Shadow of The Beast I vs II vs III - Which is Best?
 

Well It's that time of the month again, a new edition of "Which is Best?" and this month It's the Amiga's turn and I'm placing the 3 Shadow of The Beast games against each other asking you which one do you think is the better game, only your votes will determine that (comparison video below) :great



Voting closes 15th July.

Beast video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZgD1pLcsPY

Part III of course. There is no real discussion.

You are right, there is no discussion : The 1st one :D

My personal favourite was #2, since it was the first one I played. I particularly love the atmosphere, music, sound and graphics of this one. However, I used Ten Pints, as it was impossible otherwise.

The 1st and 2nd ones are insanely difficult; at least with the 3rd one I could probably finish this without loads and loads and loads of practice.

...but I'm going to have to say the original SotB; it absolutely blew me away back in the day with the graphics, music and atmosphere.

To be honest though, I do also love the 2nd one for similar reasons to the 1st so it is a very hard decision.

Agony.

This is difficult. It's between 1 and 2 for sure. People will speak up for 3 because it was more playable, but it had the worst intro, and it didn't have the vision or the feel of the first two, although I will give it credit for having a good ending that wrapped up the trilogy well.

I'm tempted to say 1 for the pure wow factor of the outside areas and for the overall artwork in general, but I did like the interactivity and the puzzles of 2 a great deal. I'll give it some thought before giving a final answer.

The third is the most playable due to the the easiest difficulty level. But when you consider the gameplay itself, it is rather shallow. Beautiful graphics do not compensate it. I vote for the second part even though it is insanely difficult.

SotB 1 of course. It was, as DamienD has pointed out, mind-blowing back in the day. Quite possibly the one game that caused more jaws to hit the floor than any other before or since.

(And I managed to finish SotB 1, I could never finish the other two! Oh, I also didn't like the graphics in 3; too little contrast inside textures, and too much when compared to the backgrounds they were overlaid on).

Remember how Laffer strolled through Beast I & II like it was no big deal without cheats or savestates ? :)

Shadow of Beast 2 FM towns
Shadow of the beast 3 Amiga worst graphics but best gameplay.

-Shadow of the beast 2 Amiga some of the obstacles are random totally impossible and unplayable but best intro ever.

Since SOB started on Amiga -should have got AGA version of FM towns version.

Shadow of the Beast 1 was my favourite. It had that WOW factor over everything else when you walked into the shops and saw it playing in attract mode. The David Whittaker music is amazing (not to say Beast 2 & 3 by Tim Wright wasn't) compared to anything of the time.

Gameplay wise, everyone is saying it was so hard. You can easily get half way through "The tree" on your first go. The Plains to the Castle too.. I only ever made it 2/3rds the way through without cheating which took days of playing and working out the timing of the various monsters.

I like the puzzles in SOTB 3, so I'm going with that one :)

Beast 1 and 2 break so many basic rules of game design it's unconscionable. They're both essentially tech demos turned into games. Beast 2 in particular has an unforgivable number of dead end states where you have made the game uncompleteable by going in the wrong direction, using an item, or hitting the wrong lever, with no indication that you have doomed yourself other than an increasing level of confusion about what to do.

It's noteworthy that some of the later ports of Beast 1 and 2 to other platforms corrected some of these issues.

Beast 3 might have been too easy but it at least didn't make the same mistakes as the first two.

Beast 1

Beast 3, But I haven't played it as much as Beast 1 and 2...

#1 still gives me chills. What an epic game. I still can't get anywhere in it, and that makes it awesome. None of the modern day infinite re-spawns, or achievement award for picking your nose. Everything from the parallax, to the music, to the questionable enemies and fairly mundane controls and combat....I'm sorry but I still LOVE it.

#2....I was always confused why I was fighting everything off with an over-sized yo-yo to be honest.

Never played #3.

So the answer for me is.....Number 4....the PS4 remake :D

ok no I'd pick #1 but on the understanding that I've never played #3 so can't comment.

"Never played" is a very temporary state to be in you know ;)

Part 3 for me

Beast 1, super spooky, super cool.