Awesome dark fantasy shoot ’em up mixed with a brilliant heavy metal soundtrack.

Story

The evil god Zaggart is re-awakening and his six most reliable minions have torn the world apart. A godly knight named Landis takes up arms against Zaggart’s wicked army. Will the world see peace once again?

The Game

Lords of Thunder is a side-scrolling shoot ’em up set in a dark fantasy world. You play as the brave knight Landis fighting to defeat the evil god. This game delivers pure, fast and flashy arcade style action coupled with brilliant instrumental heavy metal. The gameplay itself is as straight-forward as it gets: you are to kill as much as possible, collect gems and avoid getting hit. Your goal is to defeat the seven world bosses that are waiting at the end of each stage.

The game has gotten a cult following of shooter fans, because of its unique soundtrack, high difficulty level and solid game play.

Controls

The controls are very much exactly what you might expect from a side-scrolling shooter game. It just works flawlessly and it’s easy to get into its simple two button setup. Even though the game has a high difficulty level, it never pulls cheap tricks on you – it’s quite the opposite, really. Sometimes you’ll see an enemy bullet grace your knight Landis, but it still won’t count as a hit. Only direct hits are accounted for, so the game is quite fair in that aspect. The only thing that can come in your way in terms of how the game plays, is the fact that you can’t move to the extreme edges of the screen. Typically this means that you’ll miss a power-up that’s just outside of the invisible boundaries, or even worse, that you become backed up against the corner by enemies and bullets with nowhere to escape.

Content

When you start the game you’ll notice two curious features; you can select which armor you want to don as well as which one of the six selectable stages you want to play. Selecting stage order becomes a strategic matter – you can play them in any order that you prefer, but matching your current power level and armor type to the enemies and challenges for each level will increase your chances to succeed – that is to say, if you already have played the game enough to memorize such information.

It could be said that the levels have varying difficulty level, so you may choose to begin with the less hard ones and power up there before taking on the tougher ones. After clearing these six stages you are free to proceed to the seventh and final stage.

There are four different armors to choose from, namely; Fire, Wind, Earth and Water. This selection decides what type of weapon you’ll have as your main weapon. Between each stage you are prompted to re-select armor, so the best practice is to select the armor that best suits your needs for each specific stage. You’ll simply have to try each armor in order to see exactly what type of weapons it comes with, and how well it fits your needs. For example, there is a 3-way shooter, exploding bombs, lasers and so on. Even though the weapons seem to have elemental properties, they do not have specific benefits against specific enemies.

Each weapon can be upgraded with power-ups, and upgrades can also change your weapon type entirely. There’s no real logic behind it – you’ll just have to go with it. Each weapon has three possible power levels as indicated by a power gauge at the top right of the screen. Taking damage will also lower your weapons power gauge.

Other than the standard weapon you’ll also have a formidable close combat attack, which happens automatically when you get close enough to an enemy. Knowing when to use this is quite important, as you can’t fire your standard weapon and battle in close combat at the same time.

The enemies you’ll be fighting include everything from sorcerers, giant insects, dragons, monsters, poisonous plants, giant flaming skulls, armored knights and sea monsters. Depending on what stage you are on, you’ll see that the enemies all adhere to the environment in one way or another – the variety is rich and impressive in its own right.

Enemies will often come in large numbers, and even pelt you with bullets or other projectiles. You’ll need quick reactions as well as an inane memory in order to memorize enemy patterns and dodge all incoming projectiles. This game is really hard on its default setting, but if you manage to beat it there are two even harder settings that you can test your skills on. It’s obviously designed for highly skilled players.

Defeated enemies will often drop Crystals, which look like blue or red gems. Collecting these is a central aspect of the game because they’ll allow you to buy valuable power-ups from the special shop that appears before you enter each stage. So, the more Crystals you collect, the more power-ups you’ll be able to purchase. Dropped Crystals will fade away over time if you don’t pick them up quickly. Rushing to collect dropped Crystals is always risky with all the enemies, bullets and other hazards. This makes for a constant risk and reward situation that you’ll have to adapt to.

