Genesis REVIEWS: Alisia Dragoon

As an action platformer, Alisia Dragoon suffers from its gameplay limitations. However, in general, its aesthetic and overall experience make it a good game.

Not without its problems, this is a game that is worth the plunge despite its shortcomings.

R1: Alisia Dragoon:-

Year: 1992.
Genre: Action Platformer.
Publisher: General Arts.
Developer: General Arts, Gainx 

"Once again, the silver star fell from the sky, bringing death and destruction"

Surprisingly, for an Action Platformer of its time, Alisia Dragoon actually bothers to provide a story. As Alisia, you are going to go through 8 stages in order to stop the revival of some ancient evil. It is, of course, nothing special, but it's nice to have.

In design, the game offers a mixture of high fantasy elements along with some high technology.

It's consistent, and the graphics tell the story of the sorceress Alisia going on an adventure to stop that ancient evil.

That's Alisia and her pet dragon

"Do you dare to challenge us?"

The action in Alisia Dragoon is somewhat strange. I don't know if you can call it a shooter, but her main and only form of attack involves shooting a stream of electricity from her hands. The catch is that the electricity streams automatically home in on enemies. This means there is limited action from the player in directing their attacks.

Another thing Alisia can do is summon one of four monsters to help her out. These monsters each attack in different ways, and they have their own
health. Similar to the standard attacks, there is little control over how the monster behaves.

With so little control over your own attacks, the main thing you will be doing is resource managing your electricity gauge (you can't shoot forever), and trying to dodge enemy attacks. This is easier said than done, though, because the screen is often chaotic, and in some boss battles, dodging enemy attacks is like playing a bullet hell game with a seriously large target.

Try to evade all attacks from all directions

Thankfully, there are a bunch of healing items strewn about, and the earlier stages are not that challenging. Unfortunately, that is not enough in later stages, where you will feel the difficulty ramp up considerably. Worse yet, if you lose, you repeat the stage from the beginning, and there are no save options.


"Your life will make an excellent sacrifice"

Game Arts is the studio behind the amazing-looking Lunar games, and Gainax was known for its graphics back in the day. This clearly shows in Alisia Dragoon, because it is actually a fairly beautiful game.

While the character sprites are not anything special, they are well-animated and varied. It is the background that steals the show. With 8 stages, each looking very different, yet they are believable in a s single world. There is an excellent balance between the foreground and the background, where you can see a lot of effort went into it.

This is a game that uses all background levels

Best yet, is the fact that the game didn't rest on its laurels. In one stage, the game has you diagonally exploring a destroyed complex. It is something I rarely seen before, and it is done really well visually.

In sound, the main tracks are all really good. It's an overall solid soundtrack, especially in some stages. While I wasn't a big fan of the regular boss battle music, the final battle at least made up a little for it. Also, the sound effects were not complete garbage, as they are in many Genesis games.


In Conclusion:

Many might actually enjoy the limited involvement in the core action of the game. It leaves them focusing more on dodging attacks than dishing them out. And that's a fair point to make. However, I found it to detract from the overall experience.

Still, this is one pretty game, and with a design such as that, I was okay simply pressing the attack button and prancing around dodging projectiles.

 

Final: 6/10

Pros:

• Consistent world design.
• Excellent graphics and sound. 

Cons:

• Unfairly difficult.
• Many difficulty controls. 

Tips:

1. Focus on dodging enemy attacks.
2. Explore the levels to find health and power-ups.
3. Switch monsters before their health depletes, or they lose all their level-ups.

Series:

For those reading one of my Genesis review blogs for the first time, here is the basic concept:

I already reviewed a bunch of SNES games, so, naturally, I am going to review the games of its prime competition. Does the SEGA Genesis stand a chance against the legendary SNES library?

My review series is based on the top 100 list of Retro Sanctuary

Originally, I posted most of my content on a football forum called "Goallegacy," which was the first online community I had ever joined. I found it to be the best place for a football fan (the REAL football, not handegg) to hang out on the internet, but the forum is not as active as it was years ago.

For Previous Genesis Game Reviews:

The List

This blog was originally posted in Destructoid Community Blogs on January 7th, 2016. The blog was slightly edited to fit my newer review format.