Blog:My Reviews for all Dark Witch games

Hi! There's been a trend of rating a couple of stuff from the games, and now I want to add myself into it. However, instead of rating the games, I'm gonna give my reviews for all of them. Some may have familiar faces as I've got them from my Steam reviews of said game, and some are brand new. Dark Witch Story: COMBAT also counts on this list. How about we get started, shall we?

The Legend of Dark Witch: Chronicle 2D ACT
The game is a solid platformer combining the run and gun of Megaman, the slot upgrades of Gradius, and the art style aspect of Touhou. These are fine on its own as its a rare and distinctive combination that i personally never seen before, but there's been a few issues regarding the first entry that doesn't want to make me recommend playing it (same thing could be said for the "Remake", The Legend of Dark Witch Renovation).

Let's start off with the story. In a nutshell, it's basically a cliche "Enemy has stolen something and you have to get it back" but with a princess and a goddess (although they refer to Zizou as a god constantly throughout the games) theme to the game. For a first game, the story isn't all that great, and while I was playing through the game, I didn't really feel like the story was properly structured. I don't know if its just me, but I've felt like all the characters despite being bosses never actually gave hints on where Riva took the Seyga and its only until it reaches Verri when the story actually feels like its connected. The connectivity of this can be improved with this one.

And now the gameplay. As mentioned before, the game is a hybrid of Megaman and Gradius. You enhance your slots by gaining "Tres," The Small butterflies from damaged enemies/bosses and you can either choose from Linear Shot to Comet. For a platformer, this kinda sucks. Although Gradius let you choose between double and laser/ripple/any other kind of special shot, this is a platformer and although this issue has been fixed in the sequel, an update would've been nice to apply some of the changes from the second game onto here. As for the level design, its screaming bare bones and annoying difficulty. Verri's stage and somewhat Sola's stages I had the most trouble out of all them. The stages themselves aren't the greatest as all of them are a cakewalk if you know what you're doing, and most of the stages feel flat and you don't do much. When you die, you lose everything. This is fixed in later games, but I'm reviewing what came first. This is very punishing, and the bosses feel different without all the upgrades you've gotten. Makes things even worse on Lunatic.

In Megaman, if you defeat a boss, you can get their attack. Same thing applies to this one. The difference? Megaman has a separate bar for the special boss attacks, while this game uses the same slot that you can enhance. Another issue that's been fixed in the second, but it's unreliable using them at all except for using them against the bosses in a NG+ file or anything. I also felt like I've had a hard time upgrading the stuff in the extra meny that you can use tres to upgrade your health and others. It almost felt like a chore grinding the stages and slowly improving how much tres you get. This issue is worsened the higher up the difficulty is because the game decreases the amount you get.

And now for the final boss: Riva. We now know who stolen all the Seyga and the battle begins. The battle is like your usual battle from before, except once the first phase is over, then the second phase begins. All it is is a simple gif of the antagonist turned into a butterfly, spewing purple stuff at you while you dodge enemies. Like a gauntlet of some sort. This alone makes me say that she's one of the worst villains ever because not only she's a massive scumbag, but her final ways of dealing with you ain't the best either since the whole final boss is easy. It can be cheesed even harder by spamming Blad's bound ring, and then bam. You finished the game. She's not even good for a second playable character, either. Cobalt Fire is a charge shot like Megaman's Mega Buster, but CF is extremely short ranged, and the charged shots make absolutely no sense. Her final foot makes her strong by having her arsenal charged up for a short amount of time, but it's pointless considering most enemies die in one hit even from just using the weapon itself. Her Sword Rain ain't the best, either as it felt. Clunky using it.

Overall, while The Legend of Dark Witch set the standard for subsequent games after this, starting off with the first game can be a bit of a trouble. This game being on Steam can receive updates that can make this game better, but it's already useless as we've been moved on to other games.

