The Adventures of Panzer is a series of games made using a special program that lets you make games on the NES easier. In fact, I read that for a while you could even buy cartridges of them. And now you can download the two games on most current consoles (reviewed on PS4 here). Panzer is a knight with a colorful past and boorish anti-hero style personality, and he goes on adventures with his so-called friends. Gameplay-wise, the games kind of remind me of Legacy of the Wizard, but a bit more straightforward and platform action oriented. But let’s take a look at the games on this collection!

The Adventures of Panzer
In the first game, you just play as Panzer, who can run, jump, and use a sword as a short range attack. Collect potions to use magic spells by pressing up and B, and use the select button to cycle through them. You can heal yourself as well as shoot projectiles in an arc or a straight line, for instance. You’ll tromp through 2D stages, defeating midbosses and main bosses to finish the levels.

The Adventures of Panzer 2
Graphically the sequel is a bit more colorful than the first, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same. Now not only can you play as Panzer, but you can switch out to other characters, too. In the tutorial stage, you can use all characters, but once you finish that you can select a stage and bring one other character with you. Panzer has most of his standard skills from the first game, and when you press select you can switch to another character. One fires long distance arrows and can climb walls like Mega Man X. Another can throw bombs, and one can shoot magic that can freeze water that you can use as platforms.

My main problem with these games is that they are too darn hard, thanks to bad enemy placement and unfair bosses. And when you lose all your lives and get a Game Over, you can’t continue (at least not that I’m aware of). Luckily you can activate cheats that let you have infinite health and lives, if you just want to plow through everything. But even then it didn’t keep me interested. The game comes with a neat virtual instruction booklet, though, which I liked. And there’s a neat cameo from Dungeons and Doomknights, another NES style game I reviewed recently.

Kid Factor:
The Adventures of Panzer Legacy Collection is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Alcohol Reference, Mild Blood, Mild Language, and Fantasy Violence. Most of that is just in the text only, and you just hit pixel enemies with swords and magic and that’s it. Reading skill is helpful and younger gamers may find it too difficult.

Tags: Game Reviews