Great review! Merely seeing Golden Axe II makes me want to play it again right now. That game was so much fun, I played through it countless times. You're absolutely right about the game having an epic feel (not to be confused with 'epic fail', a word combination I really wish people would stop using..), also aided by the great music.
And yes, strangely enough the game doesn't work with the six-button controller. Fortunately my controller had a big button you could keep pressed down while turning on the Mega Drive to switch it to three-button mode and that worked fine.
Sigh... I miss the 16-bit days. Videogames are never going to be like that ever again.