The Legend Of Dark Witch 2: The Price For Desire
This game? This game. This is THE game. The Price of Desire. I know this is 2015, but how come they made the first game look TERRIBLE compared to this? This game is AWESOME! Just about everything a sequel should improve on the original. This game? I'm giving The Legend of Dark Witch 2 a SOLID 	10/10 becuase of:

The story. There's a nation on the west side of The Old Islands named Germa. This Germa has been shown to have good research in Seyga, and they have a researching group feared upon many known as the Ich, consisting of the top researchers of the nation. Germa decided to cause some naughty activity by sending that said group to Liana, another nation although its in the west, to continue their research in private. This move immediately Alarms the protagonist of the prequel, Zizou Olympia, to go check up on this. She decides to defeat all members of the Ich and creates a plan to go inside of Germa and to stop whoever is behind all of the research. With the people she gotten help with (the 2nd tier of bosses Codino, Blad, Stoj, and Pelusa), shes manages to go to the castle and then she counters the one behind everything: Franzer V.

As the first phase begins, Franzer starts off with a melee attack with her sword with some magic in between. However, when Zizou defeats her, she told her the reason behind everything and how nobody was able to cap a whole bunch of Seyga into a human body except for her. Then, she turnes into her awakened form and the second and final phase begins. Even after the power that she had, Zizou finishes her off, and then tells her to stop her meddling, calming and finishing Gerrma's research. This story perfects the prequel's story in every way possible. Instead of being a cliché plot about some girl stealing stuff, it expands on the world of Beatus (the universe takes place) and revolutionizes it as even more. This along with the game's soundtrack's names, perfectly evident the importance of the story (Reach for your Wish, the final boss is reaching Franzer's wishes for Germa to become the strongest nation in The Old Islands) giving this game props to the storytelling.

How's the characters overall though? While the characters have been shown to have a spike in personality, I still feel like the characters fit the classic anime style of characters. This is evidenced with one's Like Icke, Pelusa, and Rudy. Their designs are fantastic though. But the characters could be a bit worked on to make it a better experience. I can probably see why as most of the developers working on the game are males (NAN-A, the main Dev behind most of the games) and I feel like they don't know how females work really. This is just me, but the personalities of the characters in this series feel more generalized than anything.

Now how about the gameplay. this is the massive difference in between the games. my only complaint is that the level design is wayyyyy to easy. Kutio's stage can legit be beaten without pressing left. Come on, thelevel design can be a bit more expressive and beautiful. This ain't Scratch. This is true for even the higher difficulties. While everything may seem faster and more bullets spread, the level ddeisng doesn't change outside of those extra blocks you get in Very x2 Easy. To get the best experience of the game, play it on Expert. How about the bosses? They're all different, but Klinsy's back as a boss. They also got something new: Revenge Attacks: A strong powerful last-minute move that they use when at Red health. Some are good, some are mediocre, but for you, you get Hyper Dark Arm (Churros Scramble for Sola and Princess Strike for Riva). Think of it as Mario's final smash in the Smash games. Pretty much the same thing, except Zizou's not a plumber. Now how about how you play the game? Comet is now interchangeable with Linear Shot, and for the stuff you get from the bosses, they now apppear in a different slot, named the "Enhancement Slot." This is a massive game changer because you don't have to worry about losing some of the stuff in the main slot, so you can breeze through the stages improving your overall damage and such and using your good ol' High Power Beams.

The postgame is excellent too. Sola as a playable character has got to be the best choice INSIDE_SYSTEM has ever done. Not only she's broken as hell, but her story of her taking her Spring Break to find her parents takes dedication, and she's willing to go through the trouble to find them at the end of the game. I didn't really like how Zizou was once again the final boss and she almost works similar to what she's like against Riva in the first game, but I guess it sparks discussions whether or not Zizou is good or not. Riva as a playable character although she's a bit broken as well, she doesn't interact with the bosses nor even has an after talk with them.

