Golden Axe Warrior (1991)

Golden Axe Warrior is Sega's answer to the Legend of Zelda, and it's not something I can easily set aside when playing it. On paper, Golden Axe Warrior seems like it is inherently superior. It has more of everything! More dungeons, more monsters, villages, traps, magic spells, sea exploration, you name it. The problem, besides appearing to copy heavily from LoZ, is in the execution.

Your player characters movement is feels "slippery" in that spacing yourself from enemies to get hits and avoid damage is difficult at best. This combined with the inconsistent or nonexistent knockback on some enemies, the annoying hitbox placement of the sword, shield, and stubby short swing of the axe weapon make combat frustrating. This is compounded when later dungeons seem to just be about piling as many traps and annoying combinations of monsters together as possible to slow or halt your progression. The very last couple dungeons in particular are especially tedious rather than fun and challenging.

While it was fun to find and complete dungeons in Legend of Zelda in whatever nearly random order that I found them, it seems like going in order is almost mandatory for Golden Axe Warrior due to the placement of key items and the scaling of monster strength. Combat does feel a bit easier as you find better equipment, but this is quickly reset when the next area exposes you to even stronger monsters.

I'll also add that the main music tracks you'll hear the most in this game, the overworld theme and the dungeon theme, have nothing on their Legend of Zelda equivalents. I'm sure it's hard if not impossible not to have some inherent bias towards whichever game you played first, Legend of Zelda or Golden Axe Warrior, but Warrior feels like it didn't quite get down the core game mechanics that made Zelda fun, and instead just focused on copying the outline and adding content.

I feel kind of conflicted towards the Golden Axe-series. Apart from the influential original, there's really no game in the series that succeeds in anything else but reiterate itself or copy another franchise. Golden Axe II feels more like a DLC-map package than an actual sequel, Golden Axe III has some nice moveset changes but does too little too late and from what I've seen it seems as if the fighting game Golden Axe: The Duel is eerily similar to Samurai Shodown.

And to be clear, Golden Axe Warrior for the Master System is no exception. This game looks, plays and is structured EXACTLY as The Legend of Zelda for NES. There are secret caverns, dungeons with locked doors, a ship to traverse water and even some enemies that feels like actual palette swaps. It is unoriginal to a fault, with only a few mechanics to differentiate it from its big brother (the most noticeable being elemental magic scrolls and actual towns with NPCs).

That said, there are far worse things in the world than being heavily inspired by one of the most revolutionary and celebrated games of all time. All the strengths of Zelda's design philosophy are excellently replicated in this instalment, making the experience incredibly fun. Golden Axe Warrior is not a poor imitation, it has an interesting overworld, amazing explorative game design and smart puzzles.

The only real complaint I have in terms of pure mechanics are the poor hit boxes. Most weapons requires extreme precision to actually hit the enemy, and they do love to walk right into you. The result can sometimes be tedious battles where you have to position yourself perfectly and swing your weapon like a madman to hit the enemy when it decides to turn your direction, since most offensive manoeuvres end in failure.

The game does not give you a map until the second to last dungeon, so I drew my own, which was incredibly fulfilling

In conclusion, Golden Axe Warrior really is an excellent game, only weighed down by the fact that all of its glory is derived from another franchise. If you have an itch for experiencing the same feeling of wonder of the original Zelda again, or just like classic open world game design, I think Golden Axe Warrior is deserving of your time.

Platform:

Master System version.

Graphics/Sound:

Yes, it looks like the first Zelda and even the music sets the same mood as in the first Zelda. The compositions were really great and the graphics look nicer than on the NES counterpart, probably because of the Master System capabilities. The animations are simple but nice, especially swinging of the axe is cute. If you expect something that looks like Golden Axe you might be put off by the cuteness of this game, but I really liked it.

Gameplay:

This is as close as it gets to copying Zelda while having some unique aspects. Since the Master System controller has only 2 buttons, this is even further reduced than Zelda, having only one attack and one menu button, and you're stuck with a smaller arsenal of weapons throughout the game. All projectile weapons have limited ammo, so you are basically doing melee attacks all the time, which keeps it pure. The puzzles feel like in Zelda but are not a copy, since new mechanisms to trigger are invented here (hit the lights).

Difficulty:

It feels as cryptic as Zelda too, you're thrown into a completely open world with no clue as to what to do or where to go. Yes there is a few more people to talk to than in Zelda so you get a rough idea, but unless you make a map you'll get lost. I don't know why in the game offers you an ingame map after completing the second last level, it's such a tease to get this after having explored everything. I also felt relatively weak all the time, mainly because the weapon area of effect is so tiny that you almost always get hit when attacking someone. it's a bit better with the axe than the sword, but for the larger part of the game the sword is stronger than the axe. The game gets a bit easier with time when you get better armor except some obnoxious enemies. There is a direct counterpart of the dreaded Darknut in Zelda: the red clams. It's also the exact opposite in behaviour: it can't be hurt from anywhere but the front.

It's a good game in retrospect, however, I didn't have the patience to explore everything on my own, and some things just aren't explained that well. But after all that's exactly what Zelda did. So this is a great game if you like a classic action adventure, with a consistent charming little world.