Traditionally enough, Maximo begins his quest to rescue his girlfriend in a graveyard, armed with nothing but his sword, his armor, and a pair of boxer shorts.  Skeletons and zombies pop up from the ground, power-ups can be collected, gold coins can be collected to purchase saves and other bonus items, and souls can be rescued to purchase continue coins (which are different from gold coins).  While the game isn't as difficult as the original series, this one offers some unique challenges of it's own.  The biggest thing is that continues aren't free, and the more you use, the more expensive they get.  Each time you die, the Grim Reaper demands a higher toll to return you to the land of the living, and if you fail to have enough 'continue coins' saved up, the game is over.  Additionally, you have to use your gold coins to save the game-- so if you skimming through levels is not recommended, as you need both to fuel your progress through the game. 

There are five stages to the game, and each stage has five maps.  Four of the maps are actual levels where you start at the beginning and fight up to the end of the level, where you are transferred back to the hub map.  Once you beat the four levels, the boss character on the hub map is unlocked. You defeat the boss to progress on to the next stage.

While the game features a few jumping challenges, and the nearly non-stop onslaught of monsters, it never becomes cheap or unfair.  The controls are extremely tight and accurate, and if you make a mistake you can only blame yourself.  To keep it interesting, each type of monster requires a specific approach  to defeat efficiently, and before long you'll be hacking and jumping and blocking with your shield with extreme precision-- which leads to an interesting thing.  You can replay a map over and over again (to try to find all the secrets), and even if you're late in the game, you can still warp back all the way to map 1 and beat it over and over again, collecting lives, armor, and coins.  If you're good enough at it, you can keep your stores of lives replenished and never have to use a continue.

Another neat thing is the different power-ups you can collect.  You can hold as many powerups as you can find, and each one augments your abilities in some way, like a double swing, or a fancy downward strike, or a longer sword, etc.  However, should you die, you will lose all but the first three powerups you have saved, the remainder are lost and you have to re-find them (they randomly appear).   Each time you beat an entire stage, you get an additional lockable slot, so by the time you get to stage three, you have five slots that you can save your most important skills in.  It sounds a little confusing, but it's really pretty cool.

All in all it's a very solid game, with great cut scenes, sounds, and music--  and the bonus levels after you beat it are just icing on the cake.

Time to beat : 25-35 hours

Rating 7/10

Buy it at Amazon.com

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