With this being Dark Witch 2, INSIDE_SYSTEM really improved on the first game and hell even made communities grow. The Amino is the first that I know about that grew to be the biggest place for Dark Witch chit chat. That's how powerful the game is. Just everything is number one.

The Legend of Dark WItch 3: Wisdom and Lunacy
Now we have The Legend of Dark Witch 3. The most controversial game to date when discussing about which of the games are the best. And who can't blame them- INSIDE_SYSTEM decided that they would take what made the Price for Desire (Dark Witch 2) the greatest entry and crush it into small pieces. Every new aspect of Dark Witch 2 has almost been ultimately changed or removed entirely. More on this later. But why do I not liike this game? There's got to be more than just this. Here's what I mean.

Story-wise, the game is set once again in the Old Islands. However, they took a little change in tone compared to the other games. There's more war. While there's said war, there's this new formed group called the Magic Lion Corps that are causing a GENOCIDE; Killing all of the fae out there, and the leader of the group Day, gets tricked by some strange insect (Simeone) and then this causes her to betray the group, and they disband. She then goes back to the Old Islands to get massive revenge on the members of the group. Of course, Zizou decides to check once again on what the hell is happening, and when she gets encountered by her, she activates Capacity Zero: A skill in which it drains all of your tres away making you powerless in magic. After tempting to finish her off, her grand sister Mati comes in and tempts to finish Day off, making her run for her life.

After that whole thing, you're set to stage off in the stages knowing what the members knew and if they actually betrayed Day. The Level design is great and fantastic (slopes and more vertical height in the stages for once), but I feel like there's too many enemies that I've put on an invincibility cheat to glimpse at the stage design, and I've notice that the enemy spam in this game is humongous compared to Dark WItch 1 and 2. I know this is to compensate for the lack of enemies in the other games, but for a game that took out a lot, beating this game pacifist feels impossible. I'm happy that they all do more than one damage now, but there can be too much on screen, or too much easy enemies to avoid. As for the levels themselves, they're all pretty solid, but the linearity of this game says a lot. Take Al's stage for instance. There's portals that you can dash to for a gain of speed. everytime you try boosting yourself into them, the developers purposely placed an enemy to stop the boost. Why did they have to take the awesome speed? Speed was a crucial thing back then, but I guess because this game is "more serious," they made the game linear. Not only that it makes the game boring (especially when comparing it), it makes the game feel lacking.

And now for the controversial part: The Gameplay. From Dark Witch 2, they took out Punishment, Zizou having a Comet shot (Day's boss battle has it for some reason), stuff like Express, Dash, Lord Attack piercing into weak enemies (you bounce off of every single enemy no matter the strength), and a whole bunch of other stuff. Everything's been simplified to Speed, Wing, and Width. Width being a mix of an upgrade of Linear Shot and Power. This seems fine on it's own, but it definitely takes the replayabillity factor out of it. For Day, you have this short, but homing beam I don't know it's name to it, and it's honestly better than playing as Riva in Dark Witch 1. Other people are saying it's trash, but I had a better time with Day than playing Dark WItch 1 with Riva. I have yet to finish the game with her, and playing Renovation doesn't even make things better. Oh yeah, and I also forgot to mention that YOU don't have your revenge attacks anymore, but the bosses have it. And they're even more intense and hard to dodge in this game compared to Dark WItch 2.

Speaking of the characters... The overal tone of the game appleis to the characters, too. They all feel boring and a bit more serious with their work and their presence.(not even Rio, Teddy, Wonder Girl (not the DC one), and Brujita can make the game feel lively) Hell, Cholesy doesn't want you in her personal lair, Neville accused you for laying waste to Heaven's library, and Seama calls you a kid for realizing the fact that it's raining, and Zizou not knowing that water can kill electric (even though she's smart to know this already, but it was unavoidable) and in my opinion, this makes them less likable because the games prior to it had a LOT more personality wrote into the characters. Rudy? But as per usual with this series, the characters are like the usual anime characters with their personalities being similar to a lot of characters from other anime.

