YMMV / Shadow of the Beast

• Anti-Climax Boss: Maletoth in the first game. The game itself is Nintendo Hard, but the final boss is a pushover whose attacks are very easy to predict and, unlike the other bosses, you don't even need to find a special weapon beat it. The fact that, in contrast to the nightmarish earlier bosses, it looks like a giant, mutated foot doesn't help, either.
• Awesome Music: Pretty much the entire soundtrack.
  • You don't have to Take Our Word for It. The entire soundtrack for the Amiga versions of the second and third game can be legally downloaded for free at Tim Wright's homepage - including at least one unused theme for the second game.
• Funny Moments: The way you punch away nearly every enemy becomes quite hilarious. Some are bigger than you, yet a single punch is enough to send them flying in ballistic curve.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: While it's around the same length as the first two games, the decrease in Nintendo Hard and structure changes (levels as opposed to a pseudo-open world), resulted in this being one of the primary criticisms among reviewers for the third game.
• Porting Disaster: The US Genesis port of the first game. The developers didn't bother to account for the difference between NTSC and PAL formats, causing the game to run at a ridiculous speed. Needless to say, the difficulty also skyrocketed.
  • Many versions of the first game actually manage to avoid this. The basic idea and gameplay were quite simple and despite the downgraded graphics and/or music in many platforms the gameplay was often quite good, when compared to the original Amiga version. Apparently the issue in the American Genesis/Megadrive release was fixed for Japanese release. The latter has also upgraded graphics (closer to those used in PC Engine/Turbografx-16 release) and different ending sequence. However, non-Amiga versions tend to lack some individual tunes from the soundtrack when compared to the Amiga version. This applies even to the version for PC Engine/Turbografx-16 despite being on CD and using audio tracks for music (and possibly to the FM-Towns version, which supposedly uses the same CD soundtrack as PCE/T-16 version). Surprisingly many versions manage to include the parallax scrolling in the overworld sections. Even the one for ZX Spectrum, which was not known for its scrolling capabilities^note The version for Amstrad CPC could have done better, though.
  • The Atari ST port of the second game is a mess. The opening cutscene is missing some animations, the text that explains whats happening is gone, and lacks any sound. The actual gameplay isn't much better. The game appears to be running in slowmotion and the graphics, music and sound effects have taken a notable dip in quality. Compare footage of the Atari ST port [1] to that of the Amiga port [2].
• So Okay, It's Average: The remake. It's regarded as a fairly decent little game, but not much else.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: As shown in this video and commented by Tim Wright himself, the Game Over music and the guitar parts from several other tracks are taken from the Miami Vice soundtrack.
• That One Puzzle: The third game has the slab puzzle in the Caves of Bidhur; every other puzzle can be solved consistently, but this essentially involves approximating a physics puzzle in a game without physics. You have to get a large slab across a long (but shallow) pit by placing (and moving them as you shift the slab along) three balls in said pit correctly so they evenly balance the slab correctly, one mistake and it falls in the pit and you have to go back to the last checkpoint. In itself this would only be kind of irritating, but the last checkpoint is at least a few minutes back and requires you to enter a cave full of respawning Goddamned Bats that you need to kill a certain amount of to get the hammer you need to do the slab puzzle, so you end up getting drained each time you screw up. Finally, there's a boss fight straight after solving the puzzle; while not too difficult it's another way to get sent back if you mess up and die (and also Nightmare Fuel if you run into it without being ready).