Battle Axe

This is a pretty basic "arcade-y" hack and slash that is (a) bit clumsy, and (b) waaaaaaaaaay, waaaaaaaaay over-priced for what you get. Like....If it was a fiver I'd think okay, but £25? That is insane. It's a very limited experience, with three characters who have pretty samey move-sets. A short-range slash, a dashing attack and a ranged attack, and...uh...well, nothing else bar special items that give you health or some area-of-attack type effect. The tasty graphics and decent music are doing a lot of heavy lifting for the simplistic action on offer, though in the case of the former are also a bit of a weakness. Everything is large and detailed but takes up too much screen-space, so you can sometimes have an enemy you can't see that will quickly charge you with no way of dodging the attack. There's a bit of fun to be had here, but at less than an hour to finish and with nothing truly special about it, it's in no way recommended at full-price. Even with it currently on sale at £6.24 I'd say it's not worth it for what you'll get out of it. When the likes of HollowKnight and Silksong are £20, or excellent similar games like Hyper Light Drifter and Tunic offer more than an hour…

Not even worth on sale. All flash, no substance. Boring gameplay, constantly respawning enemies and terrible level design.

I don't understand the mixed review, the game looks, sounds and feels great to play. I would've preferred the camera be zoomed out a bit more but it didn't bother me that much.

A top-down gauntlet clone. Its a lot of fun.

This game is GOOD! If you're into arcade-style games (and I mean REAL arcade, like those from the '80s and '90s), this game definitely deserves a try. I don't think it's that hard on normal difficulty (I finished it on my third try, and I beat most of the bosses on my first attempt), and now I'm trying to finish it on hard difficulty. The real challenge is New Game+ (now THIS is what I'd call crazy hard—I couldn't get past the first boss lol). The controls are fairly responsive, and the characters have minor differences between them (like how they behave when you hold down the shoot button). The stages are really well designed, with a fair learning curve. My only complaint is that the game is really short. Once you master the stages, you can finish it in less than half an hour (on normal difficulty). But then again, arcade games back then used to be short as well. The replayability is up to you—whether you want to finish it with all the characters or on harder difficulties. Recommended!

This is great old school arcade fun! If you play it like a twin stick shooter, you will be disappointed. However, if you play it via melee combat, it rocks.