Times of Lore is another game that straddles that line in having a high fantasy concept but with some of the old single-hero low fantasy elements still present. They could have promoted the game with the Knight or Valkyrie representing the game's protagonist but they went with the Barbarian (kind of funny because the game is about rescuing the kingdom from a barbarian horde).
The art is by Denis R. Loubet, whose images have adorned many games over the years but were probably most associated with Origin's. He worked on almost the entire Ultima series, as well as Wing Commander and many of the company's other major releases, and he contributed to the recent Nox Archaist.
Gauntlet II, once again designed by Ed Logg, is so similar to the original that it feels more like an expansion to the original game than a true sequel. In fact, it was sold as a conversion kit for the original arcade cabinets. It looks and sounds largely the same, but it adds a lot of gimmicks, mostly involving the environment.
Players are now free to choose the same class if they want, with their characters distinguished by their color. Players can push certain blocks around, there are more environmental traps like pools of acid that shift about, teleporters, and force fields that drain health. One of the most entertaining additions is the addition of a Tag mode in which a character can become "it," causing every monster to seek them out until the player can tag a partner and make them "it" (becoming "it" in single player mode makes no difference since the monsters all want to kill you regardless). It's possible to pick up items allowing extra abilities to the player, such as ricocheting shots off walls.
There are a handful of new monsters to fight, the most noteworthy being a giant fire-breathing dragon that takes an enormous amount of punishment before going down.
Although it has a lot of the same flaws as the original, the additional gameplay elements lend it a little more longevity and liveliness as the game can keep the surprises coming for a while.
After the dud that was Nastar, Taito concluded its Rastan arcade trilogy with a more respectable effort. In Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III, we pick back up with old Rastan on his throne, telling more stories of his adventurous past. This time around, he and his friends Dewey the ninja(?) and Sofia, a whip-wielding former princess turned thief, battle foul creatures as they try to claim the jewels of Depon. But of course the story isn't the reason anyone plays a game like this. It's about evoking a certain mood, which is also for the best because the English text translation is lousy, even if no one outside Japan saw it on initial release because the game wasn't released abroad.
The game doesn't appear to share much talent with the previous two games in the series, aside from Masahiro Takaki on music, and it seems that the big plan for the game and getting the series back on track was to largely ape Golden Axe. Instead of a purely horizontally scrolling experience, characters have a bit more room to maneuver up and down and it plays like a traditional brawling game as cooperative players try to take down groups of enemies without being surrounded and struck down from behind. Instead of simply swinging his sword, Rastan has a set of moves he can use, such as charging attacks and even grabbing enemies so he can bash their faces with the pommel of his sword or fling them at their partners. It's mostly standard stuff for the genre, only distinguished by the fact that few games besides this and Golden Axe use a S&S theme.
The graphics look great. The characters are large and well-detailed. Rastan in particular looks very much the Conan clone he was always intended to be, like he stepped out of a John Buscema or Neal Adams drawing. Enemies include classic sword-and-sorcery types like serpent men, rival tribesmen, armored knights, living skeletons (of course), fishmen, and cloaked wizards. Some of the boss enemies are quite befitting of the genre, such as the skeleton of a dead king on his throne that moans "help me" as demons fly out of his carcass, or a giant tentacled sea monster. The stages, most of which can be selected in any order, have names like The Enchanted Castle of Zananstaff, Mahadidekaradi Spiral Tower, or The Palace of Black Demon Religion. There are also interlude stages in which the heroes engage in battles on horseback or while rising into the clouds on the backs of dragons. The heroes themselves don't use a lot of magic, but amusingly you can occasionally summon a wizard and can force him to cast screen-clearing spells on your behalf by booting him in the ass until his meter is spent.
In its own time, the most eye-popping thing about the game was that it used a gimmick Taito had previously busted out for its Darius and Ninja Warriors games, which was to place two monitors side-by-side in one cabinet to create a widescreen image. Not a big deal now, but it really made games standout in arcades back then.
At the game's conclusion, Rastan, mercenary as ever, divvies up the winnings with his friends and parts ways with them, frustrated that he hadn't found what he was looking for and continuing to seek a kingdom for himself. And that was the end of Rastan's adventures in video games, not counting a half-assed attempt years later to throw him in a different barbarian-themed console fighting game.
