132. Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga III (Taito, Arcade (PS2), 1992)

I said in my post on game #131 Rastan Saga II that I had hopes that Rastan Saga III would be a step forward for the series, and to my surprise, it actually does massively improve on the previous 2 Rastan titles. I think a lot of it is just timing. In the 3 years bewteen Rastan Saga II and III, a few significant arcade games were released: Sega's Golden Axe, and Capcom's Final Fight in particular, both massively popular games that solidified a lot of the tropes and mechanics of the the beat-'em-up genre. So it wasn't a huge surprise to me that Rastan Saga III ditches the side-scrolling platforming of the first 2 Rastan games for a more standard plane that you can move into the foreground or background of. The game is presented in super widescreen on two 4:3 monitors for an 8:3 resolution.

A big gripe I have with a lot of these early beat-em-ups is that enemies are so numerous as to be overwhelming, but Warrior Blade keeps the game feeling fair by never having enemies attack you
in huge groups. The gameplay itself is a gigantic step forward for the Rastan series, as it is actually fun to control your character, and there are 3 distinct playable characters. Other than Rastan himself, we also have Dewey, a fast ninja-like character, and Sophia, a thief with a long range whip. The two new characters were a lot more fun to play as than Rastan, and I found myself ultimately settling on Dewey because he was so fast and could do multiple kicks in one jump.

Each character is able to dash by double-tapping left or right (one of my favorite things to do in a video game), and you can also throw an enemy by walking into them and then pressing attack. By themselves these are not super notable control schemes, but I figured you that if you throw an enemy, you can then immediately dash into them and attack for extra damage and the whole thing looks cool and feels great to accomplish. I never got tired of tossing enemies up and then running over to give them a whack before they hit the ground, it's just so satisfying. There are a bunch of fun items like the ability to shoot fire or lightning, or (my favorite) a crystal that summons a wizard who will follow you around and use screen-clearing spells on the enemies if you attack him.

After an extremely short first level (like 20 seconds long) Warrior Blade gives you four stages that you can choose in any order. Each level is broken up into mini-stages that can have different branching paths, so any two playthroughs are likely to be decently different. Seemingly random events labelled "bad fortune" will appear after certain stages, which add extra difficult stages. There is a lot of variety between levels, in one you might be climbing through a dungeon, or riding a dragon or horse, or sliding down a mountain. The variety and short stage length really keeps the game fresh, and after each level you acquire an item that permanently increases one of your stats.

There is only one main song that plays in the background, but thankfully it is an excellent beat 'em up theme that sounds just medieval enough, and the boss theme is pretty good as well. The game has a mix of Japanese and English text AND synthesized voice acting in both English and German, so the whole thing can be kind of a cacophonous mess, but in a way that I love.

5/5, almost unrecognizable as a Rastan game, it's more like an improved Runark