After defeating the Lion Cops (Al, Cholesy, Neville, Rio, Seama, Teddy, Miah, and Wonder Girl), she does the same except for Simeone's four selected Fae: Brujita, Zanetti, Claudia, and Patty. Basically the same as the usual except Zanetti is a bitch on harder difficulties. Here's when the storywriting falls down, when Zizou and Day meet together. They have a battle again except this time, Day wields her personal kill: Ultima Splash. It simply rains a bunch of waterfalls (kinda looks like detached water parts in the game), making it easier to avoid than her Capacity Zero. Zizou wins, and hear me out: Simeone just comes in bopping up and down, smashes Day borderline saying to Zizou "I tricked her" and then the battle emerges. Why didn't Day do something even better than what she did already, and come up with a new plan to defeat Zizou? I don't know. Maybe punched Simeone out of the way to make her get stronger. Or Simeone at least corrupting Day would've been better. What we got was mediocre, and it makes Simeone figuratively the worst antagonist in any of Dark Witch.

After the story ended with Zizou, I've felt really disappointing. SImeone has a good design and such, but her usage with the story felt useless in everyway, just tying in more with Riva from the first Dark Witch. And with Day's story to sum it up, she gets her revenge plan, but all her members say that they didn't do anything. She reaches to the insect but has gotten defeated by Zizou already. After hurting her, her sister comes in, and after dying like injured Zizou (the death animation for Mati is just when you get hurt as Zizou), she wonders if everything was for nothing, and the Magic Lion Corps come in reuniting with her, recreating the team altogether. Now that ending, although it doesn't hit as much as other people say it does (I've seen better), it's a better ending than what Zizou had to provide for us. I like it, but it didn't feel as heartwarming. Just like Dark Witch 1, I can't recommend this game. Only if you're a fan of this series, this isn't a game casuals would like playing. It's too damn hard, and the story ain't THAT great, either.

Brave Dungeon
So for Brave Dungeon, I haven't really played this one at all yet. This game is an RPG, and while others may claim that this is the easiest and the best RPG to start off from, I never took my own time to finish this one. Same thing could be said for Brave Dungeon 2. However, for that one, that one was a special case as will be coming up. This one on the other hand, I'll try to give my best thoughts about it from a pesos who only watched others played it.

From what the story goes, it starts with Al, who travels to the Belfer Islands in search for treasure. Once she finds that Godshill (the final Dungeon in the game before Nightmare) is the place with the best magic item, she goes to it, but immediately gets hit and then suddenly gets inside of the Island's main Inn. The owner of it, Lugli informs her that in order to find the magic items and advance in there, she needs to make a group, and become stronger. Once she does that, she's finally at Bajel with the final magic item. She doesn't want to give it to her, and then they fight. After the fight, the magic item gets transported to Nightmare, the final Dungeon in the game. The final boss there is Zizou. After fighting her (extremely difficult if I recall correctly), she finally receives the item and that's the end of the game.

Now for the Game play. The game play seems like a solid RPG but with Dark Witch elements to it. The starting characters you can choose from is Papelne, Stoj, Mari, Rudy, Klinsy, and Neville. There's also Zizou if you unlock her, but in reality, it's just Al's story for some strange reason (you finish the Nightmare boss and Al's there for some strange reason), but then it did have a small segment with Zizou breaking the 4th wall. They all have their own set of uniqueness added to them, and my personal likes are Al, Klinsy, and Stoj. Playing as Zizou was basically playing on noob mode because she might be the strongest form of Zizou that we have. Unlike Brave Dungeon 2, the damage cap is extremely huge, and it can get up to extreme amounts of damage and such if used with hacks and stuff. That's pretty much I have to say about the game play.

