YMMV / Golden Axe

• Ass Pull: Partially due to being a Canon Foreigner in the Sega Genesis and MS-DOS ports, the existence of Death Bringer is not foreshadowed at all.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Wilderness", the main theme of the game, no matter which version you are playing, is great.
  • It also got a great remix in Sonic and All-Stars Racing: Transformed.
  • Battle Field, the boss battle theme from the first game. You'll know it's time for an epic battle when you hear this tune play. The Genesis and Sega Ages version also sound fantastic.
  • From the Genesis version of the first game, we have Showdown, an imposing tune that plays when you reach the final boss, Death Bringer. It starts out as threatening as the boss you're fighting, but later grows into a more hopeful sounding tune, pumping up the player to finish the battle. This track even got an upgraded version in the PS2 remake!
  • Revenge of Death-Adder had some rocking tunes, too.
  • Second Boss Theme from II, first played on the boss battle in lava cave against two minotaurs and two lizardmen. Later it's also played during Boss Rush outside enemy's castle gates and finally during the fight against the Dragon-in-Chief in the penultimate boss battle.
  • It's not Wilderness, but Vast Field, the music of first stage in III, is an epic music to start your journey to kick evil's booty.
  • The theme in Ride the Whirlwind stage in III, which is also combined with an awesome level setting of fighting atop of a giant falcon. You're probably not taking this level because it doesn't give you more prisoners for extra lives to save, and you'll not save one of your brainwashed friends.
  • Fight with Adversary from III. A fitting music when you fight against your possessed friend and Eve the gryphon/birdman.
  • The Gate of Fate, Eve the gryphon's true theme, is the Climax Boss rendered in song form, an epic showdown with a mighty adversary before the final boss!
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Probably the best-remembered element from the games to a lot of people is the Vallejo-esque Tyris Flare in her Chainmail Bikini. Tyris was one of gaming's earliest popular sex symbols (preceding Lara Croft by half a decade), being Stripperiffic enough to make her blatantly sexually appealing, while also being rendered in enough graphical detail to make her visually attractive. Ax Battler also provides a similar service for female and gay gamers.
• Complete Monster: Death Adder (specifically his PC Engine version, The Revenge of Death Adder, and The Duel) is a monstrous tyrant who leads an army of evil to Firewood Kingdom, massacring everyone within the country such that Firewood utterly ceases to exist, exhibiting his personal sadism by murdering the king and queen in front of their young daughter, Princess Tyris Flare. Seeking even greater power, Death Adder invades Southwood kingdom to do the same thing, slaughtering villages and enslaving the populace. Upon his return from death, Death Adder opts to massacre and enslave everyone he can for revenge, with the consequences of his victory being death on scales such as the world has never before seen.
• Contested Sequel: III is either considered the best game of the series by far with tighter controls, much more varied moves and characters, or an ugly, slow mess that doesn't come close to the quality of the two previous games.
• Demonic Spiders: The skeletons. They inflict twice the damage of normal mooks, tend to come in duos along with other enemies, are common in the last 3 levels, are fast, have to be comboed at least 3 times to kill, and like all enemies have the annoying tendency to flank you whenever possible. They also have a jumping attack that does almost as much damage in one hit than their whole ground combo combined, which by the way is 1.5 bars of health. Naturally, two show up to assist Death Adder in battle... and the ones assisting Death Bringer have 256 HP ^note Death Bringer has 128 HP, the skeletons have double his HP. Worse still, in the Fan Remake Golden Axe Legend, their shields aren't just for show or klonking over the heroes' heads in a short ranged combo; they block attacks, and in fact do so very often.
• Even Better Sequel:
  • The third Mega Drive game is a noticeable improvement over the first two, boasting a Fighting Game style special attack system, branching paths, less ambiguous health gauges, and not having a Game-Breaking Bug that makes the female swordswoman much harder to use than intended. Some fans regret it, preferring the simple, frantic action of the first two games. Its graphics generally are much more bland compared to the other two Mega Drive games.
  • The Revenge of Death Adder greatly expands upon the original with more detailed graphics, branching levels and more playable characters which have team up attacks similar to The Simpsons.
