Blog:The Downfall of The Legend of Dark Witch

This was originally planned to be a YouTube video, but I realized NAN-A couldn't understand the video if it was, as he only understands Japanese. So here's the entire script I had planned for it. I hope you enjoy.

The Legend of Dark Witch is my favorite game series of all time. The gameplay is excellent, and the soundtracks are awesome. But after its inception, the franchise has suffered a big downfall. I want to highlight some of these issues, and how they can be fixed. This video will be structured year by year to be organized. But before we even talk about The Legend of Dark Witch, let’s explore its origins. Preamble This is NOT an attempt to cancel NAN-A, Inside System, Circle Entertainment, Flyhigh Works, or anyone who works at the latter 3. This video mainly discusses the series as a whole, and what can be fixed. Please do not attack the people at these companies (or NAN-A himself), as doing so is not the right way to solve these problems, nor is it productive. 2000’s NAN-A, also known as Inside System, is a Japanese indie game developer that made his debut with Touhou Project fangames in the late 2000’s. These games are still available to this day on his own DLsite, but that's for another video. Anyways, NAN-A was aware he couldn't publish his fangames on consoles due to the use of Touhou characters. So, as a way to get his fangames to have an audience outside of PC gaming, he created a new franchise called Majin Shoujo (or internationally known as The Legend of Dark Witch), stripping almost everything related to Touhou and having characters that somewhat resemble them while keeping things original. And I think he stuck the landing pretty well. Whenever I play it, the comparisons to Touhou are vague and distinct from it, giving off a similar style, but a different experience. I've played both franchises, and both are pretty different enough from each other. I know that's pretty subjective; but I'd like to think most would agree here. Anyways, The Legend of Dark Witch, Majin Shoujo, whatever you prefer. 2014 The beginning game is a good start to the franchise, but it has its fair share of issues. The Legend of Dark Witch released in 2014 to a generally positive reception from critics and players. This game is rather unpopular in the community, but I feel like it gets a bit too much hate from everyone. The main appeal of Dark Witch is the slot system. Killing enemies increases the meter. A skill will be highlighted, and then you can “install” said skill. Play perfectly, and by the boss, you’ll have almost every skill. This system is rewarding and fun, but a major issue is dying. Upon death, you lose everything. If you die in a boss fight, you lose your buffs, which is a major problem because it’s harder to work back up at that point, especially on Lunatic. This is a double edged sword, and the problem isn’t as simple as outright eliminating this penalty. Death should be punishing to the player. I’d rather have it here than not, but it’s something to think about. Using skills also removes from your meter, which essentially tells the player “A new skill, let’s try it! Oh, this consumes part of the meter, I should stop using it.” This is silly, and I don’t know why NAN-A implemented it, especially when these skills aren’t much better than your regular buster shot. A big thing fans complain about is the level design. Many call it too punishing, and I disagree. When I died in the game, I felt like I messed up. The only really unfair deaths I found were the ice sections in Al’s stage. You can easily slip off and fall to your death if you try to correct your jump. It’s not so bad with the big ice blocks, but in the later ones, you better have Wing, or you’re likely going to die. Riva can bypass this with a decently timed dash jump, but Riva is flawed. Her shots are inadequate for the challenges in-game, so stages like Verri’s become way harder than Zizou’s runthrough of the stage. Even with its flaws, Dark Witch 1 still holds up well, but there’s not much reason to play it compared to 2. 2015 While the first Dark WItch set the standard for what’s coming up next, the team decided to make things worthwhile for the fans to enjoy the next year. So in 2015, fans were treated to Episode 2, The Price for Desire, which many have arguably claimed to be the best in the series, including myself, and it’s one of my favorite games I’ve ever played. Episode 2 expands the series, improving on many of the faults of the first game. To balance out the issues with using the technical skills in the first game, 2 introduces the Capacity Meter, which allows you to use your skills and install abilities at the same time on a different meter than the Enhancement Slot..This has been vastly improved as well. You can get new skills, like Punishment and Dash with Punishment acting similar to Riva’s Cobalt Fire, and Dash, well, gives you the ability to dash. The skills are also much more practical in this game, as I found myself using a bunch of them, as opposed to the first game, where I only used them in speedruns. Add a great postgame, and you've got one of the best Dark Witch games, and I highly recommend it. In 2015, Episode 1 was ported to PC and Vita, and both were pretty good ports. A small issue with the PC version was the initial performance. Several users experienced somewhat poor performance (keep this in mind for later), however NAN-A quickly responded with several updates, which is great. Outside of this, nothing was different, but they’re still great versions of the game. 2016 2016 was a relatively good year for Dark Witch. We got 2 games this year. The first game up is Rudymical. Rudymical is a rhythm game that was released for mobile devices, and for what it is, it’s pretty fun, although it suffers from a poor control scheme, but the big release this year was Brave Dungeon. It’s technically mainline, but otherwise, at the time it wasn’t all too notable. Brave Dungeon was a very weird RPG, if we're taking it at face value. Leveling up doesn’t level your stats up, but it gives you more HP. You level up your stats with Tres. There are no random encounters, but you’re forced to fight enemies in your path. You can’t run away from battles unless you fill out the map. You have a bunch of party members from the get-go. You automatically recover SP, no accessory needed. You can choose to go to any dungeon at any time, even the final one, and so on. But it ended up being a fan favorite. Brave Dungeon is a very basic RPG, but it’s surprisingly fun. The level design is where it falters. It’s linear, and alternate paths are few and far between. Alternative paths typically give you Materials to craft Accessories. The combat is pretty good. It doesn’t beat something like Persona 5, but the combat is still fun and quick. The game starts off somewhat difficult, but becomes easier as time goes on. A good game for sure, but too small to talk about anything else. We were also teased with the third game in the series, which would release the next year, and wraps up 2016 in a nice, small package. 2017 2017 was, in my opinion, the best year for The Legend of Dark Witch. The ports and games were out of this world. Thanks to the Nintendo Switch, some games were ported here. Just a quick rundown of the games ported. Rudymical added 2 new buttons and co-op. Brave Dungeon got a new game mode, Dark Witch Story Combat. The Legend of Dark Witch 2 was ported to Steam, and the game is even better. I've already covered the changes, so I won't go over them again.

