Golden Axe™ II

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Golden Axe 2 is a beat-em-up for up to 2 players and a direct sequel to Golden Axe, this one being exclusive to Sega Genesis/MegaDrive. As in, don't mistake it with Revenge of Death Adder on arcades. Actually, it's barely a sequel, as you will see it feels a lot like expansion pack that third-party developers would make for popular PC games. Or mission pack, even. I think that this might have been developed by different smaller team in Sega of Japan. Released in US in very early 1992 on 4 Megabit ROM, same ROM size as Golden Axe 1 on Sega.

The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.


Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "GAXE2_W.68K".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "GA2_PC_MG_EFIGS_US.pdf".

Has online (in Bedroom HUB only) and local multiplayer.


The plot of this game is that somebody stole Golden Axe once again! Who is it? Death=Adder again? Nope, Dark Guld. And the troika of heroes from the original game is back. Gilius Thunderhead (dwarf with axe), Ax Battler (Conan-like guy), Tyris Flare (amazon woman).
Look, developers didn't care.
Though, I did like how they set the wrong expectations in the intro. How trollish of you, Sega!

And so you go on, hacking and slashing around enemies. Just like in Golden Axe. The core gameplay pretty much had no changes, it's still a 2.5D beat-em-up where moving directly toward enemies is likely to get your butt kicked so you have to use your ability to move up and down the battlefield. Still got dash attack, still can combo, still can spam jump attack around or do the powerful downward thrust after running jump. Heck, even enemies are pretty much reskins of those in GA1. You can easily tell that lizardmen are amazons in disguise. Or minotaurs are big brothers from GA1, albeit with restored ability to throw heroes like in arcade GA1.

It's easier to tell what is different there. Most importantly, developers tried to make controls feel much more responsive and try to lessen the effect of cheese tactics. Indeed, they managed to make it feel much better. The heroes are more responsive, the vertical hitboxes seem to be more forgiving and somehow the action feels faster. Not so much about preventing cheese tactics though. The headless knights seem to move out of way if they see you dashing and some enemies attack in front of them if they see you in the air, but you can abuse that behavior instead. I did notice that if you dash attack somebody too often, they will become invincible for few seconds to dash attack, it seems. But eh.

They still made some good changes though. You don't take damage when knocked off the beasts anymore, that you can ride. Other enemies are now damaged if you throw one at them, which is how it should have been in GA1! Back-attack has been replaced with more general crowd control attack (let's call it surround-attack) which does damage to both sides. You do it by pressing jump and attack in same time. Of course Gilius, the dwarf, is the only one who does it properly, others have delay before attack on another side. And magic carrying creatures now fight back.
Plus, they sometimes let out 4 enemies at a same time onto screen, while GA1 on Genesis only allowed up to 3. It may not sound much, but seeing how it's a game where enemies try their hardest to surround you, it's a good fun.

And yea, still got three heroes. Dwarf has less magic, but more range with weapon. Amazon has bad range, but lots of slots of slots of magic, too bad that there aren't that many. Ax Battler is not-golden middle. And Tyris has the highest dash attack priority out of them all.

And you also don't have to use all magic. Just hold magic button and you will select how much of magic point you will use. Quite a fancy addition.

And it all would have been errrrr fine, maybe, if they had had awesome levels. Sadly, they feel uninspired. The graphical style has been changed from more Conan-like to darker fantasies, something more fitting to necromancers and such. But they forgot some of the charm. And they forgot adventure feel to the game. You don't just walk into village to discover that it's on top of giant turtle. Nope, you come into lava cave, you stay in lava cave and there is nothing more you will be able to say about it aside from “it's a generic lava cave”. Background are cheap at times too, sometimes it's just same wall.

Same goes for music, it's not adventurous, it's fairly usual videogamey this time, shorter loops and all. Good thing it's AWESOME music with great drums. No idea why credits track sounds like it came out of Streets of Rage .
Can't say same about sounds though. They are weaker. Most importantly, the voice sample for death screams has been changed to “BLEH!”. I mean, it's good that it doesn't make the music stop. But cmon, it doesn't feel violent at all this way. And to think that arcade GA1 had dead bodies stay on ground forever in additional to deaths creams.

Oh yea, and you can play cooperatively with your friend in main game campaign. There is no collision. But it has friendly fire. And continues are shared. Nothing much else to say, use magic wisely. It should be good fun. Haven't tried it. But then again, what beat-em-up isn't more fun with a friend?

And yep, there is some options that you can fiddle with. There is difficulty. Setting it on Easy lowers enemies amount, their health, but the game will end right before the final level. Yep, it's one of those games. Setting it on Hard will just increase enemies amount. You can also change your health amount per life. And change magic between “Special” and “Normal”, the latter being like it was in GA1, where you press magic and it uses them all. Plus, usual controls and sound test.

And they still kept the Duel mode. For one player it will act as endurance mode, where you face 15 rounds of various enemies, while you have to keep same health. Not bad, but sadly they still didn't bring any magic potions in, so Gilius is once again the top character there.
For two players it acts as versus mode. As usual to expect with 2.5D early beat-em-ups, it's pretty bad if you try to take it seriously, just usual chasing around, trying to land a hit. Pretty much just a bonus mode.

So, ehhh. Sega made it after the world got to experience Final Fight and Streets of Rage, due to which many people saw Golden Axe 2 as outdated on release. And they sold it at a price of a full proper game too, so yea.
But overall, I do like it. Gameplay was slightly improved. But it's uninspired, so you will get more impression by playing Golden Axe 1.

So this is the last of the mega drive games I bought on steam and this one was a bit of a disappointment. It very much feels like the same game as Golden Axe. The graphics have been improved and the levels are different but that is about it. The gameplay still does not flow as well as Streets of Rage. So my final conclusion to this series of Mega Drive reviews is get anything you have personal nostalgia for but Sonic 3 and Streets of Rage 2 really hold up to the test of time as very good games.

the greatest epoc of gaming on steam, BUYYYYYY

FUCK YEA, nostalgia up in this bitch.