
Swords and Magic Action
"A masterpiece surpassing the timeless classic “Crossed Swords” is born here. Looming giant bosses, upgraded graphics. It is up to you to save the Kingdom of Belcana, once again fallen into the clutches of evil!"
Crossed Swords 2 is an ADK-developed 1995 sequel to the first Crossed Swords made for the Neo Geo CD exclusively with it gaining no ports to other systems so far, but retaining similar gamplay-style. Decades after the first game, Nausizz is back, having revived himself from the dead through sheer will, and to spice things up a bit now the player can choose between three heroes - the knight of the first game, a ninja, and a female dancer armed with dual knives as they venture across 12 stages in order to fight Nausizz who is on a quest to conquer the land of Belkana after his return from the afterlife alongside his own castle. The sequel notably adds a few Japanese-inspired elements, including ninjas and samurai as enemies. New gameplay features include an arena mode allowing players to practice against specific bosses, a dash move and the ability to executive powerful special attack through fighting game-style motion inputs.— Translated description from back of the case
Tropes:
- Animated Armor: Several of the knight-like enemies of the second game are actually living armours, with no flesh or blood underneath as you realize after defeating them.
- Balance, Speed, Strength Trio: While the first game have both players as knights, in the second they can choose between three different playable heroes, in that order - the ninja (a Jack of All Stats), the dancer (a Fragile Speedster and Squishy Wizard) and the knight (a Magically Inept Fighter and Mighty Glacier).
- Breath Weapon: Nausizz takes it even further than the first game by turning into a Big Red Devil that breathes a gigantic fireball that can kill you if hit from point-blank.
- Call-Back: One section has you fighting in a hallway containing portraits of all enemies from the previous game.
- Degraded Boss:
- In the first stage, your very first Rat Man encounter is the armoured Rat Man boss in the first stage, before regular Rat Man enemies started appearing after the boss is killed.
- The Shadow Knight who appears as the boss of the colosseum stage returns as mook enemies later on. There's also two similar knights (using the same sprites) as a Dual Boss.
- Flying Seafood Special: Giant flying blue jellyfish float out of water surfaces to attack you.
- Gashadokuro: The Skeleton Worm is the skeleton of a giant with a centipede-like body made of bones, who claws at you with it's bony talons.
- Giant Hands of Doom: One of the available power-ups is a giant fist that when summoned, drops down from the heavens into the arena, dealing massive damage to any number of mooks that happens to be on the point of impact.
- Gratuitous Ninja: Ninjas are recurring enemies who appear halfway through, despite the Medieval European setting. One of the three playable heroes is even a ninja.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: For certain enemies:
- The pail-head knights, being living armours, breaks apart from the waist after they're killed. In some cases, the lower half will run off-screen comically while the upper simply dies.
- The Devil's Eye and Acid Papilion enemies splits vertically upon being slain.
- Intrepid Merchant: After completing a level, a red-clad gypsy lady will suddenly teleport into the area from seemingly out of nowhere, and sell you weapons and power-ups before leaving.
- Knight and Samurai: The game plays with this trope, as in addition to the previous game's knight, the player is able to select a ninja as the game's protagonist.
- Knight in Shining Armor: This sequel mixes stuff a bit allowing you to play either as the knight, a lady dancer, or a ninja.
- Magic Knight: Evil mages armed with scythes are a recurring enemy in this game, where they can cast attacking spells in tandem with using their weapons to rough you up.
- Moth Menace: Acid Papilions are giant moths who attempts stinging you with their poison.
- Oculothorax: Red Devil's eye enemies are eyeballs with tentacles.
- Rat Men: The game has a heavily-armoured rodent man (called a Hyper Rat) as the first boss.
- Resurrective Immortality: The reason why Nausizz returns - after being slain, he can revive himself through sheer will within decades, since he's a Demon Warlord.
- Samurai: With the game throwing Japanese fantasy elements into the mix, you get a samurai clad in red armour as a dangerous boss halfway through, one who can pull a Flash Step while attacking you. There's also a samurai in blue later on as another equally difficult boss.
- Stripped to the Bone: The second game has a power-up that, when used on human mooks, will turn them into uniformed skeletons. Before crumbling apart.
- We Will Meet Again: This game has Nausizz stating outright (after you finally killed his third and final form) that as a Demon Warlord, he lives to inflict agony and pain on others, will continue to exist no matter how many times he's killed, as long as peace exists he will return to disrupt it.