The last game to be released in this era was Episode 3. Honestly, I really don’t like this game, but many do, which is a good sign. It strips many elements from 1 and 2, which kinda sucks, but it somewhat makes up for it with its level design. At the very least, it’s a decent game.

So yeah, 4 games in one year is insane for one person, even if most of these games were ports. All of them are good and worth a play. One criticism I have is the lack of mainline games on Switch. You could’ve easily gathered an easy crown porting all 3 games to the Switch at once. Call it The Legend of Dark Witch Collection, and you’re good to go. Easy money. However, the 3DS was still alive in 2017, so I guess I can understand why they weren’t ported. 2018 After the great games that were released last era, 2018 really took a backseat. We got the announcement for Brave Dungeon 2, which was slated for 2019, however it was indefinitely delayed for The Legend of Dark Witch Renovation, which kinda sucks. I would’ve preferred a new game, but I guess a remake of the first game would work well. Remember that the other Dark Witch games were on the Switch, but the mainline games were still stuck on the 3DS and PC. And somehow, someway, what should’ve been a slam dunk ended up being a bit of a disappointment. 2019 At the nigh end of the year came Renovation, a remaster of the first game. Sounds good, right? Well, kinda? Renovation isn’t a bad game, but it barely improves upon the gameplay of its predecessor. Sure, you have new boss attacks, which are fun, and a new artstyle, which sucks compared to the old one, but other than that, I’m drawing a blank. I’m thinking of so many ways Renovation could be improved. First, ditch the new artstyle, and keep the new UI, which is lovely. I really like the new UI, but it’s attached to that god-awful new artstyle. Also, if you’re gonna do a new artstyle, make it good. Converting a pixel-based game to anything else is hard. I’ve yet to see a game who pulled it off without flaws. Some games I’ve seen that try to do this are Cave Story 3D, Ace Attorney, Street Fighter II, and individually, they aren’t so bad, but the original is always ideal in my opinion. A game that does do new graphics well is Cave Story, barring 3D. The new graphics are great and give the game more personality. Balrogs scratches are cute, Quote actually looks like a robot, and everything in the game was accurately updated to match this new style. Even the Beast Fang, an unused item, was updated. This is the quality work I expect to see. If Nicalis can do it, Inside System can as well.

