The story picks up immediately after the events of the first game. Aarbron, the protagonist, has partially broken free from the curse that transformed him into a monstrous servant of the Beast Lord Maletoth — he is now in half-beast form, neither fully human nor fully creature. His sister has been kidnapped and taken to the lands of Kara-Moon, and he must venture through a hostile world to find her. The narrative is again told primarily through the manual rather than in-game, but the premise gives the journey a more personal, urgent quality than the original's revenge arc.
Where the first Shadow of the Beast was essentially a pure action game built around learning enemy patterns through relentless repetition, the sequel introduces a more varied structure. The game is still a side-scrolling platformer with melee combat at its core, but puzzle-solving now plays a meaningful role alongside the fighting. Players encounter characters to interact with, objects to collect and combine, and situations that require lateral thinking rather than reflexes alone. Some of these puzzles are genuinely cryptic and demand patience, which divided players at the time: those who wanted more depth found it, while those who had loved the raw intensity of the original sometimes felt the pacing had been disrupted.
The combat remains demanding. Aarbron has a limited health bar, enemies hit hard, and the game offers no continues in its original form. The design philosophy carries over from the first game — Edmondson's preference for games that require mastery — but the addition of puzzles means that failure is not always about skill. Occasionally it is about knowledge, or trial and error, which can feel frustrating when health is scarce.
Shadow of the Beast II is again a showcase for what the Amiga hardware could do. The parallax scrolling that made the original so striking is present throughout, with richly detailed backgrounds shifting at multiple depths. The environments are more varied this time — forests, dungeons, open plains, underground passages — giving the world a sense of geography that the more monotonous landscapes of the first game lacked.Tim Wright's soundtrack is widely considered the finest in the series. Where David Whittaker's score for the original leaned into atmosphere and dread, Wright's compositions are more dynamic, shifting tone to match the different environments and moments of the game. The music alone became a reason for many Amiga owners to load the game up.
The game won the Best Graphics award at the Golden Joystick Awards in 1990, recognition that placed it among the most technically impressive titles of its year.
If you want to explore the full arc of Reflections' work, Shadow of the Beast and Shadow of the Beast III are also available on GamesNostalgia. For more on the studio and the man behind these games, click below to read the Martin Edmondson biography.
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