This was the very definition of "rent, but don't buy" as a kid, since you could feasibly see most of the stages within a 3-day rental period. The crowd control gameplay still mostly eludes me - I just don't see how you have more than a split second to time attacks and dodges when 4 difficult enemies are all gunning for you. I'm probably not utilizing the moveset to the fullest. Overall though, I just wanted to say: like with every Golden Axe title, this soundtrack fuckin' slaps HARD. If you want real metal kvlt FM synth shit, look no further. I wouldn't blame you if you skipped the game entirely and spent hours in the sound test section vibing to all the BGMs.

Golden Axe III was never really a game I was interested in playing for the longest time. I think a big part of it was because I disliked Golden Axe II and this game has a very polarizing reception. You can find many people who like this game and even argue it was one of the best of the beat em ups on the Mega Drive. Nowadays however it’s very clear people don’t appreciate it like it once was, while there are still enjoyers of it, I always felt like the negative reception has been more vocal. This game also back then stayed in Japan though it was probably meant to get a US release considering art for the cover was already made for the game but it was only released on the Sega Channel. It’s been almost 3 decades since this came out and it’s time to give my opinion.

This is a 1 or 2 player beat em up where you’ll go through 7 stages with a choice of four characters this time. No one from the past games is playable here though Gilius does show up in the beginning to remove the curse of the one you chose and he’s also at the end of the game. The first character you can choose is Chronos Lait who is half human half panther. Due to this, he uses his strengths of being part panther to use with some great speeds and has many good attacks with his claws. He was the character I chose for my playthrough. Kain Grinder is this game’s typical buff dude with a sword though for some reason he was my least favorite to use. I did only play the others for stage 1 to see how I’d feel about them, he was the one I just couldn’t get good attacks on enemies with. Sarah Barn is this game’s token sexy girl. She uses a shorter ranged weapon but makes up with it by using different moves to support her smaller weapon giving her more technique then Kain. Finally we have Broude Kragger who is the slow but powerful character kind of like Max from Bare Knuckle II. I almost went with him but I felt his slow speed wasn’t too good for this game but he’s probably fun to use if you’re doing 2 player mode.

One thing you’ll notice messing with the controls is that you have a lot more moves to use. While you obviously only have one button for attack, they’ve given it a lot more uses compared to the previous entries. I mean just look at this move list and be amazed at just how much you can do. It’s easily one of the biggest improvements this game makes compared to the previous game. You can feel like a badass just with the many options you have at your disposal, even stuff like grabs have more depth even if it’s still nothing major for the genre. There’s even a block function though you have to do back and attack to activate it which felt too unnatural for me to use comfortably. Magic sadly hasn’t been changed at all and in fact was made worse compared to II as that game didn’t force you to always use the highest level of magic which this game does. Characters in this game don’t even have their own max levels for potions you can hold at once, they’re all the same amount which is a weird thing to keep the same for each character. One other cool thing that I sadly couldn’t do is there are co-op attacks and even co-op magic attacks giving you more reason to play with a friend.

Levels haven’t really been expanded much in this title and still feel like stuff you’d find in the past few games in the series but that’s not really a bad thing. One cool thing however is the ability to take multiple paths to lead to different areas of the stage you’re in allowing for a lot more replayability. That said however it’s still the longest game in the series so you got yourself some time to spend on this before your journey ends. This game also makes you play through it with no passwords or saves and you have limited continues though for a beat em up this is understandable as the other games did it too. One odd thing I felt was it seems the game really tones down instant death as pits are a lot rarer which means you or the enemies won’t be falling too much in this game. Maybe they’re more common in different routes but I’ll explain later why I only did one playthrough. So with new move variety and lots of replayability, this sounds like it’ll be amazing right? Well about that…

