Rygar: The Legendary Adventure Review

While it has it's bad parts, mainly with the giant sized boss fights, I think the game is pretty enjoyable, it feels like weird and jankier precursor to God of War which I know is a comparison that has been said to death but it's hard not to see it even if it is ultimately Tecmo Koei trying to get a piece of the Onimusha pie that Capcom had with the whole monster killing mythological fantasy action game.

It is impressive what was done here, the world suprisingly feels interconnected despite it named like worlds in a platformer. You will be running around and backtracking a lot and learning new abilites to open new pathways or solve some seal puzzle, it also had a grappling hook before God of War 2 did all though GOW2 did it a lot better. There is also combat and platforming basically everything before GOW before GOW would do it even though GOW is tighter and more polished, but this game's execution of these ideas are decent enough in own right since this generally combines so many elements like action, adventuring and platforming and rarely do they overstay their welcome. Rygar also has the follow cam before GOW as well.

The Onimusha inspirations can be seen in how there are weapons that can all be upgraded to level 3 with enemies you kill giving currency.

Now this is all the good and honestly the only big issues with the game is that giant size enemies are a pain in the ass in that they are hard to hit, the lack of an actual dodge command can be a pain and the worst part is that bosses can hit you and then hit you again while you are getting up after the invinciblity frames wear off, a quick button tap to get up would greatly help. And that extended platforming section
in Aracdia is also really bad due to how easy it is to miss jumps due to the fixed camera, this isn't as bad Devil May Cry 4. The voice acting is also pretty bad but you can view it in a so bad it's entertaining kind of way.

Overall, for a game that was a weird indirect precursor to God of War, it's solid especially with no development hindsight to go off of.