Second, we only got one stage as DLC. That’s lame as hell. Why not give us 3? Or 5? Or 10? You have to switch the menu just to access the DLC, which is odd, but that means you could theoretically add as many stages as you want. I'll also note that the DLC stage we did get had no new assets. If you're going to take that route, totally fine, but it would be trivial to make a new stage with this method. There was so much potential for this, but it was wasted. Given that Renovation is 3 years old, I don’t think we’re getting any more DLC, which really does suck. Or hey, why not add a Steam Workshop menu? You can add as many stages as you want. Also, they added several songs from other Dark Witch games, alongside a remix from Drancia Saga, a niche 3DS/Mobile game from some of the publishers of Dark Witch, which is actually how I discovered that game existed, which is cool, but they finally released the anime soundtrack. That’s cool, but why not release the soundtrack digitally? This is pretty much worthless otherwise, because no one would bring their Switch just to listen to that one ending theme from the anime, which is actually pretty catchy. Oh yeah, the anime itself. It’s a screen capture from Youtube. I wish I was joking. Because of that, it looks like garbage. I also don't see why we didn't get more comics in the game, but admittedly, that's rather nitpicky on my end as they're available on NAN-A’s site for free, but it still would've been nice.

The performance is also terrible on both platforms. On PC, the game has several frames where it just freezes, particularly at the beginning of every stage. I even got one in the middle of a stage. For a pretty tough platformer that demands several precise inputs, this is unacceptable. On Switch, the frame rate drops, even in the Classic mode, which is baffling. A 2014 game on the 3DS can run better than the same game running on Switch. I can go on and on about the issues Renovation has, but I hope you get the point.

Oh, and one more thing. NAN-A increased the price of the original 2014 release to the same price of Renovation on Steam. It’s better than not having the game on Steam at all, but it’s still a poor practice. I don’t even know why NAN-A didn’t bundle both games into one package, so people who own Classic get Renovation for free, and vice versa. This is more than possible on Steam, and it has been done before. Take Doom 3 as an example. Failing that, you could just sell Classic alongside Renovation, and delist the original. Classic gets delisted, but people who own Classic get a large discount for Renovation. Take Ori and the Blind Forest, for example. Friendly reminder that the game isn’t bad, it’s just frustrating. Maybe I was expecting a little too much, but even then, a lot more could’ve been done. A lot of you are going to ask “Well, if Reno sucks so much (even though I just said otherwise), why not play Classic?” I'm reviewing The Legend of Dark Witch Renovation as a product. And as a product, it's not worth it, not by a long shot. 2020 We all know what happened in ‘20, so I'm not even going to try to explain that here. Anyways, nothing happened with the main series this year. No new announcements, no status update on Brave Dungeon 2, nothing. However, something interesting did come out of this year. Beatus Creation. Beatus Creation was a line of VTubers based on Dark Witch. It was actually pretty successful. Streams often got well into the hundreds of watchers. Over 10 VTubers debuted here before its unfortunate cancellation. Their purpose for the entire series was moot, however. A blind viewer probably wouldn't be able to tell that they were made for The Legend of Dark Witch, and that barely did the series any favors.

