Shadow of The Beast 2

STORY / GAMEPLAY
After defeating Maletoth on the first game and gaining back your human nature and body, you return to your homeland Karamoon to lead a peaceful life. But the demonic forces won't just let go of the fact that you killed Maletoth. Zelek, a powerful dragon-looking beast enters your village and kidnaps your baby sister to use her as a "Messenger" replacement for the Beast Lord! This is where your quest begins, to find and bring your sister back and ultimately kill Zelek! On the way, you will be called to fight against more than 100 types of evil minions and monsters that are now out to avenge their master's loss. In each visually stunning level, there are many puzzles for you to solve and proceed further to your final goal and the intense action makes things even harder. SOTB 2 is a good but very difficult -and sometimes frustrating- game. It's particularly hard to finish it since your energy level (presented in a bottle) can easily deplete after taking some hits! Your main weapon is some kind of a chained mace that can kill an enemy from a pretty safe distance since the chain is quite long. This is a positive aspect compared to the first game where you had to engage in full-contact fight (with your fists).

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Atari ST version is quite decent (and technically way better than the first SOTB), taking into consideration the hardware's limitations. The game's scenes offer more than the default 16 colors on screen (but no more than 32) and a small number of parallax scrolling layers on the backgrounds, but the animation unfortunately suffers a lot; and I mean a lot! Although the sprites are beautifully designed and animated, the frame rate drops short, especially when the screen is too crowded. Note that the Amiga version runs smoothly at 60 frames per second! Soundwise, the game gives mixed impressions. It starts with the wonderful, original movie-like intro which unfortunately is...soundless! Intro aside, the ST version offers in-game music (yes, this time the SOTB has music on the ST) as well as some sampled tunes (but of low bit-rate quality) at the main-menu and the game over screen, all composed by the great Tim Wright.