Barbarian

The visuals are excellent, with the interactive backgrounds looking great and reacting perfectly.

Though some of the button-smashing combos are tricky to execute, the multiplayer action is solid, and the quest mode stirs in puzzle solving for antisocial savages who prefer going solo.

Playing the game is a bittersweet experience. It’s strangely diverting, but all the time you’re thinking of what it could have been with a bit more testing and tweaking.

A repetitive game with pretty graphics that fails to inspire much of anything.

The gameplay mechanics are pretty basic and repetitive, and the storylines are so bland that there's not much value in finishing the game with every character.

Indistinct characters, painfully hokey storytelling, poor AI, and a shallow combat system add up to a disappointing experience.

If Sapphire put as much emphasis on the combat as they did on conjuring gritty stories to back each fighter, Barbarian could have been a lot better. [July 2002, p.115]