I almost forgot, there was one thing this year related to the main series. Dark Witch Connect, a match-3 puzzle game released in 2020. Yeah, a bit late to the party there, don't you think? And the thing is that it's not a bad game, hell, it can get a bit addicting, but I feel like it would've been a million times more popular if it was released half a decade ago. But Connect does have a bit of a cult following in the community, so I guess it did something. But yeah, definitely a bit of a letdown. 2021 Aside from Beatus Creation continuing, we got another mobile game, this time, it's a clicker game… playing Dark Witch 3 music… in 2021….yikes. Honestly, I haven't even touched this game, so let's see what Mali, my script editor, has to say about the game. Yeah, what he said. Needless to say, this is where shit starts to hit the fan. At this point, many fans are getting impatient for BD2. I've even seen some people think BD2 was canceled.
 * Mali’s comment from the wiki*

We also got ports of Brave Dungeon and Rudymical to Steam. Rudymical runs on Unity, so it runs perfectly here, resulting in an amazing way to play Rudymical. Brave Dungeon though? Well, it has more than mixed results, I’d say. But to explain why, I have to explain the loading process for the game. Technical mumbo jumbo is way out of my league, so I'll try my best to explain it. Every Dark Witch game on Steam uses a compressed archive of files, filename being ISD. These are almost impossible to open without special tools. The only person we know who can open ISDs is NAN-A himself. Attempts have been made to open them, to no avail. For 1 and 2, these worked great, and had minimal lag, mainly because those games are pretty small. Renovation though? NAN-A decided to change the engine (i think), but this engine poorly handles the archives. That's why the game does the freezing thing. After restarting the stage, it runs just fine, though. This is bad news for Brave Dungeon. Naturally, you'd think it'd load all assets on each floor, right? *pause* Wrong. Instead of that, it loads on every battle. So as a result, the battles take forever to load. And that's really bad in a fast paced RPG where you can have encounters one after another. Yuzu can run this game better than the PC port, and that also goes for Renovation, even if the PC is much more powerful than the Switch. That's unacceptable. 2022 2022, in my opinion, was the single handedly worst year for Dark Witch, bar none, and that's why I'm making this video. Brave Dungeon 2’s Early Access was finally released. To put it bluntly, it’s frustratingly mediocre. Let me explain why. At face value, the game itself was good. It improves upon the dungeon design, has some new mechanics, and is overall an improvement over its predecessor. However, the positives are completely undermined by the issues the game has. This is including, but not limited to: Glitches Balance issues Poor choices Lack of updates Poor porting Early access I should stress that last point. The game is bad, but it could end up being one of the best in the series because it's being sold to you as an early access game. You're promised a worthwhile package in the future, but in its current state, it sucks. How I broke down Early Access basically explains why it never works. Games that successfully pull Early Access off are few and far between, and Brave Dungeon 2 is no exception. Brave Dungeon 2 is the perfect example of just a plain disaster. It's not fun, pathetically easy (and that's coming from a Dark Witch 2 fan), and it cements itself as one of, if not the worst games in Dark Witch History. Period. And if that's not a downfall, I don't know what is. Still not convinced?

Beatus Creation unexpectedly shut down. I really wish I could tell you why, but apparently Circle and Flyhigh Works can't disclose anything about it. I won't blame them for doing this. Tons of VTubers retire out of the blue (one of my favorites was Kiryu Coco), but what really pissed me off about this is that nothing was left behind. I've seen several VTubers retire, but leave their content up for all to see. I don't see why that couldn't apply here. To bring up Coco again, she retired, but left her content up. Why Beatus Creation couldn't do the same without a good reason is outrageous. As someone who strongly cares for digital media preservation, this is disappointing to see. And this time, it's personal.

On top of the pile of crap that came from BD2, someone named Hajimu drew a rather risque piece of art of Seama in her BD2 attire. Okay, who cares? This is commonplace on the internet, why am I getting pissy over this specific artwork? Well, NAN-A retweeted said artwork for thousands of his followers to see, and conveniently, Hajimu linked Brave Dungeon 2 in a reply to said tweet. Play the world's hardest game of Connect the Dots and you'll see why this is an issue. This was just a stupid move in my opinion. I don't know what NAN-A was thinking here. I know some media that's acceptable for most ages in Asian countries would bat an eye in the West, but even then, I still think that this wouldn't fly by in other countries. The fact that Hajimu uploaded it to Steam and cropped it shows that. Are you STILL not convinced? Well, let's say Nintendo started doing the same thing. Would that be an issue? By this point, you agree with me, or you don’t.