Power-ups that you can buy include damage absorbing shields, extra health and weapon upgrades. You can also arm yourself with special bombs that wipe the entire screen clean from enemies. These bombs can be very effective if used at the right time, but they’re also relatively expensive.

Other than buying from the shop, you can collect health power-ups and weapon upgrades from defeated enemies, but they are really rare. When you take damage, you will lose health as well as weapon power. This means that your precious upgraded weapon can be reduced to its weak default setting pretty quickly if you’re unlucky or not careful enough.

The game starts you off with three continues, meaning that you are given up to three chances to continue the game after you die. Each continue has one single life, so when you die, you can either choose to start the game all over, or keep your collected Crystals and retry the stage in which you died on (or select another stage!). Dying also means losing all your power-ups, but you’ll always have the chance to visit the shop before you embark on a stage, meaning that if you have the Crystals to cover it, you can compensate for it. Note that you can also buy new continues from the shop and even though they are quite expensive, this feature is kind of a big deal.

Should you die during a boss battle you can use a continue with great effect. You won’t have to replay the entire stage, but instead you’re taken directly to the boss battle. This means two things basically; you won’t have the chance to collect Crystals so that you can buy a new continue each time you die, but you will have an extra chance to visit the shop, tackling the boss with newly bought upgrades. This feature is brilliant; It’s very fair and smart of the developers as it eliminates a possible exploit as well as it gives you an extra help if you’re struggling with the boss battle.

The boss battles require some practice. Their attacks may seem overwhelmingly powerful at first but once you’ve figured out their weaknesses and attack patterns you’ll eventually be able to defeat them consistently.

Beating Lords of Thunder will take about an hour. Other than extra difficulty levels, which indeed are extremely hardcore challenges, there’s not much else to do in the game. There’s no multiplayer or extra game modes. In this respect, the game relies entirely on bare bones replay value, which it does have with all its different weapons, stages and bosses to master.

Playing it multiple times for either high score challenges or just for the kicks is quite satisfying as it is, simply because there aren’t really any other game out there that is quite like this one. But as with most shoot ’em ups, Lords of Thunder is best played sporadically. That way it will never grow old.

Graphics

The first thing you’ll notice about the graphics is that the game is lighting fast and runs like a dream – even with tons of enemies and bullets on the screen. Lords of Thunder has very colorful and inspiring 2D graphics and all the animation is of high standard. The enemies and environments are also quite detailed. Each stage has its unique design, and there are many interesting and unique designs to the enemies as well. The different weapons are quite spectacular when they’re fully upgraded – all the flashy graphics sure make for an enjoyable visual presentation.

Lords of Thunder also features an animated cartoon-style intro, which sets the mood to the rest of the game.

Sound

The music in Lords of Thunder is brilliant and truly one of a kind. The whole soundtrack consists of top quality 90’s heavy metal, full of catchy killer riffs, grinding guitars, pounding bass-lines and awesome drum work. Thanks to that the game runs from a CD, it features a full CD quality soundtrack of pure goodness. Being a metal music fan, this music is insanely appealing, and it instantly grabs your attention and never lets go. It just begs to be played loudly. It imbues you with an unyielding fighting spirit and it certainly goes hand in hand with the rest of the game.

The combination of a fantasy setting and metal music may seem far-fetched, but it actually works perfectly here. Each stage has its own music, and they’re all really good tracks. There’s no denying it: Lords of Thunder easily has one of the best video game soundtracks of all time.

The sound effects are also great – each weapon has its own sound, and there are some screams and grunts in there. You could argue that the explosion sounds doesn’t have as much impact as they could have, but other than that the game sounds awesome.

Summary

Lords of Thunder is a total blast from start until the end. It may have gone unnoticed by some because of the fact that it is very rare, especially in Europe, but it certainly is a great game that you should play if you like tough arcade shooters. Thanks to its unique setting, great game play and solid soundtrack, it delivers an exotic mix never before seen. If you’re into this type of games and metal music you really owe it to yourself to experience this golden hour of video gaming history.

Developed By: Red Company
Published By: Hudson Soft
Version Reviewed: TurboGrafx-CD
Genre: Shoot ’em Up
Players: 1
Also Available On: Wii (Virtual Console), Playstation 3 (Playstation Store Japan)
Released: 1993