• First Installment Wins: Most of the fanart in the series usually are about the main trio (Ax, Tyris and Gillius), and mostly in their original design. Good luck finding art of any of the characters from the arcade and Mega Drive sequels. The only notable exception is Death Adder, whose cameos in other games tend to use his design from Revenge of Death Adder, rather than his original incarnation.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Chronos' Forward-Back-Forward + Attack + Jump in Golden Axe III. Easy input, huge damage, wide range, makes him invincible while doing the move, unblockable.
  • The red dragon in the first game. Spam the attack button and the fireballs will knock enemies down with no chance for them to retaliate.
  • In the first game, Bottomless Pits are trivial for the player to take advantage of and allow a One-Hit Kill (or even a zero-hit kill if you manipulate the Artificial Stupidity appropriately) on any enemy within range of one, up to the final mid-bosses the General Bitters).
• Good Bad Bugs: Using a spell on Death Bringer while he was in his death animation would cause a second, glitchy axe to fly into the air and impale him along with the first. Later revisions of the game prevented this by disabling magic from triggering at this point.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Ax Battler is considered to be the worst of the three due to being a Master of None, while Tyris Flare excels in magic, and Gillius excels in his superior range with melee attacks. To add insult to injury, both Tyris and Gillius have higher priority when using charge attacks, while Ax Battler will almost always get attacked first if he uses it against stronger enemies.
• Narm: In the Sega CD Arcade Collection, the enemy grunts were resampled to use better quality digitized voice. The only problem is that, for male characters, it was a very stock "Oww!", while women received a grunt which barely registered injury.
• Narm Charm: As usual with really old beat-'em-up games. The sound effects are hilarious and one of the heroes is named Ax Battler. Who doesn't even use an ax.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The skeleton in the character select screen.◊
  • The "fighting" Mantis in Revenge of Death Adder has a grab attack where it grabs the enemy, pulls them close, and you hear the same loud CRUNCH you hear where your character eats food.
• Porting Disaster: In the arcade version of Golden Axe, each character has his or her own algorithm to determine if that character should use a longer range melee attack or a shorter range melee attack. In the Genesis/Mega Drive version, all characters share Ax Battler's algorithm. Therefore, attacks that would have hit a target if the longer-range sword attacks were used would whiff if the algorithm mistakenly picks the shorter range sword attacks. This bug is carried over to Golden Axe II. This bug severely negatively affects Tyris's game play. This bug also affected Gilius, but did not sabotage his usability.
• Spiritual Successor: The game takes lots of inspiration from Conan the Barbarian. One character is even an Expy of Conan.
• That One Attack: Death Bringer is already a hard final boss in the Genesis version to begin with, but, as explained in the WhoIsThisGit video on him, his shockwave attack is incredibly dangerous. While the original Death Adder only created one shockwave with his similar attack, Death Bringer creates six, which makes it far harder to effectively dodge the attack. If you're knocked down by one, he'll unleash his own version of Tyris's dragon spell if not interrupted quickly, which will deliver a whopping three bars of damage to both players.
• That One Boss: Death Bringer. He is a stronger version of normal Final Boss who is accompanied by two skeletons which actually have double his HP. On top of this after landing a hit one a player, he will use one of their spells, which cannot be dodged and hit both players. Depending on what spell he uses, the player can die after getting hit just once.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Golden Axe: The Duel, the third arcade game in the series, changed the format from a belt-scrolling action game to a one-on-one fighting game.
  • Golden Axe: Beast Rider, a 3D action game, wasn't much better received. Play, a now defunct gaming magazine, gave a much more favorable review than pretty much any other critics. Interestingly, the reviewer nearly outright accused other critics of being incredibly biased with this trope in mind, reasoning that certain "online reviewers" wouldn't have enough time to thoroughly test the game for a decent review. This is contrasted with many other games that reviewers spend a great deal of time playing before reviewing.
• Vindicated by History: During its time of release, III was negatively received, and people seemed to be glad that it didn't leave Japan (Outside of a Sega Channel release). As time passed and through emulation, people started appreciating the game more without comparing it to the older games and started wishing that Sega should have brought that to the Western shores. As of today, the game is available in the West through Sega Genesis Collection bundles, and people think of it fondly. It also helps that compared to Beast Rider, III was agreed to be a lot better.

---