Barbarian, the game in question here, is a medieval rip of Powerstone (from the Dreamcast) as best I can tell, minus the interesting character design and over the top gameplay. First and foremost, this game engine has potential. The problem is that the development team had the wrong focus and tried to shoehorn it into an arena based fighting game. Barbarian appears bred to be an action adventure game, ala Golden Axe, but instead you’re locked in a confined arena with a small number of competitors. The idea is to be the last one standing or the last team standing. Despite full 3-D movement, regular fighting game rules still apply (best 2 out of 3 rounds, life bars, combos, etc.).

Players can choose between versus mode and story mode, but the word “story” is used lightly here. Versus mode is self-explanatory. You can play with any combination of four human/cpu players and add on up to four computer controller grunts. Eight characters on the screen is pretty crazy, but even with a bunch of friends over, it still isn’t fun. The story mode is the section of the game that “should have been”. Should have been what? Well, should have been a lot of things, Golden Axe being one suggestion. Instead of taking these barbaric creatures and unleashing them on a quest to beat things up, they are locked down to a single fight at a time. Come on, Tekken 4 has an adventure mode thrown in as a bonus to its fighting game, and I feel like Barbarian has a fighting game thrown in as a bonus to its adventure game but then forgot to put the adventure game in. The story in “story mode” is just a bunch of text in between fights detailing each characters progress in the world, and it absolutely pales in comparison to the extra Mission Mode in Soul Calibur.

I feel compelled to at least outline some of the ideas that are supposed to make Barbarian work. There are six combos available to each character. That’s it. Six canned moves are all you have to work with. Each completed combo has its own properties such as pop up, stun, quick, and push back. Along with the combos, there are magical projectiles and magical runes to use. There are runes awarded based on certain situations. If you hit someone with a rock, you get a certain rune. If you complete a combo, you get a different type of rune, and so on. The idea here is that you need to figure out which runes (different actions for each player) work best for your character. For example with 21 (big hulking guy), when he completes a combo, he gets a “No Pain” rune. This allows him to not react to hits, basically allowing him to swing through the opponent’s combos. Once you have that rune going it’s easy to get in and throw the opponent. This earns him a different run that has a high damaging circular attack. Once you have a strategy down, it’s just lather, rinse, repeat.

Now I feel compelled to tell you why these ideas don’t work. Combos are really all you have to work with. Once the first hit connects, the rest are guaranteed. The only way to stop a combo is to interrupt it with a special push-back move, but that takes like half your magic meter away making it only useful a couple of times. This is pretty infuriating, because it leaves you feeling so helpless. The only true way to combat a combo is to block it (combo moves don’t stop if the first hit doesn’t connect, so you have to block everything). Blocking is poorly implemented, and when you first start the game, you can only block what is right in front of you. This leaves your sides and back open to additional players or grunts hitting you while you’re blocking. It also makes it tough to block while you are running away, which happens A LOT. It turns into a button mashing fest with a few runes thrown in here and there. Picking up objects in the environment is not worth your time. They are hard to aim, and you’re usually pummeled to the ground before you can finish picking it up anyway. The camera sucks because the default view will try to keep every monster on the screen. When the main baddy is closely chasing you and a grunt is all the way on the other side of the screen, it effectively traps you in by creating a false wall. The other option just zooms in on your character, which doesn’t allow you to see anyone attacking you.

The graphics are decent, but don’t strike me as anything that couldn’t be done on the Dreamcast. The action is fast but sacrifices any real good animation in return. The spells aren’t that flashy, but the hit sparks look good for what it’s worth. The environments aren’t anything special, but they do make up for their drab appearance with hidden rooms, levels, and breakable floors.

I actually found the music to fit the mood nicely, real deep bass, tribal kind of stuff. Most of it sounds like it came out of a big castle scene in a Conan movie or something. The sound effects are all right but nothing more than grunts and groans. The only speech in the game is from the narrator, and he’s very long winded. It’s nice that they added so much voice to the game, but it’s a pity that you only hear it when he’s ready the story to you in between fights.

Barbarian as it stands today is not worth your time. Barbarian in the future may have a lot going for it. The RPG-like upgrade system and the small movelist makes it a perfect candidate for a long drawn out beat-em-up adventure game like Maximo or Hunter the Reckoning. The problems with Barbarian are absolutely unacceptable for the fighting game that it’s trying to be.

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