by Werewolf: The Last Warrior is a 2D side-scroller made by Data East. Retro gamers might be familiar some of their other games such as Karate Champ, Rampage, and Joe and Mac: Caveman Ninja.
The game has a simple but fun premise: you play as a Werewolf named War Wolf and take on the forces of the evil Dr. Faryan and his Death Slaves.
So, is Werewolf: The Last Warrior as cool as it sounds or will this game fail to rise from its grave? Let’s find out.
Gameplay
There is a lot to cover here because there are so many differences between your human form and Werewolf/Super Werewolf forms as well as a plethora of power-ups. For now, let’s start with the basics for all forms. The D-pad moves you, the B button jumps, and the A button attacks. Holding the A button can charge a special attack that is different depending on your form. If you hold up and jump, you do a high jump. Start pauses the game, and if you hit Select while paused you can check your remaining lives and score.
As a human, your jump height and attack power are significantly lower, but you get access to a ranged attack when you hold the A button. It comes in the form of the word NOOO! flying across the screen, which is hilarious.
As a Werewolf you have a much higher jump, you can climb walls, you can crawl though small tunnels, and you can use your claws to monkey-bar across certain ceilings. You do this by hitting up and A while near the ceiling. If you hit A and B at the same time, you do a backflip that lets you avoid damage. If you hold A, you do a screen wide attack that does major damage to enemies and yourself, so use it sparingly.
You can become a Super Werewolf by collecting 5 Small White Power Orbs to fill your Anger meter. It’s similar to the Werewolf but jumps much higher and does double damage. You can also find other pickups such as the Small Red Power Orb which kills all enemies on the screen; the Large Red Power Orb that makes you invincible; the gun, which lets you fire a single shot in your Werewolf forms; and the blue W, which changes you to human if you are Werewolf/Super Werewolf or damages you if you are human.
1-Ups give you extra “lives”, and if you get 50,000 points you also get an extra life. Small and large hearts heal you, hourglasses give you more time, and money symbols increase your score.
The gameplay itself is a lot of fun. The platforming is very responsive and polished. Slashing enemies to pieces as a Werewolf is so satisfying. His arms even turn into cool blades for the attack animation, which is pretty unique for werewolves. Shooting a gun as a werewolf is also very cool. The spinning high jump is also very reminiscent of the TMNT game, but more polished in my opinion.
I give the gameplay a 9/10.
Graphics and Music
The graphics in Werewolf: The Last Warrior are phenomenal. The first time you transform into a werewolf we get a cutscene, and it looks great. Data East took full advantage of what the NES hardware offered in ways you don’t see often.
The full screen pixel art is often reused partially or in full, particularly The Great Spirit telling you about levels and the scenes where bosses were defeated. The enemy variety and sprites are also pretty good.
I give the graphics a 9/10.
The music is solid, but the variety is very limited. The music is mostly tied to which form you are in. So, if you are in Werewolf form as much as possible (which you want to do as often as possible) and you don’t like the music for it, this might be a dealbreaker for you. There is one stage where it doesn’t really have music, just an alarm that is constantly going off the entire time regardless of your form. Whoever made that decision should have been fired.
Overall, I give the music a 5.5 out of 10.
Difficulty
I can see why War Wolf is called the Last Warrior. This game is brutal! What this game calls lives are the same as continues. There is also a timer, so in many levels you don’t have much time to explore for power-ups. Also, there is no password system. There are plenty of pits and a few traps that kill you instantly or do insane damage. The lightning on the skyscraper was an unexpected kill trap; previous electricity just did heavy damage. The one thing that didn’t feel punishing was the hitboxes. They were actually quite generous.
I put this game’s difficult up there with Ninja Gaiden and TMNT. For some, that is a dealbreaker; for others, that’s a challenge to be conquered.
Final Verdict
Data East has outdone themselves with this game. I’m usually not a big fan of their games barring a couple of exceptions I will be reviewing later, so that is a nice surprise. I give Werewolf: The Last Warrior an 8/10. It’s currently about $17 loose, so it’s fairly cheap to collect for a retro game.
