Guardian Legend NES Review - A classic

by 46 on Monday, January 23, 2006
This game was secretly popular back in the day, but what\'s keeping it from being a great memorable game?

The game has a huge soundtrack and excellent graphics that even supersede that of its earlier compile cousin Zanac. Though not nearly as fairly challenging as Zanac, the game has more structure to it. I think a game that is fairer to compare this game to is Blaster Master, a game that is actually a little better than this one.

The main problem with this game is that the main survival skill in this game is quite simple, and that is being skilled at replacing your energy. Tons of enemies pour on you like there\'s no tomorrow. In one stage, the surface is practically carpeted with evil ass volcanoes that relentlessly spit out swarms of heat seeking rocks, and the only way you can survive it is not by using dodging skills like in most shooters but by blowing away as many as you can hoping that they\'ll drop items that sufficiently replenish up your energy.

Walking around in the overworld is way easy. The block patterns in the overworld are not very creative and don\'t have a significant impact in the game. The enemies in the overworld are rather pathetic too, Though occasionally some might be a tough encounter, such as those carrot things and the little sun shaped things that don\'t stop chasing you. Speaking of sun shaped things that don\'t stop chasing you, there\'s a miniboss in this game that is just that and is probably the hardest one in the game. You will need to use a power up on it if you want a good chance of survivng. Among other challenging minibosses in the game include a mecha crab thing, a cluster of crystals, and an elusive dino skull that fires impossible to dodge bullets at you. But even so, the minibosses are not required to kill though they often drop useful prizes.

Some boss fights in this game are of a challenging variety, like in Blaster Master. Some are either super easy (Teramute, Bombarder, Zibzub), are hard at first but are simple once you figure out how to find an easy way to kill them (Crawdaddy, Eyegore), mildly challenging (Fleepa, Clawbot, the first boss, the final boss) or are a solid challenge (Optomon, Grimgrin). Some of the power ups in this game are neat though many are useless. The control is fluidly comfortable.

I\'m just going to stop, I need to make more concise reviews than this. Unfortunately, this game gets:

3 stars



-46
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