Shadow of the Beast II

Shadow of the Beast II was built at Reflections and published by Psygnosis on the Amiga in 1990. A Mega Drive conversion followed later, and that is the version you will find here.

The 1989 original made its name on technology: up to twelve layers of parallax scrolling, an enormous on-screen colour count, and a David Whittaker soundtrack that sounded impossible at the time. As a game, though, it was a fairly shallow platformer in which you mostly ran right and died. The sequel tried to fix that by adding an adventure layer — you talk to characters, collect and use items, find your way around a far more open map, and fight less often but more painfully. Your main weapon is no longer a fist but a mace.

The ambition is admirable, the execution divisive. The puzzles are aggressively illogical and the game gives almost no signal about what the next step should be. Without a walkthrough it is entirely normal to spend an hour circling the same screens. Meanwhile combat is unforgiving, health is hard to restore, and death sends you a long way back.

What still holds up is the atmosphere. The visual world of the series — twisted creatures, empty landscapes, alien architecture — is among the strongest things European games produced at the turn of the nineties. The Mega Drive version cannot match the Amiga's colour range, but it holds its own musically and artistically.

The recommendation comes with conditions: if the aesthetic appeals and you are willing to keep a walkthrough open, you will get a strange, uncomfortably beautiful game. If you want a smooth action platformer, this is not it. The series continued with a third instalment in 1992, and the first game was remade for PlayStation 4 in 2016.