Last Battle is a side-scrolling action game similarly to its predecessor Black Belt. The player takes control of Aarzak (Kenshiro in the Japanese original), who fights against his enemies using his punches and kicks. Aarzak can attack while standing, jumping, and crouching, for a total of six basic attacks. In addition to his life gauge, Aarzak has a power-up meter that will gradually fill as he defeats enemies. When the meter reaches a certain point (depending on the stage), Aarzak will transform into a super-powered state, allowing him to perform rapid punches and kicks for the rest of the stage. The game's levels (with the exception of boss battles and maze stages) feature a time limit at the lower-right corner of the screen; but unlike other time limits, instead of killing the character immediately when it reaches, it will instead gradually drain the player's life gauge until the player completes the level. The game is divided into four stages or chapters, each featuring several levels. After completing a level the player will be shown a map which displays the player's current location and the paths they can take. Most of the levels are linear side-scrolling segments where the player must simply walk from one to side to the other while fighting every enemy who gets in the way. Other levels are dungeon mazes in which the player must figure out the correct path to the goal while avoiding traps. The player will encounter various allies throughout the game that will increase Aarzak's offensive or defensive strength, or replenish their health. The game features several one-on-one encounters with bosses as well. The player must sometime complete levels in a certain order in order to finish a chapter. 'Last Battle' is also notorious amongst gamers for its harsh difficulty throughout. The original Japanese version ist based on the Fist of the North Star mangas/animes. During the translation process all references to Fist of the North Star were removed - similar to its predecessor Black Belt.
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I'll admit I've never watched Hokuto no Ken. It's not like I don't want to it's more of just I have other anime I want to watch first. If there was one thing I knew about it for sure was it's success in the game market was almost abysmal. I can only think of like 2 maybe 3 good games based off this series. This is not one of those games oh no it's not even CLOSE!
This game reminds me a lot of Kung-fu/Spartan X and Vigilante where you go one direction and continue to fight enemies that die in one hit until you reach the end of the path. Now you may think oh that sounds like a dec-NO don't even finish that sentence. It's not fun. First off your attacks have such bad range and it feels inconsistent and I could never get a 100% feel around them. It's the worst with knocking projectiles, you may think you know how to get rid of them only for it to ignore your attack and bam you're hit.
Then you have the boss fights and these are so bad. Sometimes I can easily beat them but then it just feels like they hit me every single attempt I try. They all feel the same too outside of a special move they have. But nothing about these are enjoyable. I guess it's cool to see them die.
In fact that's one thing I'll give the game, it looks alright. I do wish it had more variety but it's not too bad. It's probably the best thing going for the game.
If the game isn't being frustrating it's being the most boring mind numbing game ever made. You try going into those building levels and see if you're having fun by the 3rd one. Seriously what were they thinking with some of the levels they just go on and on and the whole game just feels so slow. Why can Kenshiro only go fast in those building levels. It's all just so tiring after a while.
Did I forget to mention you only have one life? Because you do, kind of. Ok there is a continue cheat if you hold all the buttons at the text you see before the title logo shows up but if you didn't know about this, they expect you to do that horrible borefest in one go. Why couldn't you at least have lives or just a normal continue system? There's also just no i-frames and there's touch damage. You can get hurt by a STATIONARY ROCK!
Ok I've probably gone too long writing this but man it was frustrating and I didn't even mention the weird localization or some of the other dumb stuff like having to do levels more then once. It's just not a fun game and I feel drained of any energy after beating it.