Golden Axe is one of those retro games that just about everyone has heard of and for good reason too. It’s a very classic beat em up that got several sequels and the gameplay is very smooth. It’s also got a bit of a story to it so there is more of a budget than some of the other titles. The difficulty level is super high but what else is new right? At this point that’s really just par for the course.

The gameplay is fairly straight forward here. You can swing your sword, hit opponents at close quarters, and you can throw them. I found the most effective attack was to jump and swing your sword. This is because most enemies can’t reach you in the air which is already a super big advantage and then another good bonus is that it knocks the opponent over. So if you were getting trapped in the corner or something like that then this will give you a whole lot of space. Trust me, it’s a really good way to reset your positioning.

The only downside is that the attack isn’t particularly strong so you will have to use it a lot. Still beats getting hit constantly while trying to use the normal attacks though right? I would say to never use the standard hits unless it’s a one to one because almost inevitably the opponent will land a counter attack on you somehow. For some reason your hits just don’t really have much of a stun effect on them so the opponent is able to squeeze in a hit sometimes. Let me tell you, your health bar goes down really quick so those hits tend to add up before you know it.

That’s the part of the game that I would definitely like to have tightened up a bit. The beat em up style works better with large hit boxes where I can really be sure that my attacks are landing. You need at least some hit stun on the opponents and that’s really not much of a thing here. It makes it so you have to go with some cheesy strategies like the jumping hit that I mentioned. I really don’t think that’s the intended way to always launch an attack but it worked the best so why wouldn’t I use it right?

The graphics here are really good and I would say that’s one of the more impressive parts of the game. The colors really stand out and the stages are well designed. The soundtrack is also good with a lot of energy and life built into it. They didn’t hold back on the technical elements. As for the game’s length, I’d say it’s around an hour or so. The difficulty should definitely add on a few hours to that though as you will not be beating most of these levels on your first shot.

Maybe if you find the best place to use the bombs that will help. I never really figured out how to be more efficient with those. I sort of just used them as I got more because otherwise I’d be filled up a few times and the extra bombs would go to waste. Only unfortunate thing is you use them all up at once, I couldn’t figure out how to make it so I would only use 1-2. There has to be a way to do that though.

That’s about it for my gameplay tips here. It’s fairly straight forward so it’s really just about executing the attacks with perfect timing as opposed to learning anything fancy. You can always try to wait for the opponent to lunge at you. That way you step out of the way and then launch a counter attack. That’s actually a pretty effective way to handle things but not all enemies will do that. You can also cause an enemy to fall off the stage. Some minions like skeletons will literally just walk off the map if you bait them, while others require a quick jumping hit to take them over the edge. Either way it’s not super hard to do and it is really efficient since you are skipping a fight so I would say to keep that in mind. I feel like most beat em ups don’t really do that so it’s a nice little touch there.

The toughest enemies in the game are definitely the knights with a shield. I’m still not sure what the best way to deal with them is. Their blades are so long that they can hit you while you are jumping and they don’t let you get up close to hit them. I mostly just kept moving up and down to try and hit them as soon as they appeared in front of me but that’s hardly foolproof and I definitely took a lot of hard hits in the process.

Overall, Golden Axe is a pretty good game. It may not be the longest one out there and I had a few suggestions to improve the gameplay but on the whole I think it did pretty well for itself. I’m certainly ready to go and check out that sequel. It’s yet another game that would work really well in a modern setting. I can picture this becoming a 3D beat em up like Dynasty Warriors on the PS5 and just enjoying the process of taking all of the opponents down a few pegs. That would be a lot of fun. In the meantime if you have the Switch Online I would definitely recommend checking this one out.

Overall 7/10