Let’s talk about the enemy variety. It’s horrible. There is so little here and it just gets old after a while. Could the team just not put anymore enemies when making this game? It’s a shame because it hurts the combat for reasons I’ll explain in a bit. There’s also barely any rideable mounts with one being this weird snail thing that uses its tongue and fire breathing dragons. The enemies do at times try to change up their strategy which is cool but it doesn’t make up for having to fight the same dudes over and over again. Then you got the enemies with shields and this right here is one of the worst parts about the game. I get it, you can block so they should be able to as well but it basically ruins the idea of wanting to use a lot of your moves because once you find the moves they suck at shielding against, you’re going to spam them. In fact let’s get this clear rn, this game has a huge problem with basically relying on a couple of moves just to survive the later stages as you can get beaten to a pulp if you don’t play optimally. You do at least get health refills from the reoccuring elf thieves and you can even gain lives by saving 5 humans and best of all you can up your max health by collecting hearts. Still though at the end of the day, it’s going to feel draining and it hurts the combat when shields are mixed in.

The bosses don’t help matters as they can really be annoying unless you abuse their bad AI quirks. It’s either going to be you dying trying to be flashy or just spamming the same two moves as you may get hit a couple of times which is never fun. It especially gets bad when said bosses start just becoming enemies in the actual levels and sometimes it just annoys me to the point I said “Oh come on! Enough with this!” Which made me pause the game and realize I wasn’t having fun anymore and got kind of quiet. This is when I knew the game was showing its flaws for me and this was the point I knew I wasn’t going to do more playthroughs.

I’m going to say it, this game is way too long for its own good. I’d argue this might be a me problem because the first game was pretty short but I rather take that then this which feels like it never ends. If they were going to make a game longer, they really needed to do more than just add branching paths, just something that isn’t fighting the same five enemy types. Maybe if the levels were a bit shorter or even had set pieces which the first stage did but I can’t think of other examples. I honestly would have played the game more times if it weren’t for how repetitive it can get and that’s such a shame because having a lot of replayability is cool. There is one more thing I need to discuss however which is the ending.

Okay so this game has two different endings and the way you get it is confusing. Apparently this game was infamous for not really being known how you truly get it. It does seem to be known nowadays (EDIT: Hey Arle here! What I'm about to say is actually wrong at least according to the site gaminghell so apologies for the misinformation with this section.) so I’ll just say the one I saw that seems to be right. One thing I didn’t mention about the bosses was you can actually fight the other playable characters that have been cursed as Gilius was only able to save one of you. Saving one of these characters will basically allow a continue. Now you may think “But Arle! You have 4 continues from the start!” Yes that’s true but let’s say you only save two but use three continues, you get the bad ending due to using more than you saved. Meaning all of that could be for nothing if you use too many continues. While I can’t confirm it, but some routes don’t lead to those characters though going down every time for me led to all of them so I’m not sure if I got lucky. Now if it was just for the good ending, I wouldn’t really care but you need to do this to fight the 2nd phase of the final boss so you’ll never feel fulfilled and why is it even so cryptic to begin with? At least you don’t have to worry about the difficulty selection gatekeeping the final boss like II did but this still isn’t much better in some ways.

Graphically, the game is kind of boring to me personally. This game came out in 1993 and there were many better looking games in 1993 or even before like Thunder Force IV, Gunstar Heroes, and Phantasy Star IV. I won’t say it all looks bad but I do wish the game used more than 8 megs. Even the magic isn’t all that impressive looking which is a shame, I was hoping it would look the best here. If you play in co-op this game also occasionally has slow down though I couldn’t test it out. The sprites are good and while some could have better uses of color, it’s a better use of the graphics in my opinion. The music is decent but there are some good tracks like The Vast Field and Ancient Mound (Wish I could’ve heard that one during my playthrough). Sadly the voices are still not good but that doesn’t surprise me.

I gotta say, I’m sorry to the fans who like this game that I gave it a hard time. I really do like things about Golden Axe III and would love to see another crack at it to improve it’s flaws in my eyes but sadly the series never got another entry like this with the next game in the series being an Arcade fighting game. I really want to like Golden Axe III as I’d argue it could be the 2nd best game in the series with some of the things I complimented it for but its flaws hurt it so much for me. I feel so bad having to give it this score because I almost thought of giving it a 6/10 and even a 7/10 earlier in my playthrough. Maybe it would be more fun for me if I played with someone else? I think you should try giving it a full playthrough if possible but I don’t blame you if you stop. I’ll give the game this, I liked it more then II because at least this had its good moments. I should probably end the review now before I get more sad about how this game ended up for me.

