My Played Video Games Review: Alisia Dragoon for the Sega Genesis
Alisia Dragoon is a platform, fantasy action game developed by Game Arts of Japan for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in 1992. The game was surprisingly published outside of Japan by Sega.
Looking awesome durinng those days, this game continued our fantasy action cravings after being weaned off the Nintendo NES/Famicom. Barbarian sword and fantasy themes were always popular back then.
The Story
The action is crazy. Enemies attack at sexy sorceress Alisia from everywhere. And nowhere. Alisia must battle crazy barbarians, mow down swarms of poisonous insects, and slay flights of winged daemons. Blast your enemies in waves or each one with multi-directional, auto-targeting energy beams.
Recruit fantasy companions like the DragonFrye, Ball O'Fire, Thunder Raven and Boomerang Lizard. Use them to throw sharp boomerangs, fire spits, and lightning attacks. With Alisia's powerful fighting skills, burn enemies to a crisp. And prove once and for all that you can challenge evil and come out as the hot lady champion!
The Graphics and Sound
The graphics are simply amazing for their time. Alicia looks like a fantasy anime girl and the enemies look good too. The regular enemies look not so good though. The backgrounds look great too. They are detailed and vary from level to level.
The sound effects are above average here too. The lightning kinda sounds like soda fizz though. Monsters give off an explosive sound when they die and roar or snap at you when they attack. Alisia sounds cute when hit but it does get irritating after a while. The music is just average though. Nothing boring but nothing to shout about either.
The Gameplay
The game controls are easy to use, one button is for jumping, the other for lightning strikes, and one to select your summoned monster through stages. Alicia is easy to move with the joypad.
Another great factor is that her lighting automatically aims at enemies, so there is no reason to bother directing it.
The game has good difficulty, enemies swoop at you aplenty, and each fire a projectile that you can not easily evade. All enemies take several hits before they die. In the meantime, they are still shooting at you, decreasing your lifebar bit by bit. It i easy to lose lives so you have to plan your moves and learn the enemy patterns well.
The difficulty here makes for decent replay value. There is no password or continue feature, so you either go all the way beating it in one sitting, or die trying.
My Verdict
Alisia Dragoon is a side-scrolling game that is definitely for gamers of good platforming action skills. It is a solid game that offers up some very good challenge for gamers with skills but casual, whiny gamers might pass it up for its difficulty and look to other platform action video games instead.
Go play this hidden gaming gem on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive or play it on your favorite and trusty emulators.