Golden Axe Warrior - Review

Legend of Golden Axe... err... Golden Axe Zelda... umm... Golden Axe Warrior. That's what I played. Sorry, I got confused. Let me get this out straight off the bat: I'm not really sure how Sega didn't get sued for this one. This is about the closest you can get to playing Legend of Zelda on the NES without actually playing Legend of Zelda.

Golden Axe Warrior is hard. Very hard. Like if you started off Legend of Zelda with one heart instead of three kind of hard. There's two ways to regain health in Golden Axe Warrior, staying at inns or the occasional dropped food from monsters. Let me tell you, the first three or so hours seemed like all I was doing was clearing a screen and then running to the nearest inn only to do this over and over again. When you have three hearts and have to kill five to six enemies who can take off a third of your health just by touching you... not easy.

After beating the first few dungeons you'll get more hearts, making the game a little bit easier. Don't get me wrong, the game is never a cakewalk but with equipment and health the game does become a tad easier.

Once I got past the first few hours the game really picked up. Golden Axe Warrior is fun. Is it as fun as Legend of Zelda? No, probably not, but I would say that it's certainly in the running. At the end of the day though I had a good time beating it, even if there were some moments of frustration. It's just unfortunate that it's so difficult to distance it from Legend of Zelda, the games share a lot of similarities. Even so, Golden Axe Warrior is a fun game.

Here's the deal, if you played Legend of Zelda and enjoyed it you will most likely enjoy Golden Axe Warrior. Sure it's a little bit more difficult but it's bigger and also has a few interesting things that Legend of Zelda didn't. Golden Axe Warrior is essentially what Legend of Zelda would have been if it had been released four years later. Why not give it a shot?

Squid.