WAIT! I completely forgot about VS MODE! So it’s basically like the bosses where you fought the other playable characters, you can even play as the bird boss Eve. Yeah there’s really nothing else to say here, bye bye!

On the 19th of the month known as May, a lone warrior by the name of “Mega Middle Name Last Name” went on a quest… a quest to tackle a long-forgotten legend known as the Axe of Gold. Through this journey, he found himself the first piece of this axe, and had to then complete a trial to claim it, but unfortunately for him, this trial wouldn’t please him, and he would merely deem it as simply being “ok”. This stagnant opinion of his would only get worse overtime when he found the second piece of this axe, where he would then have to face another trial, one that would frustrate the hero more than anything else, being almost identical to the original trial in just about every way. Our hero deemed this trial to be “a waste of time”, and yet pressed on, clearing this trial and gaining the second piece of the axe. He struggled to find the courage, strength, and determination to press on, as he had a pretty good idea about what he would find if he continued on, but after his inner thoughts shouted at him enough, he then pressed on anyway through a land known as the “Sega Channel”, and found the third and final piece of the Axe of Gold.

Before finding this final piece of the relic, the warrior had come across the hilt of the Axe of Gold, which had an engraving which read “Vengeance of Death Adder”, where he faced another trial, which he went into with the lowest of hopes, and came out with the highest of praises. It had taken what the previous trials had given him, but with a hint of quality seen that the previous trails failed to achieve, which gave him hope for the remainder of the trials that he would face. Unfortunately though, once he took on this third and final main trial, what he found just simply couldn’t compare to that past trial. Nevertheless, when comparing these trials, he found this third trial to be of higher praise and value then the first two main trails, but nothing that was gonna make him retell his adventures to many adoring listeners, as it had very few noteworthy moments throughout.

The tale of the trial was one the warrior was well familiar with, with an evil tyrant known as Damud Hellstrike taking the golden axe and placing a curse on the avatars found in the trial, so the chosen avatar by the warrior had to go stop these cursed avatars and save the day, which didn’t captivate our hero, but he ignored it and continued on either way, the landscape presented to the warrior was very similar to that of the previous trials, but with noticeable improvements over the landscapes he had previously ventured through, along with more detail being added to the avatars present, the melody that flowed through the trial was one that the warrior was also familiar with, sharing similar qualities with previous melodies he had heard, but it was nothing that would ultimately stick with him after the trial was done, the weapons given to him were of a similar quality to the previous trials, but he found them to have a better flow then previous ones, with faster combat and movement being to his liking, and the challenges he faced took the basis of the challenges from the previous two main trials, but improved on them ever so slightly to make it seem like the gods behind these trials wanted to try something different, but the warrior could see right through this hoax.

The challenges the warrior faced were those of the fantasy beat-’em-up fashion, where he would take control of one of the four avatars presented to him, travel through a land full of thirteen different locales, slay many different creatures and foes that he would encounter along the way using his preferred melee techniques, along with several magical techniques he had picked up on his quest, gather plenty of magical potions and food items to keep himself well fed and protected throughout the journey, and fought plenty of big, bad beasts that would prove to be more challenging than any other foe he had faced previously in his journey, both in terms of genuine challenge and the dirty tactics they would use against him. While challenging, there wasn’t much in this trial that the warrior hadn’t faced before in a similar fashion, but throughout the journey, he did notice a few things that weren’t present in the previous trials.

The warrior had found influence from the Vengeance of Death Adder trial in the form of alternating paths that he could take, with each of them leading to different parts of the locales that he ventured through, as well as some paths allowing him to reach other locales that he wouldn’t be able to reach if he had ventured down the other pathway. This was a change that pleased the warrior, even if it didn’t really change too much about the trial itself, but it allowed for many different possibilities for him if he at all decided to tackle the trial again. In addition, throughout his journey, the warrior saved many different innocent souls that would contribute to his quest by giving him additional chances, which would help in case he was ever slain on his journey. This change didn’t really impress the warrior too much, but it was noteworthy enough to where he was thankful it was there.

