The first was the way the magic works. Skirting past the
fact that the little Wizard creatures you have to beat to gain power can now
actually harm you, magic is now a little more flexible in terms of how much you
use. You can press the button to get a basic spell, or hold it down to charge
up to the amount of power you have. This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s
good that you don’t have to commit to using all of your power the moment you cast
a spell as in the previous game. It’s not so good because as it will take at
least some time to charge even the most basic power, it’s now almost impossible
to use magic to break stun-lock. It doesn’t happen as often in this game but it
would have been nice to have the option!
The other thing that has changed is the way that attacks
have been balanced. In the previous game, it was all about spamming the dash
attack. In Golden Axe 2, different enemies require slightly different
approaches and the dash isn’t always the best one. The Lizardmen, for example,
are best dealt with using a jump attack. The Headless Swordsmen are ferocious
but they tend to go down more easily if you come at them from an angle and use
your attack combo. It’s still a case of spamming your attack, but there is some
flexibility over which one to spam. The minions, and the Skeletons in
particular, can be a pain in the bum, but that’s the time to be using your
magic – to deny them their advantage of numbers.
This results in a game with a lot less cheap deaths than
Golden Axe. Stun lock occurs a lot less, any of the characters work well and there
is a lot more variety when it comes to strategy. However, it also meant that I
beat the game on my third attempt, having gone through all the characters and
chosen Gilius this time, and that only took about 40 minutes in all. I suppose
I could go for a score attack if I really wanted to give myself a hard time –
you tend to be graded on how much damage you did to how much you took – but that
would suck all the fun out of the game for me. Golden Axe 2 is a better
designed and objectively more fun game than Golden Axe – but I’m glad it was
part of a bundle and I didn’t spend any significant amount of money on it.
Unless someone really wants to play two-player co-op with
me, I probably won’t come back to Golden Axe 2; the job is done in my opinion.
It was fun while it lasted, but in this case, the game didn’t last too long.
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