This is one of those old Genesis games that really pushed the console to its limit. It showed what was possible with these platformers and I can say that it has aged well. Now, I do think there are a certain amount of mechanics and areas that would have been really annoying if I played it without the rewind feature, but as it stands it was a fun game with these quality of life updates.

The game begins with the kingdom being attacked and the princess is captured. Her brother the crown prince has to save her as well as the world and he is armed with a powerful arm weapon. It can be used to harness the powers of the 4 legendary elemental spirits. This will give him a fighting chance at the very least. He will need to defeat the mysterious villains and reclaim the other arm weapon, but it appears to have grown sentient and evil. This will not be easy.

As far as the gameplay goes, it’s an overhead Legend of Zelda type game. No worries though, you can jump and use an assortment of magic. The various spirits you summon can heal you or aid you in battle by attacking foes. They all have their own special abilities as well like being able to go underground or make you become intangible. This will also tie into the puzzles which can really get difficult by the end. Don’t think that you can just walk in and ace any of the puzzles with your eyes closed because it’s not happening.

I breezed through the first half of the game but then the second part really slowed me down. One reason for this is the puzzles but another is how difficult the enemies could be. If you drop a combo mid way then you are going to be eating an absolutely devastating counter that drains a lot of your health away. Additionally the weapons you have all run on a use system kind of like Breath of the Wild. So once you’ve used your sword enough then it will break. You only have one dagger that never breaks and it’s the weakest one.

Personally I would save the big swords for the boss fights but it does mean that the minions become extra dangerous. I never like it when weapons break so that is one area where I would say they should have ditched this mechanic. It is not one that has ever aged particularly well. The game does have a really good map though so that’s another example of something that the game did right. Many games completely mess up on that when it should be a fairly straight forward addition.

You do have a very small inventory of how many weapons and items you can hold onto which also makes you feel really worried about what to keep. I definitely recommend keeping some spirit summons on hand because sometimes it can be hard to find the exact element that you need. You summon spirits by blasting something made out of it. So you blast a river to summon the water spirit for example. One shortcut around this is to have an item on hand that summons the associated spirit but they are very rare. The game will make sure you get 1 per spirit so you should save that for as long as you can. The fire spirit in particular is extremely handy for boss battles because of how much damage he deals. The water spirit is also handy for her infinite health regeneration for as long as she’s active.

Technically the shadow and grass spirits are only really good for puzzles. I think the shadow one absorbs some hits for you but it seems inconsistent and the grass one attacks too slowly to be of any real help. There’s no reason to have them along for the boss fight but I suppose it’s not like they are making things worse. You can also de summon a spirit to save on magic meter as needed. It will regenerate quickly when you are outside of a dungeon or if you use an item to stock up again.

I also thought the combat got an extra boost from how you can actually land combos. That’s not something you would see so often from an older game. Usually it’s a basic slash or two, not throwing every move that you have against the opponents. You can still miss at times but it plays like those old 2D beat em ups. I appreciated the attention to detail here.

The graphics have held up extremely well. The illustrations look really good but even beyond that you have great sprites and character models. The action is always clear and then you also have a really good soundtrack to back it up. When you mix all that together, there’s just not much to worry about here. The technical areas are really good. The game is a little on the short side with around 5 hours of content but since you may get lost that helps add to the time. You also really need to factor in the sheer difficulty here too.

Overall, Beyond Oasis is a pretty good game. I had fun with it and it just has solid fundamentals around the board. It’s the kind of game that you can’t help but enjoy. I would definitely look forward to a modern remake of it someday. If you like retro games then this is definitely a great one t check out because it is considerably more polished than most other games from this era. It feels satisfying to blast through the enemies and get to the end.

Overall 7/10