Blog:The Legend of Dark Witch Episode 3: Decent and Disappointing

After ZeusDeeGoose reviewed his favorite game in the Dark Witch series, he had said the following. ''Anyways, now that I'm done with this game, I guess I might as well talk about the other Dark Witch games. Do I choose the game that started it all? The game I'm heavily mixed on? Maybe the spinoffs? Hmm... Maybe an outside source will choose for me...'' ''And so, one day in October 2022, the aforementioned outside force told him to review the game that he couldn't. Zeus protested, but he eventually started typing. And so, the legend of Zeus' reviews of the Dark Witch games continued...''

I think it's pretty obvious I'm a fan of Dark Witch 2. So when I found out about Dark Witch 3, needless to say I was pretty excited. I had checked out the trailers in December of 2017, and it looked amazing. A recap of all the Dark Witch games started. Dark Witch 1? I loved that demo! (Keep in mind I actually didn't own the full game yet.) Dark Witch 2? That's the best demo in the franchise. And now, Episode 3? No way. And the music, it's great! Woah, 3D? That's amazing! A new character named Day? Get out of here. The Lord Attack returning from Dark Witch 2? I loved that ability. The largest amount of stages in a Dark Witch game? A new magic item system that I can use an unlimited amount of times? I went NUTS  over this announcement. Excitedly, I typed in Dark Witch 3 in the eShop store, looking for a demo, aaaaaand... nothing. Yeah, keep in mind that I had no eShop funds and no way to pay for it. I don't know why I didn't just ask my parents for money, but I guess that doesn't matter now, since I have all 3 of the games now. Anyways, you know the story. Christmas Day 2019, boom, all of the Dark Witch games on 3DS, all mine for 20 bucks. I beat Dark Witch 2 that same day. And on that same night, I tried Dark Witch 3, and... I was pretty disappointed, and a little confused at the same time. Keep in mind I was waiting to play this game for 2 years, so yeah. I had a right to be disappointed. I was so disappointed that I literally shut the game off, and held it off until later. That's never happened to me in a video game ever before, and it hasn't happened since. But after a while, I decided to try the bad Dark Witch game again. I had barely recovered after that absolutely traumatizing experience. And needless to say, I was extremely displeased with Dark Witch 3, and I was done after a full playthrough. So I went back to Dark Witch 2. I went back to play as Day, and nothing changed. I had checked forum threads to see if I was just playing the game wrong, and I had seen that many didn't like the game. And for a while, that was the end of my Dark Witch 3 journey. I eventually picked the game up again a couple months later, anxious. And, oddly, I actually had fun. What was this weird feeling? I replayed the game again, and I actually liked it! I think once I had gotten the sour taste out of my mouth that this wasn't Dark Witch 2, I think I was able to enjoy myself a little bit. That being said, I thought it was still the worst mainline game, but it was still decent. A whole year later, I picked it up again, now on Citra, and I thought I was going to have a good time, especially with seceral calling it the best Dark Witch game... but... something changed. So today, I will talk about my experiences with Dark Witch 3, and how I feel about it now. So buckle up my friends. We're going to talk about Dark Witch 3, and how my thoughts of it changed radically over the years. Let's begin with the music, yet again.

Music
I felt like the music in Dark Witch 3 was pretty good. Really, the only thing I didn't like were the remixes. I guess this includes the Dark Witch remix. And don't get me wrong, there are some great Dark Witch remixes here. Sweet Green Love, Take a Walk, Research for Truth, and White Out Champion are all great. I wouldn't listen to them over the original songs, but that was true with the arranged songs in Dark Witch 2, so it's fine here. But what happened to the rest? I guess I can categorize the rest into two categories. Either ear-bleeding or boring. I don't know how else to put it. The only songs I think are bad are Hello Samurai Ninja and Illusion Andante. Wow, those are pretty rough. The rest were average at best. Many of them lack the heart of the original songs, both figuratively and literally, because most sound like robotic bleeps and bloops. Even the actual computer remix in Dark Witch 2 had some heart. Thankfully, these remixes are only in Rudymical, so you don't have to listen to them, unless you're doing 100%. The main game soundtrack is very good. Most stages have good music, but even then, I still prefer the Dark Witch 2 soundtrack, as there's more songs in Dark Witch 2, and the remixes are way better.

Story
The story in Dark Witch 3 is extremely frustrating, but I'll explain most of it later. I honestly don't care about spoiling it, so here's your warning now, I guess.

