Alisia Dragoon

"Veterans Only."

Side scrolling games that offer up an extreme amount of difficulty and a fair amount of play time that isn’t too hard to get into, but offers a challenge is something of a gem to me. Alisia Dragoon delivers the goods in both respects by allowing the gamer to go through several stages of monster whacking using some pretty impressive magical skills and the services of some wild looking creatures! The game itself really doesn’t have much of a plot to it other than you’re out to stop the evil force from taking over the lands. Again, it’s one of those action games that takes an over-used story line and piles it into a challenging game featuring a rather cute looking character. If you can get through the various stages that seem to drastically increase in difficulty as you move along, then you may find some pure action gaming enjoyment in this title. Boiling the game down completely, you may find that the game is more or less geared towards the advanced/veteran gamers rather than the beginners!

The game play allows you to really experience what the game difficulty really is through the battles that you may face. Through your travels in this fantasy world, you have the ability to use a creature of your choice to help you with the battles and the various enemies, but you have to be careful because those same helpful creatures can get themselves and you killed rather quickly! These creatures all have their own set of attributes that you really don’t have to worry about, but they seem to be lacking in the intelligence part because they get whacked more often that you do. Attacking the enemies is done with a simple lightening spell that grows shorter every time that you use it. In order to reuse your attack at full power, you have to let it charge back up and then fire it again. Mind you, you can still attack your enemies, but the attacking will be less than full strength and you may find that it takes more shots to kill off whatever it is that you’re aiming at. Something else that comes into play is that the game is a one life deal and the only way that you can continue is to collect a continue point at some location in each of the stages. If you get yourself killed before you find the point, then you’ll be staring at a game over screen and have to start all over from the very beginning! This is what ramps the challenge up into high gear, in which you have to play through the entire game in one sitting to make it to the end and see the ending that the game has to offer.

The control is a little off in terms of just how much you can jump and how high. Controlling Alisia through the game can take a little practice and if you’re not careful, you may find yourself at the bottom of a pit or taking un-necessary damage from an enemy opponent! Alisia can do a variety of things, where the most advanced thing that you’ll have to do is the attack and jump, and with enough practice and knowledge of the timing involved you can learn what the game has to offer in a couple of hours. Veterans to the action gaming genre will find this to be easy enough to pick up as will most beginners, but using the actions and the control in the game and making sure that you don’t make any sort of mistakes in the process. The different creatures, as an afterthought, are non-controllable and calling them out means they will do what they have to on their own, even if they go running off the cliff and you’re powerless to stop them!

Now the visuals in Alisia Dragoon offers up some of the best side scrolling detail that you can find in games like this. Alisia has life and animation along with some exceptional detail without giving way to the different problems that most games of this age and type have on the older systems in the way of slow down and break up! Most of the stages are mood fitting and you’ll find that in the later stages of the game, the different effects that are supposed to incur movement and otherwise blaze across the screen like no ones business. Considering that this is a Genesis game that is relatively old, you’ll find that the visuals featured here bring together a much larger story that is rather enjoyable to watch, as it is to play.

The sound effects that you hear in the game are limited to the small squeaks and otherwise that come from Alisia getting nailed by an enemy and some of the beginning and ending themes are pretty good as well. However, the game has this strange fantasy tone to it that just doesn’t go away with time, but rather sits in your mind after you’ve turned off the game! The best example of this is the stage music for level four, and you may find that the music is just enough to keep in your mind for a couple of days after playing through this game. Other than that, there really isn’t much else to the audio selection that is worthy of mentioning, and I’ve heard it said that the Genesis really does go out cheap on their sound, with this being a small example of that fact.

Alisia Dragoon isn’t a bad side scrolling game, but it is definitely geared towards gamers of a much more advanced skill level. With no password feature and little to no replay value, there really isn’t much of a reason to pick up this game once you’ve played through it! The control is something that takes a little practice; with the difficulty being the game’s biggest strong point. Visually, the game shines, while the music is slightly to the fantasy side of things. All in all, Alisia Dragoon is a solid game that offers up some great challenge for anyone who is looking to try out his or her manly {or womanly} action gaming skills.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/01, Updated 12/28/01