Last Battle

Not a lot to cheer about with Last Battle, this game makes a strong case for top three least favorite Sega games. The back of the case for this game reads, "In the mood to punch, kick, and knock the daylights out of a bunch of wicked thugs? If the answer's 'Yes,' be prepared to receive your own fair share of hard knocks, because these goons are tough." Yes, I do want a fun and slightly challenging beat 'em up game. Martial arts based? Yes, please. The instruction manual has a page and a half devoted to explaining the background story. Seems a bit excessive at first, but as it turns out, you will be begging for more plot information once you actually play the game. You play as Aarzak, a generic hero with a generic mission - save the world against a 'nefarious power.' You are granted two moves: a punch and a kick. There are no fancy multi-button moves like Mortal Kombat - the developers want to keep things simple. You do have the ability to jump. So your options are fairly limited. If you feel ambitious, try jumping and kicking at the same time to perform a kick in the air. Or for the super adventurous, try a crouch punch or kick, which does exactly as you would expect. As you blast through enemies, a meter begins to fill below your character icon. When this meter reaches certain checkpoints, you character 'levels up.' This process involves your character ripping off articles of clothing and miraculously packing on the muscles in the blink of an eye. Leveling up increases your stats and is a must to advance in the game.

Last Battle verges on comically terrible. Normal enemies at the start of the game take one hit from either a punch or kick to kill. I've heard that in the original version of this game (Japanese), when an enemy was killed, their heads would explode in a shower of blood, quickly followed by the rest of their body. Keep in mind that you play a martial artist and have no weapons other than your hands and feet. The English version does not see this level excitement. Instead, the blood is replaced by enemies flying off the screen when you land the killing blow. Your enemies are equipped with weapons of all kinds. You will have knives and blades flying at you, thugs with polearms and flying guys with scimitars falling out of the sky. The good news is that the game is divided into a series of levels. About the only quality I enjoy about Last Battle is the fact that you can select which level you want to go to next (you usually have the choice of two or three). There is a 'world map' where you can see all of the levels which make up a stage. There are four stages in the game and the levels in each stage are connected via roads where you can go to any level adjacent to where you are standing. This adds a nice element of choice and nonlinearity to the game. The levels themselves are very short, lasting only a minute or two. Some levels are boss battles, which can be especially difficult the first time as you really need to know what their moves are and their weaknesses in order to beat them.

Here is where the game gets even more absurd. You have a life bar that goes down when you get hit (and does so with alarming speed). Contrary to what I would expect, you do not regain health at the end of every level. After certain levels you may gain some health back but unless you have a guide, you will have no idea which levels do this. Although people have beaten this game, Last Battle is damn hard. I have gotten much better since I first started playing, but I still get rocked by the boss battles. If you die, it is game over. There are no extra lives, no continues. This game is set on permanent 'hardcore' mode.

Now the frosting on the cake: the in-game dialogue. Of course this dialogue is text based, but there is either not enough background information to understand what is being said, or there was a gap in the translation to English. For example, the first level ends with you meeting your friend Max. He says, "I wanted you to meet Alyssa!" Your character responds by saying "Now you have the look of a hero!" The screen then fades to black and you are prompted to choose the next stage. Each non-boss stage ends with an equally confusing exchange between Aarzak and some other NPC. There are interpretation guides people have made for this game. The sole purpose of these guides is to decipher what these two sentence conversations mean.

Seeing as I only enjoyed one very minor part of this game and loathed pretty much everything else, it goes without saying that this is not an essential Sega game. It is also one of the few games on this list I have not beat or even come close to beating, despite many hours of play in my childhood. It is hard, confusing, and frustrating.