Hi, Blad here intervening with a disclaimer. As most of you have guessed by my voice, I'm a minor. And legally, I can't see said artwork. So how do I know about it? Let's bring up a guy named Oersted, the world's biggest Live A Live fan. He actually brought this up in the Wiki server (which I help run). So yeah, just in case any of you were curious. Blad out.

Oh yeah, NAN-A's doing NFTs now. I'm not going to explain why this is baffling, so Google is your friend here. I actually found out before the main Dark Witch Discord did, but I didn't say anything because I thought it was fake, but no. And this followed with outrage. And in my opinion, it was somewhat justified. I left the series. Me and a few other members formed a Dark Witch Refugee base, just in case the original server fell. But thankfully, Crippe, the main moderator for the speedrun.com leaderboards got everyone to cool their shit. I am eternally grateful for him doing this, otherwise I wouldn't be here in the community now. NAN-A didn't know NFTs were harmful, and I guess I can cut him some slack there. Admittedly, we overreacted a bit, but next time, do your research before investing in new technology. And that ends 2022 on a disastrous note. Needless to say, let's hope 23 is better. How to save the series This is me going on a bit of a soapbox.

An idea I have is to get another company to help with the development of the games. I’m not saying NAN-A should completely abandon the franchise, but he should add another company, like how M2 helped out with Dark Witch 3. This can help with speeding the game’s development up significantly. I think this applies now more than ever due to the size of Brave Dungeon 2. NAN-A seems to be rapidly expanding the size of its games, which is good for the series but can be a nightmare to develop. A dream company I have is Inti Creates, but that might be aiming a bit too high. There's no perfect answer for this, so I'll just leave it open ended

Don't rush the games. Why did I write this? Many of you are questioning, why did I write this? It's because I love the series. Nobody has been vocal about these issues that have plagued the community and the games themselves, so I had to. I'm not doing this to egg on NAN-A or anything, I'm doing it because I love his work and the games he has created. And I beg the viewer to do one thing. Share. Tag Inside System on Twitter with this video. Share some of the issues with him. Mention him on Discord, whatever. Even if you don't agree with what I said here, I think we can say that the franchise gets at least a little better with my suggestions. Before I head out, I wanted to thank 2 people. Mali and Oersted. Mali helped me out with some of the scripting, offering ideas and giving me new points of view. I'd like to thank Oersted for personally capturing footage for the BD2 section. And I thank you for watching. Until next time.

Commenter’s note: Save for typos or factual errors, suggestions adding script content will be ignored. will be ignored. Please just leave a comment instead. Also, statements that require verification will be highlighted in green. Commenters are free to remove these after a source has been provided. Thanks! Unorganized

Music selection Intro: Menu. Tetris 99 Preamble: Boss Rush, Mega Man 8, or Inside the Deapsea Metro Subway Car, Splatoon 2 2014: Shooting Starfish, Splatoon 2 2015: Neo Burning Town, Shantae Half Genie Hero 2016: Greenhorne Battle, Miitopia 2017: Onto Grasstown, Cave Story 2018: Intermission, Mega Man Zero, Mushrooms, Terraria, or Clock Town, Day 1 2019 (first half): Honeycomb Highway, Sonic Lost World 2019 (latter half): Through The Trees, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge 2020: Sigma Stage 1, Mega Man X, or Intro Stage, Mega Man X 2021: Frost Man, Mega Man 8, Sugar Lane, Mega Man 8, or Acid Hues, Splatoon 2 2022 (former half): Eggman Land Day, Sonic Unleashed, or Starjump, Celeste 2022 (latter half): Running Hell, Cave Story Famitracker How to save the series: Geothermal, Cave Story 3D Epilogue: Aeris, Final Fantasy VII, or Wing Fortress, Cave Story TO DO: Add the issues of the Western Dark Witch community (Added by Mali:this contributes to the Downfall) … Commenters may add to the list.