Retro Thursday – Alisia Dragoon
Hey, it’s the first mini-review in a few months, I’m glad to be back and well, here goes.
Alisia Dragoon was a game that came out for the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) back in 1992 and was made by Game Arts and was published by SEGA outside of Japan.
This isn’t a game I have any familiarity with, but it did sound interesting when it was chosen in the thread. The game is a platformer with a sort of run-and-gun element to it. You make your way through the 2D side-scrolling levels and you shoot what looks like an electric bean at everything. It auto aims at enemies with is both helpful and slightly annoying as it may hit the wrong enemy, but it wasn’t very often that happened. You can need to stop firing every so often for you electric/lighting meter to refill. The good thing is if you take your time and let it refill it can overfill by three symbols and then do a double lighting attack, which seems to be more powerful and moves across the screen damaging and killing everything in its path.
The most interesting thing though is the pets. They’re monster-like creatures and have various abilities, but you can only have one equipped at a time. There are four in total and I only briefly used them. The dragon has the ability to fire fireballs, which you can level up and it shoots more, and more powerful fireballs, then you have a little fire sprite that damages the enemies it touches and more.
The gameplay is decent enough with you going through the levels like most platformers. I thought the gameplay was alright to begin with, unfortunately with a little more time I stopped enjoying it and got bored. The game didn’t keep my interest. It may have been the fact that it just wasn’t able to add to the initial premise of the game, I also think the lack of a life system didn’t help. You do get continues, but you seemingly have to collect them, as you start the game you get one life and that, for me, is somewhat of a hindrance. I think with more time playing it wouldn’t be a problem as you collect continues and level up your beasts, but I didn’t get much joy.
I think both musically and visually the game is alright, the visuals aren’t anything stellar, but they are decent, and the music is good, especially the first level, which had a stand-out tune.
Verdict: Neutral