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Taking Golden Axe back to its roots, but at the same time, taking a new storyline, Golden Axe Beast Rider puts you in the story of Tyris Flare whose Axirian sisterhood has been slain and her god captured by the Death Adder.
Tyris sets out to seek revenge with the help of mystical beasts rid the lands once and for all from the grips of the Death Adder and his underling Queen of the Dead.
True to the classic, Golden Axe Beast Rider is filled with barbaric action and nudity. This game is something parents would want to keep away from their children as environments are filled with sacrifices and massacres of both villagers and, mainly, the Axirian sisterhood. A lot of them are hung among poles and trees either almost or completely nude, not to mention the ones littered on the ground.
Not only are the environments filled with blood, upon slaying an enemy, the player can make a final cut to dice them in half whether vertically or horizontally, blood spilling spraying everywhere.
The leather armoured heroin also returns in her classic white with red lining bikini for fans all over.
With this being said, environments are detailed and filled with grass, ruins, rocks, mountains, and so forth, but what’s disappointing however the lack of textural quality. The graphics are, though with some detail, very simple and blurry, and resolution is low. The game looks a lot more like a small resolution game of 800 x 640 upscaled to 1280 x 720 as a fair amount of pixilation occurs during the course of the game. The worse part of it all though is that the game will also stutter every now and again, even with the lackluster visuals.
It’s not the worst graphically, but it isn’t particularly good either.
Sound is also very basic, from the sound of sword clashes, spell casts, running footsteps, and killing, to the background rhythmic background music. The music is more of a tribal ambience with some slightly more upbeat plays during fights. It’s also very soft so you will need to turn down the sound effects to balance out the sound a little during play.
During the course of the game, you will have in-game cinematics which are a little cleaner than the game itself, with slight improvements on textures. There are also 3 CGI movies in total dealing with the introduction of your god, and Death Adder; though these are also very basic, but very nice. As you watch through these scenes, they will become available in Bonus Features to be re-watched whenever you like. Though graphically improved, voicing isn’t very good. The voice cast is very plain, and in some cases, off tone.
While playing through, you try to gain as much loot as you can to pay as tribute to the gods. As you gain enough points, you will receive a gift of the gods which can be used in Challenge Mode and Trails of Tyris, consisting of weapons and costumes; which includes the bikini.
Challenge Mode allows you to play through any segment of the game you’ve already completed to increase tribute rank and unlock more weapons and costumes while trails of Tyris puts you into an arena within different locations in the game with 10 waves of enemies and you fight to survive them all.
Tyris is a master when it comes to combating and countering. While slashing horizontally is fast, it isn’t as strong as a vertical cut, which is a little slower. By mixing the two, you can create quick 2 or 3 button combos. Knockback is also available to give yourself some room and this can also be used within the combos. There will be times when knockback is required to knock enemies into poles to activate switches.
While combos and simple, if you want to gain more tribute points, you need to build up your Titan Bonus which adds a percentage more loot every time you collect some. To build it up, rather than button mashing the combos, you time each press to enable a brutal strike which builds up the percentage and deals more damage. If you get hit, the bonus resets to 0 and you need to build it up again. This timing only effects the fast horizontal swings though as the vertical swings have relatively the same timing as the brutal strikes.
Enemies also attack in the same manner where you evade vertical strikes to get behind them and deal a brutal strike, or parry their horizontal attacks to temporarily stun them. You can parry a vertical strike but that will marginally deal damage to you, and stun you.
When hand to hand combat isn’t enough, Tyris can use fire magic to help her and blast away enemies. As you gain more gifts from the gods, you will also gain stronger magic powers which also eat up more mana. Mana is replenished either through potions which you can find around the world in caskets and such, or a mana pool where you can stand and rejuvenate. This also applies to health through finding meat around or finding a health pool.
Combat, although simple, is easy to learn to just pick up and enjoy.
As mentioned, Tyris will also have the help of mythical beasts which she can summon from the portals. Utilising these beasts is very important as later in the game, enemies will have armour or fast movements. The beasts will act as a shield as they will take the damage instead.
The Abrax is great for firing a medium range artillery strike, while the Lynth is great for pouncing onto your enemies and quickly annihilating them. The Mirigore is more powerful than the Lynth and superb for its melee attacks but can gush up a tornado to blow everyone in it away, and the Krommath is great for trampling enemies under its feet.
Although you won’t get hurt, enemies can knock you off the beast and mount the beats themselves to use against you. There will also be times when they will already have one and you will need to knock them off to use it to your aid.
When an open beast is attacked instead, it will go into rage mode and attack anything it finds.
Golden Axe Beast Rider definitely revives the heroes and brings back old memories of pure massacre, but unfortunately it doesn’t bring back the same feelings with single player only. If you can get pass the lacking graphics and sound, this game can be enjoyable for its simple, yet satisfying carnage. And of course, for all the fan ’boys’, they get their treats.
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