And here's when I start to point out things: From what it seems, because this game uses the same sprites as Dark Witch 1 and 2, and there isn't enough enemy variety in this game, the enemies in this game all share the same theme as the 2 games prior to it. The only difference is that in each Dungeon ,they fit with the theme of the stage (The only theme I hate is Nightmare cause they added a Virtual Boy Filter onto the characters), the reuse of sprites and sounds will become more apparent in this game's sequel. Now I'm sorry for concluding this early, but that's all it is for Brave Dungeon. It's a pretty solid RPG game in my opinion! The difficulty isn't too bad compared to something like Final Fantasy or Mario and Luigi:Partners in Time, but this could potentially be a perfect game for people who're starting with this genre of video games.

Dark Witch Connect/Break Block Seyga Crystal
While Brave Dungeon 2 is still in development, NAN-A released two mobile games that would accompany fans while they wait for something special to happen with BD2. This is Dark Witch Connect and, Break Block Seyga Crystal. These are both solid games, however, the latter is if not one of the worst games that have been created. I'll get to this point later in this review, but I'm gonna make this short as there really isn't much anything in these games.

Dark Witch Connect
This game was released in the Google Play Store and the Apple Play Store for free. No in-app purchases, or ads. This makes it one of those rare games out there that is very good, and it doesn't even have any of the things that makes modern video games suck. Except this game...despite being released internationally, only has a Japanese option for the language. This makes every user who doesn't know Japanese know how to play this game unless if they've translated the text using a proprietary program like DeepL or Google Translate, or they looked up online on how to use it. For how this game works, it works similar to Bejeweled but instead of it being a match three, you drag the character to how many times its connected to each other. The bigger, the more points you get. This is a pretty solid concept, and you can even use your main selected characters' revenge attacks as ways to add Kuito's green balls (Bine-Bines are explosives in this game that explode within a 3x3 radius), clear some characters off of the screen, or add +5 seconds to the timer. I personally like the characters where they add more to the timer cause for those skill ones out there, it'll give you some time to work on chains. After a round ends, your score will help you rank your character (the max is level 10), and you can have a chance to earn some Ache-Playing Levels. Although they're in complete Japanese, so it's basically random unless you ask the developer himself or once again translate it yourself. This was it for Dark Witch Connect. You can spend your tres by unlocking characters through a loot box, which isn't the best in the world, but there's the other option where you can reduce the chances of that happening.

Break Block Seyga Crystal
And then there's Break Block Seyga Crystal. Right off the bat, just what is this shitty name? The name for this game is literally what you have to do in the game (break a giant Seyga Crystal), but the name is just... Disgusting. And I haven't even talked about the story on how it started. It first started off as a test game and from early screen shots, it showed early in development. Then sometime later, we got something  with a QR Code, which lets us access to a public test build, where it shows.. BD2 Al, BD2 Patty, and a Yellow blob monster from the first game breaking the Crystal? It has a million hits, too. But outside of that, there are some orbs that appear on the screen that you have to tap to destroy into tres. Similar to something like Cookie Clicker. You can spend tres to add characters to the Seyga field, make the orbs go faster, and strengthen the presses to the orbs. However, this is when things started to get worse: When you want 500 tres or more, you have to watch an ad for it. While the test build is just the Unity Placeholder ones (makes the whole process less agonizing), the final version has the long, lengthy, and annoying ads where you have to wait for it to finish and then you  get your reward.

This game is just a buttload of shit, with nothing making any sense to it at all. It doesn't even have valuable replay value after breaking it. It even uses music from Dark Witch 3, and that game has yet to have a port or a Remake to the time I've made this review. And here's one thing that I've noticed about this company: why do they get to reuse content that's NOT EVEN RELEASED YET (this was before Early Access BD2) WHEN WE CAN'T USE IT IN FAN PROJECTS???? Break Block Seyga Crystal is just a game that didn't need to exist. It didn't even have an Apple Release. But hey, I will say this though: this is nothing compared to what Brave Dungeon 2 has to offer.