As well as causing control issues if you try to turn around and lamp an enemy behind you quickly (surprise! You're blocking the wrong way now!), the pushback when you block an attack is so severe that you'll usually be out of range to counterattack, the exception being some special moves if you can pull them off while you're being pushed back (Sara's sword-throw, Chronos' leap) or if you're very, very close to the enemy, in which case you may as well attack anyway. There's one more addition, possibly the biggest addition- a block command, done with Back + Attack, and you can hold it to become impervious to most enemy attacks!. Aside from these slight omissions though, the additions make the game move away from the Double Dragon feel the original games had, and more like the contemporary competition. However, some magic mechanics have disappeared- characters now all have three magic levels rather than the character-specific levels previously, and you can no longer pick what level of magic to use as in Golden Axe II. There's even co-op attacks and magic spells that cane be used by players facing each other briefly, although the utility of the physical attacks is limited as you often won't have time to use them. Now, though, every character has stronger forward attacks with Forward + Attack + Jump, low sweep attacks with Down + Attack, and one Street Fighter-esque special move each with different effects- Sara throws her sword like a boomerang, Kain does a Power Wave fires a flame across the ground, etc. The player characters still have the moves from previous games, such as dashing, crowd-control back attacks, jumping stabs and so on, and as ever there are Bizarrians to ride and help you out, though they're few and far between. While Golden Axe II was based entirely on the original game's engine (although I actually like Golden Axe II, so come fight me), III has been made from scratch, with a fighting system that brings it more in line with contemporaries like Streets of Rage II. Over six stages, with a branching path system similar to the one in the arcade-only Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder, your chosen warriors must fight for the Golden Axe, for the last time on Sega hardware. Instead, four new warriors- Kain Grinder (basically Ax Battler), Sara Burn (basically Tyris Flare), Proud Cragger (basically Max Thunder) and Chronos "Evil" Lait (basically the game breaker)- take up the task of trekking across the land to defeat the forces of Damned=Hellstrike (also known as the Prince of Darkness) who has stolen the Golden Axe, brainwashed all the warriors of the land (including the characters you didn't pick), and ushered in an era of darkness. With the exception of Gilius, who appears briefly at the start to lift a curse placed on your chosen player character, the classic Golden Axe trio are nowhere to be found. So then, actually talking about the game now. If only there was a way I could play it a lot and then write down my analysis on why I feel it doesn't wo- oh. It couldn't just have been the backgrounds being dull and the lack of Chicken-Leg, right? I didn't like it, but the specifics were hard to define. I kept retrying it every time it showed up on those aforementioned Sega collections (beating it for the first time in the Sega Vintage Collection rerelease on XBLA) but every time it was the same. Ever since then, I've disliked the game and yet been unable to articulate why. The verdict the only-slightly-smaller-than-now version of me had of this was that it wasn't the Golden Axe I knew. A third Golden Axe? I would've been all over this, surely! I love Golden Axe! Why was I not informed? Sega passed on releasing this in the West? But why, it's all in English! This is nonsense! Thus, one of the first Mega Drive games I looked into for emulation was Golden Axe III. I don't know about you- perhaps you were the kind of person who was better versed in import games back in the 90s, or had access to the Sega Channel- but until the advent of emulation (and, well, every Sega collection under the sun including it as part of its roster) I never actually knew Golden Axe III was even a thing, so to find it when first downloading Genecyst was a shock. Or, rather, the sequel I never knew existed. Let me tell you a story about GOLDEN AXE from my youth. Golden Axe III - Time passes and their battles become legends that pass down forever.
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