Mega CD Longplay [138] Dark Wizard (Part 1 of 4) Armer IX
246http://www.longplays.org
Played by: Reinc
The player takes on the role of one of four playable main characters: prince Armer IX, cavalry leader Robin, sorceress Krystal, or vampire Amon, and must re-conquer the land that has already fallen to a demon army and find a way to defeat the dark wizard Velonese and prevent resurrection of an evil god. The four main characters feature largely different stories; however, every game begins with the King's death and the player character becoming the new ruler of Cheshire. There is no canonical link between the four characters and their stories, and Armer IX, while seemingly the rightful heir, has only a cameo in the other scenarios.
Dark Wizard, known in Japan as Dark Wizard: Yomigaerishi Yami no Madoushi, is a 1993 tactical role-playing game developed and published by Sega for the Sega CD.
During combat, the gameplay takes place on a hex-map, and features turn-based tactical battles with cutscenes during attacks. The player controls one of four playable characters, each with their own attributes, abilities, and available units. Between battles, the player can visit settlements, shop for items, perform quests, interact with NPCs and look for hidden items. All of these actions are also possible to do during battle, but only in the region you are attacking.
This is an absolutely massive game with a mountain of content, excellent soundtrack and nice visuals. For a 1993 game, it is outstanding, and I enjoyed recording it. Although there are several bugs that hurt the overall experience: if you play with battle animations on, the sound effects will sometimes disappear until you reset the game; the description for Elven Ring item says that it increases an elf's range, but it either has no effect, or it only increases spell range of unpromoted elven mages; the description for Fan-Shaped Letter item says that it increases attack and defense, but it actually gives +1 to mobility; Krystal's peasant units tend to skip their turns a lot; also, I'm not sure if you are supposed to have unlimited magic points. I think you aren't.
Another thing that I like about this game is how well the power progression is conveyed. You start with the ability to recruit literal peasants who wear "cloth armor" and who are armed with knives and sticks, no spellcasters (except for your player character), and any new unit you can deploy is a faceless mook who the enemy can deploy too. But as you play, these mass-produced units start going on their own quests, gaining their own unique abilities, each of them having done something that no one else did. And by the time you get to the final part of the game, you have a god-slaying dragon rider, elemental lords, a cleric with messianic powers to revive the dead, an uberninja who can wipe out multiple units without ever getting hit, and more. And all this feels like it was earned, rather than found in a neat character-shaped package with a pre-determined set of abilities. This is made even better by the game's naming feature, which allows you to change any unit's name at any point in the game. I take advantage of this feature in my longplay, both for easier navigation through my party's roster, and to further flesh-out its individual members.
This longplay contains four playthroughs, one for each character, on Normal ( hardest ) difficulty. I started as Armer IX, so his playthrough will have relatively more mistakes. There was just too much to show and to keep track of. The end of Armer's playthrough is also where I edited in most of the extra scenes and dialogues. I think I managed to show everything, or nearly everything, at least once throughout the four playthroughs. What I know I didn't show is all the starting speeches for all possible battles in each region, but they are not particularly important anyway. -
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