There is no doubt that in the catalogue of the famous Neo Geo there is a large number of titles with an excellent level of quality, not only mechanically, but also in terms of graphics this company was far ahead of others. Their graphic level was so high that nowadays most of their games have aged really well and that's something very difficult to achieve, because even games after some of the Neo Geo titles have aged very badly. This game that I'll talk about next is one of those titles that to this day is able to maintain its charisma with regards to the graphics and that despite being a little repetitive in its playable aspect it's still a fun title.
The plot of Crossed Swords places us in a very common medieval world, that is, a world full of knights, castles, magic and creatures of all kinds, very similar to what we could see in the saga of The Lord of the Rings. But instead in this title we find ourselves in a kingdom called Belkana and as is common in this type of story, everything begins relatively quiet, all in peace until the kingdom was invaded by a whole horde of monsters and grotesque creatures causing chaos and destruction to every place they go. At this point in the story we are going to embody a famous knight whose name is "The Knight of the Jorney" and our duty and equally the duty of our protagonist is to end all these creatures that were desolating his kingdom and his beloved people.
Crossed Swords has the typical cliché plot of a lifetime: A kingdom is attacked by an army of villains and a hero appears who must stop them, simple as that, but effective as that. In those days we didn't need an extremely deep story to enjoy video games, and since Crossed Swords is also an arcade, a highly developed plot was not necessary. Luckily, over the years, video games have evolved not only graphically but also in terms of their storyline, and many of them have a very long history.
Graphically it's everything I like in a retro game, but even more so because of its medieval aesthetics. Despite not having extremely detailed graphics, Crossed Swords has a graphic level good enough to be considered a game that has aged very well today.
The whole medieval setting is very well recreated, throughout our adventure we will see the typical scenarios that relate to this type of environment, we will see castles, forests, dungeons and villages, ie all the graphic aspects that characterize the Middle Ages are extremely well achieved. The scenarios themselves are not very big and that's because of the mode of this game, since Crossed Swords is an RPG action game with first person perspective, but not the typical perspective, but rather it's a similar to the classic boxing game Punch-out, so being the camera closer to the back of our character, our perspective with the view of the scenario is a little more closed, because our main focus is our enemies, but still, you can notice a good amount of details in our environment and a use of quite dark colors.
The design of the character sprites also stands out a lot, having these designs perhaps a better level of detail with respect to the scenarios, although this is because compared to the scenario the characters occupy more space on the screen, so they must have a better graphic quality. The designs are not so varied, many of the enemy characters are re-used but the color is changed, sometimes it is a little boring to see always the same designs, but at least that is compensated a little with the final bosses, because they have good designs and very fluid and dynamic animations.
Music is everything we expect in a video game or a product where we find ourselves in a medieval world. Crossed Swords has the typical medieval melodies that remind us of movies like The Lord of the Rings, but they are pretty good, they are not excellent because at a certain point after some time playing they can annoy us a little because they are repeated a lot, but their level of composition is really very professional. As for the sound effects, there's not much to say, since they're pretty basic, but still necessary.
Crossed Swords is a first-person action game, but it's not a conventional "first-person" game, since its modality, as I mentioned before, is more similar to the classic boxing video game: Punch-out, the one where we have a vision of our character right behind his back, but we only see a semi-transparent silhouette of him (if you played Punch-out you'll know what I mean, anyway with the images I'm placing you will understand perfectly what I'm talking about).
While Crossed Swords is a "first person" action game, due to its characteristics of being set in a medieval world, it also has certain characteristics of an RPG, although they are quite basic features and are not as developed as in other video games that focus more on an RPG genre as such. As we advance in the adventure we will learn the correct use of our character, because even though it's not that difficult, if we have to be quite agile when it comes to dodging certain attacks or performing certain attacks, basically the modality of this videogame is based on dodging attacks, performing attacks or defending from attacks, in this aspect it's a bit repetitive, but we're talking about an arcade and basically this is the essence of most videogames of this genre.
In general terms Crossed Swords is not an extremely difficult title, in fact, due to its arcade style it is a relatively short game, it might not take more than 1 hour to complete, but because it also has a cooperative mode it makes it even more fun to play with a friend.
Crossed Swords is not a game that will change our lives, but it is a product that is quite fun to try out, and especially to visualize due to its excellent graphics, which shows that Neo Geo was an expert in creating titles whose greatest appeal was their graphic appearance. And many of his games are a great one of this.