Unfortunately though, this was where the warrior’s compliments for the trial ended, and where his complaints soon began. Upon finishing the trial, he then pled to the gods, asking them why he was continuously being given the same tasks to complete over and over again on his quest to obtain the Axe of Gold. The Vengeance of Death Adder was the only trial he had faced which he considered being of legendary status, but for the trials before and after that one, the warrior felt nothing but a sense of gruesome repetition that ate at his soul every time he would take on one of them. The difficulty of the challenges he faced didn’t help make this feeling go away either, as he looked over the many battle wounds he had suffered through the journey. However, as he pled to the gods for answered, he found himself not getting any sort of response from them, and at this point, he figured he never would. It was typical at this point, really.

Thus, despite the content of the trial remaining as basic as ever, the hero concluded that, for this third and final main trial he had faced, it was nothing more than just being a basic trial that had some certain level of excitement that was admirable compared to the previous trials, but nothing that would make him want to come back anytime soon. “To any other aspiring warriors reading this”, he proclaims, “do not attempt what I had done unless you were thoroughly pleased with what the previous trails from the Axe of Gold. The rewards may be great, but the journey to get there will not grant you the same satisfaction.” After the warrior spread this message to others throughout the land, he then went back to his home base, Axe of Gold in hand, ready to see what other adventures he could take on after this. What trial will he take on next, and will he ever venture back out to find the remaining trinkets for the Axe of Gold? Only time will tell…

Trial #429

EDIT: Hi, it's me, Mega, talking in the first person to say that, on the day before I posted this review, they announced a brand new Golden Axe game at the Game Awards. I swear I didn't plan this to line up so perfectly, and no, I don't know why I have these mystical powers.

Honestly at the start I thought I was going to enjoy this game because I was having a decent amount of fun but that quickly faded way. While longer then the other titles the length honestly hurts this game really showing the lack of enemy variety there was.

I think my biggest issue with this game was the absurd difficulty because my lord this game was so damn challenging for no dang reason. I did like the visuals however the game did look good and to me it played fine enough.

Overall very disappointed with this one.

Golden Axe III tem a melhor jogabilidade da série, com controles fluídos e comandos variados, que eventualmente se assemelham à jogos de luta. Dá pra ver a influência de Streets of Rage I e II nas mecânicas aqui, e voltar para os Golden Axe anteriores gera um estranhamento com os controles mais atravancados deles.

Mas mesmo assim vale mais a pena voltar para os antecessores do que jogar esse aqui. Tudo que Golden Axe III oferece de bom se perde no meio de gráficos bem feios, piores até que o do primeiro jogo, de 89. Além disso, as fases sem inspiração, de uma palidez ímpar, que mesmo que permitam múltiplos caminhos não anima muito, pois se saí de uma fase sem graça para outra sem sal. Outra coisa que não ajuda muito é a repetição de inimigos, no caso 4 regulares e 3 chefes que depois viram oponentes comuns. As únicas coisas que mudam são as cores e um padrãozinho diferente aqui e acolá. A falta de criatividade também é vista nas montarias, também repetitivas, com uma sendo virtualmente inútil.

A trilha sonora é mais inspirada e bem executada nesse hardware querido que costuma sofrer nesse quesito, mas ainda fica atrás das presentes nos antecessores.

Recomendo só para quem for MUITO fã do gênero e tiver curiosidade sobre como os controles trabalham aqui. Fora isso, melhor deixar passar.

Caiu de nível. O game possui gráficos inferiores até para o primeiro game, lançado em 1989. As músicas são horríveis, não tendo mais aquele tom medieval. As fases e cenários ficaram sem inspiração, com pouquíssima inovação e criatividade.

Até nos pontos positivos existem pontos negativos. O game está mais difícil e com fases mais longas (o que mostra o quanto os inimigos são repetitivos no jogo). Durante as fases você pode escolher o trajeto que vai seguir, o que também é uma ótima inovação (apesar do jogo não deixar claro os caminhos certos a seguir, o game tem finais diferentes de acordo com os caminhos que você for escolhendo ao longo das fases, o que não faz muito sentido pra mim). Resumidamente Golden Axe I e II são melhores que esta sequencia.