Crossed Swords is a Third-Person Action game in where we play as a nameless knight out on a mission to destroy a demon lord that is wreaking havoc in his lands. We are given the choice to skip up to three chapters to get right into the thick of the action, though for newcomers, you should take the opportunity to learn the ropes and start from the beginning. It is an action title and you’ll be slaying countless baddies on your journey to the demon lord, yet a button masher this is not. You’ll want to look for an opening in your foe’s stance, while at the same time be prepared to either block a low or a high attack. If a blow is blocked, the attacker will temporarily recoil from it, leaving him wide open and defenseless to a full-blown assault. You can also move left and right to dodge. It is at times seemingly a safer option, but the moment range is quite narrow, so it won’t be long before you are face to face with your assailant once more.
You have one button to attack and simply pressing it will cause you to slash high, while holding down on the joystick will have you perform a low thrust. It is important to vary between the two as to keep your enemies guessing where you’ll strike next. Holding the joystick up will raise your shield to block high attacks and holding it down will block lower ones. The majority of your opponents play by these same rules, giving it a near fighting game feel. This allows you to become a master of combat if you have enough experience and knowledge over how each foe tends to fight. Your ace in the sleeve comes with the second button. Pressing it will cast a magic spell to get the edge in a battle. There are several spells to use and what type you have is dictated by the sword you wield. They can be defensive in nature, like the axe that summons a brief bubble that shields you from any attacks for a few seconds to a sword gained later on that lets you turn enemies into scarecrows.
The humble sword that you start with is none too shabby. It lets you cast a fireball, which is much more useful than it sounds since you have no other way to attack foes at a range. Permanently turning enemies into harmless scarecrows does sound more useful, but that comes at the price that they will usually no longer drop their gold or health items upon defeat. Cold hard cash is how you get all but one of the weapons from a merchant that appears randomly throughout your travels. He typically carries three different swords and some health items. You will have to actually buy the weapons to find out what spell they grant you. It can be a bit of a gamble your first time around if you find one that you really like, since you can only have one and buying another will replace it. Luckily, every weapon does the same amount of damage and has the same speed, all that will change is your spell.
Once you buy a weapon, the next time you see a merchant he will offer an upgraded version that doubles the amount of spells you have. It is as you can imagine, quite pricey indeed. You are pretty powerful compared to most of your standard enemies. Chances are that you will be dying from the continual wounds you will suffer from fighting though hordes of them. They never come at you more than one at a time, nor do they even attack until you best the foe you are currently fighting. These are rather honorable monsters, and it makes fights quite an intimate and tactical affair as you try your damnedest not to get floored while everyone else waits their turn. The fact that near everyone plays by the same rules gives combat a really personal feel to it, for lack of a better expression. You have no one to blame if you get too cocky, start swinging like a madman, get predictably blocked, then get combo’d by a low tier enemy.
In such cases, you have yet another ace up your sleeve. Holding down both buttons will activate a breaker that lets you get free from a combo. It will cost some health to use though, so knowing when to use it is vital. In fact, you may actually end up losing more life than you otherwise would have if activated when your foe was about to finish up his attacks. This is the type of game where it helps not to panic or do things out of desperation. Keeping your cool and thinking things through will do as much good, if not more than having high reflexes. Well, at least when facing regular foes. When you encounter a giant red caterpillar, it would help to have your shield facing his flamethrower like breath, rather than your face. Crossed Swords will always be focused on melee action, but it will throw some curve-ball enemies to keep you on your toes.
There are seven chapters in total and all can be beaten within an hour & a half. Your adventure starts you off in a peaceful looking forest and makes its way up to quite a variety of locales. As you travel to the seven main areas, there are little intermissions between them that has you go through chunks of road or shorelines before reaching your destination. It is a neat little touch to make it feel like more of an actual journey than just being teleported around. I wouldn’t say that the story is memorable, quite from it, but the environments certainly are. They add these small, non-intrusive cutscenes on occasion that really helps the world come to life. For a game released in 1991, the graphics have aged really well due to the high-quality sprites offered by the power of the Neo Geo MVS arcade cabinets. The music is solid as well, though one track, in particular, has got to be one of the worst compositions I’ve heard in any video game.
A feature that really helps out with the replay value is that you will be given various branching paths to choose from within a level. They all lead to the same destination, yet you can’t help but wonder what you just missed out on for picking the path you did. Alongside the fact that you will likely not see all the spells on offer and that the combat is a ton of fun, it is hard to resist giving the game another whirl. There is also a two-player mode to get a friend in on the adventure. I’d imagine not many of us had a Neo Geo AES or CD in our homes back then. I bring this up because the last time this title was sold in the West was in 1994 for those systems. It wasn’t until 2018 that Crossed Swords finally made a comeback and released digitally for all the major consoles. Despite all that time, Crossed Swords is still as unique and as fun to play as ever. If you’re looking for an easy to pick up hard to master Action filled title, this is more than worthy of being in your collection.
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