179. Sword Master (Athena, Famicom, 1990)

Sword Master is a basic action platformer based around sword combat. You control a character with high, low, & neutral sword attacks, progressing through a generic fantasy medieval setting. Most levels will have a few weak enemies scattered around before having you fight a stronger miniboss. Most of these minibosses have pretty basic exploitable patterns, and like a jump kick in many beat-'em-up games, jumping in with an overhead sword slash is kryptonite to the AI of many otherwise-challenging foes.

The core fencing gameplay is reminiscent of Zelda II (except you can jump much higher), though it never feels quite as nice. Sometimes I was unsure if I even hit an enemy until I looked at their health bar. While most enemies are pretty basic to fight against, a few have more interesting patterns. I was excited after the second level when the game gives you the power to become other characters by pressing the select button, but the wizard who you can change into has even more impotent attacks than the default sword master.

One thing I really enjoyed is that your character is always facing right, unless a boss / miniboss enemy is on your left side, like a fighting game. THe strength of this game is its combat, which makes the platforming sections (especially those with instant-death pits) feel very tedious, as the jump is very high but not very wide. Coupled with annoying placement of unkillable obstacle enemies, I have to wonder why the developers included platforming at all.

3/5, An interesting fighting game / platformer hybrid that is a little too difficult and stiff