The game starts off so well. humans and the Fae are having a massive war, and the Magic Lion Corps are killing all the Fae. Then one person named Day betrays the group, and she's kicked from the group, and the Old Islands as a whole. The group then disbands. Day goes back to the Old Islands to get her revenge a while later. Zizou Olympia tries to fight and stop Day. Day activates Capacity Zero, which takes Zizou's magic. Day nearly kills Zizou before her sister, Mati comes in to save the day. Now it's your job to go find out what the Magic Lion Corps members know. Then she goes to the Fae and Beastwomen to find out what's going on. This sounds cool, right? Well, they ruin it. Zizou faces off with Day, and then Zizou wins. And I'm not joking when I say this, but out of nowhere, Simeone, a mastermind, comes in and says "Ooh, I tricked that stupid day girl", then fight commences. Day was already a great antagonist on her own. Why not do a climactic battle where Day uses Capacity Zero against Zizou, but somehow Zizou powers through it? An idea I had was that Day already went too far, and she doubts that the Magic Lion Corps likes her now, so she continues her rampage. That would be cool, but instead we have this worthless character. I should also note that Simeone isn't even present in Day's run as far as I know, so what was the point of this character? Hell, they treat it without fanfare. Simeone literally just appears on top of a textbox, like, there's no cool buildup before the final boss, and when you defeat her, there's no slowdown or anything. Anyways, the final boss commences, Zizou wins, talk with Mati, game's over, have a nice day (Ha, ha!). My god, talk about a disappointing ending. Spoiler alert, I'm gonna be saying that about Dark Witch 3 a lot. I should also mention Day's story. I actually skipped most of the cutscenes in Day's playthrough, so here's a summary by a friend. And I'm not going to lie, but I was pretty shocked when I read it. It was so much better than Zizou's story. And they agreed! So all in all, this story could've been great, but that finale just broke me. Even when I hated Dark Witch 3, I was right on the money with this story. I also don't have a lot to say about the dialogue, except that it's not as good as Dark Witch 2. I don't think I really remember the conversations. The conversations are also ridiculously short. It's not that big of a deal, but you could already skip these conversations within a second if you wanted to. So players who wanted to read it could do so, and those who don't can skip it without time loss. Oh well. I guess we should go onto the gameplay.

Gameplay
The gameplay is easily the most controversial part of Dark Witch 3. And I'm going to be truthful when I say I'm not a fan of these changes. Before you raise your pitchforks, I'm going to explain why. First, what happened to the Technical Skills? Technical Skills were a big part of the appeal of Dark Witch. In Dark Witch 3, they are removed. Why? It was completely unnecessary. Sure, they made the bosses easier, but that removes a massive part of Dark Witch. The replayability. Without the technical skills, this may as well be a linear platformer, as there's no benefit to picking one stage over another. Another major loss is the Enhancement Gauge. The Enhancement Gauge is not bad in this game, but compared to Dark Witch 2, it's just so limited. Look at Dark Witch 2. You have large control over your slots. Now let's head to Dark Witch 3. There's no control. As far as I know, there's no bonus slot, which is extremely disappointing. Even the first game had a bonus slot if you get all the Syega. Also, I know I didn't touch on this in my Dark Witch 2 review, but where is the Syega Shop? It's not really a big deal, but again, this removes the replay factor. Hell, even playing with a new costume would've been nice. Or hey, why not an extra challenge mode, like a 1-Hit KO mode, like the first and second games? I'm not as upset about this change as the others, but it could've been cool.

Dark Witch 3 does bring some new things to the table to make up for its removals. One example is the Lord attack, which acts like a dash. This dash is great in theory, but it ends up being unreliable, because for some reason, if you dash into an enemy, you get sent into freefall. This does not seem bad at first, but you can't move in freefall, so most of the time you'll just A. fall into a pit and take damage, or B. get hit. This makes the dash pretty unreliable, and as a result, I never use it. The risk just isn't worth the meager payoff of slightly more damage. I should also note that if you dash into a boss during i-frames, YOU take damage, which is extremely unfair. You could at least bounce me off of the boss, game!

Conclusion
So, you wanted my answer? Episode 3 is a very mixed bag for me. I appreciate several aspects of it, like most of the levels, the music, and more. But there's a lot of negative aspects for it to, and I generally think 2 is better, hell, even the first game is better in my game. Maybe I should call it the worst Dark Witch game, as I'm actually learning to appreciate Rudymical, and Brave Dungeon is better than I originally thought.