Criminally underrated game in my book. Easily my favorite in the series.

Now, let me immediately qualify that by admitting that I don't really care for Golden Axe as a series. I wasn't around for it when it was new, I played Golden Axe 1 and 2 before games like Final Fight and Cadillacs & Dinosaurs helped me "get" beat-em ups, and I've never had a player 2 for Golden Axe. I'm able to "get" the appeal of a lot of classic SEGA properties, but Golden Axe is one of the few that's always eluded me.

Since I'm far from what might be considered a Golden Axe purist, the sorts of things I'd be looking for are sure to be different from the sorts of things a legacy fan would want out of a series revival. In addition, the sorts of complaints I see leveled at this game in particular (it's bland and mindless) are about in-line with what I feel about the rest of the series. The lack of multiplayer and character variety I get, but knowing that Secret Level was doing everything they could just to shove the game out the door, I'm a bit more understanding.

And like honestly? I'm all right with only Tyris Flare being playable, since this incarnation of her is way more interesting than what we saw originally, at least in the first two games. I feel like a lot of SEGA games with multiple playable characters all boil down to some combination of "dude", "dudette", "big dude", and/or "high-concept dude". I know Tyris is supposed to be the princess of a deposed kingdom, but we see absolutely none of that reflected in her 16-bit incarnations, so she mostly just comes across as "dudette". Tyris here is at least her own character, being the sole survivor of an Amazonian tribe wiped out by Death=Adder. That proud warrior archetype isn't exactly ground-breaking, but it's SOMEthing. Anyway, it's kinda fun seeing her boast about how great and mighty she is in the first-person tutorials.

(And like, this is absolutely the wrong series to turn to for feminist takes on female characters, but surely Tyris's leather armor in this game is at least a little more practical than her usual bikini mail)

I think what it is for me is that an honest-to-goodness effort was made to update the classic game's mechanics to late 00s sensitivities and execution. The titular beast riding is obvious - the Chicken Legs or whatever less-ridiculous names they've been given this time around have slightly filled-out movesets, with each of the different beasties having different things they can do. The game even capitalizes on the mechanic by having a late game mid-boss become rideable.

There is also the implementation of the original game's bonus stages, in which the player(s) tried to stop gnomish thieves from heisting their campsite and got extra potions for their trouble. These bonus stages are reprised here, only as mid-chapter pacebreakers rather than between levels. I kinda like this design - this isn't the sort of game that's conducive to interstitial sequences after stages, given that's where the narrative is placed, so sequencing in bonus rounds into the levels proper, such that they still represent some sort of challenge and turning point (it's been a couple years, but as I recall, you don't actually get a checkpoint before or after this bonus round, so dying means you have to replay this bit) is a compelling touch.

Plus, I know the titular Golden Axe is usually used by Death=Adder, and is thus traditionally the tool of the bad guy, but I dunno - I kinda like its use here as a ranged option for Tyris, akin to Marvel's take on Mjolnir.

Now, I'm not about to tell you this game is great or anything. I like the experiments they try with the level design - one level's wide open and asks the player to collect thingies from different parts to progress - but I generally didn't find any of the levels or environments themselves super memorable. There's a single gap in the game that is inexplicably impossible to clear unless you know that the jump kick can extend your jump; it's never conveyed that the jump kick is a platforming tool. If I cared at all about Gilius Thunderhead and Ax Battler as characters, I would probably object to this game's treatment of them, with Gilius cussing about his balls and Ax Battler being turned into some wandering dude's title.

But, like, this is the sort of game where I find its faults funny more than anything. I had a particularly memorable bug in the final fight against Death=Adder. He has two phases, and for some reason, after he transformed into his second phase, the game forgot to despawn the model of his first phase, and there were two Death=Adders on the field. The extra Death=Adder had rudimentary AI in place, but no actual battle routines, which created the odd effect where he kept running up to and circling Tyris, but didn't actually move to attack. It's kinda like if you've ever seen a schoolyard fight in a movie or something, where the bully goes in to beat up some nerd and the bully's flunkies just circle around taunting. Only here, it was Death=Adder taunting while a second Death=Adder beat me up. One of the funniest, strangest glitches I've ever run into.

I guess my point with all this is this: Beast Rider is a rough game, put together by a team in a hellish dev cycle that collapsed their company. I don't deny any of that. But I also cannot reconcile the idea that this game is in any way a betrayal of its series of origin, since it's a series I do not like to begin with. I find so much about the original games uninspired and uninteresting, which is not at all anything I can say about this attempted revival. I really respect how much this game tried. It's my hope that the next attempt to revive the property doesn't completely throw away the ideas raised here.

Not really sure why I wanted to buy myself a copy of this game so I deserved what was to come LOL.

This has to be one of the worst games I have played in awhile. From the terrible combat to level design to boring bosses to boring everything this game has nothing good about it. The combat is so mind numbingly boring where you have to either dodge or parry attacks depending on a color aura the enemy will show. As the titles suggests there are beats you can ride but they all feel so wonky to move around in BUT they do deal a lot of damage so are 100% worth using even though they are annoying to move around on. The level designs and overall look of the game is boring and bland that not once did I look at the game and found something cool about it.

Honestly there isn't much to say about this game just about everything is below average there is NO fun to be had with this game. Not sure what they were thinking with it lol they could have done so much more with the Golden Axe name besides giving us this mid.