Artificially inflated difficulty and some truly terrible level design choices make this one an easy pass. There are plenty of retro hack n' slash games out there worth your time.

Fantastic brawler / hack and slash arcade style game! The beautiful sprite works propel the graphics to the fore front but the game play is not to be overlooked. You have a standard melee attack, a projectile attack, and a dash / teleport attack that has a little bit of invincibility frames to help you in a pinch. You earn money as you progress through the stages and can purchase a number of items / upgrades with the currency you've collected. The upgrades really go a long way towards keeping the adventure fresh and engaging. There are stat buffs like heath, speed, strength and more. As well as healing items, bombs, and magic attacks. There are three characters, all of which play very differently. Everything from attack speed, mobility options, health, and more differ between characters which further enhances the depth and replay value of the experience.

All in all Battle Axe is a wonderful throw back to classics such as Gauntlet and Golden Axe, albeit a bit faster I'd say. The gorgeous graphics, and tight arcade game play make for a great package. Cooperative play is an option as well of course. I highly recommend this game! The default difficulty is "Hard" and it is not kidding. There is a very steep challenge at that difficulty but it is definitely doable with a fair bit of practice and memorization. There are also two other difficulty settings if hard is too much to deal with.

The game is fun, but $30 for this is criminal. Glad I got it on sale, I hope for $10 or less.