The Legend of Dark Witch Episode 3: Wisdom and Lunacy

The Legend of Dark Witch 3: Wisdom and Lunacy is the third game in The Legend of Dark Witch franchise by INSIDE SYSTEM (NAN-A). It released on December 21st in North America and Europe, and it released 6 days later in Japan. It recieved mixed to positive reviews, but the general fan consensus is quite positive. It is generally considered the worst in the franchise due to all the changes from The Legend of Dark Witch 2 and the original.

Plot
Magic is a power only the Beast Men could possess. This allowed them to take over the world. But one day, the power balance disappeared. Shortly after that, Syega is revealed. It is a crystal that allows run-of-the-mill humans to use magic. With this newfound power, humans overthrow the Beast Men. For a while, everything was mostly peaceful. However, occasional strife broke out. One of these oubursts occurs on the Old Islands. 8 fluent magic users form to create the Magic Lion Corps. It is implied many Beast Men are killed by this group, and humans are planning to wipe out the Beast Men entirely. However, this plan was completely ruined by Day, who forcefully disbanded the Magic Lion Corps. Day was banished from the nation, but one fateful day, she returns, plotting her revenge. Zizou finds out, and is not happy about it. She comes down once again and tries to stop Day, but Day comes prepared and uses Capacity Zero, effectively defeating Zizou. However, Mati, Zizou's sister, scares off Day just at the right time. The ending depends on what character you used.

Zizou
Zizou finds out that Day is being manipulated by an outside force. This is revealed to be Simeone. When you finally beat then both, Zizou shortly reflects with her sister about the conflict, as they walk up to the God's Realm. Mati tells Zizou that she's proud, and then the game quickly ends.

Day
Zizou fights with Day, but Zizou ends up losing. Yet again, Mati comes in, but she's defeated too. After the fight, Day gets a little sad, but the Magic Lion Corps members come back and ask Day to do good. She somewhat agrees, and the Magic Lion Corps is regrouped. Day now intends on restoring the Old Islands and cancels her revenge plan. The Old Islands are now at peace, but not for long...

Good Qualities

 * 1) Despite all the issues with Zizou's moveset (Bad Qualities #1), there are still some good things going for it.
 * 2) * The Lord attack has been intergrated into Zizou's main movepool. and although you can't hit with it during invincibility frames, It's quite powerful. It's also used for platforming. It blows the Comet shot featured in The Legend of Dark Witch Episode 2 and the first game out of the water because it's more than a slightly faster Liner shot.
 * 3) *Zizou is not as overpowered in The Legend of Dark Witch 2, therefore restoring the balance.
 * 4) *Tres now refills the Capacity Meter. This rewards good play, and makes sure it doesn't get as mindless as Dark Witch 2 sometimes.
 * 5) *Falling into a pit now doesn't kill Zizou in one hit. If you fall during the invincibility frames, you don't take damage either.
 * 6) *While this is somewhat of a bad quality, Zizou's jump is pretty precise, but combined with the Lord Attack, stages should not be a ton of trouble.
 * 7) Good level design. A lot of gimmicks were thrown in, which makes the stages more distinct. The Syega pieces also return, adding some replayability.
 * 8) Awesome music, which is composed by Raito. Like Dark Witch 2, there are some standout tracks, such as:
 * 9) Dark Witch 3 Theme Song
 * 10) Quiet Footsteps In The Summer Rain
 * 11) Magic Lion Corps in the Now
 * 12) Glide High Sanctuary
 * 13) Tick Tock Up Rock
 * 14) Sweet Green Love (arranged)
 * 15) Bosses fights are really fun, save for the minibosses. However, these can drag as well. They are perfectly paced, so it no longer takes an eternity to kill them. They even switch up some attacks on the harder difficulties so the experience is slightly different, unlike in Dark Witch 1 and 2 where bosses were essentially damage sponges.
 * 16) Great graphics. It follows Dark Witch 2's style of artwork, but it still looks great.
 * 17) This game has a near-perfect difficulty curve. These are thanks to some of the changes in the gameplay.
 * 18) The story is okay. It's a lot easier to follow than Dark Witch 2.
 * 19) The 3D effect looks decent. It's pretty similar to New Super Mario Bros 2.
 * 20) The Syega pieces are fun to find, although some require game knowledge.
 * 21) Although the replay value isn't as high as previous games, it's still there, and you can unlock cool concept art.
 * 22) You can now freely select your difficulty, therefore negating the need to create multiple save files just to get achievements.
 * 23) *This means theoretically you only need 2 save files to get everything. This is better than the way Dark Witch 1 and 2 handled it. You could get everything in a theoretical 3 savefiles, but it was insanely difficult.
 * 24) It's by far the longest Dark Witch game taking over 4 hours. And those are pretty good hours at that.
 * 1) It's by far the longest Dark Witch game taking over 4 hours. And those are pretty good hours at that.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The items were nerfed. You have three uses at the start, which is generous, but you can only have one type of an item in a single stage, which is a downgrade from Dark Witch 2 where you had all the items at your fingertips once you bought them. (This could be a good quality or bad quality because it makes the game more fair)
 * 2) The museum requires Tres to unlock stuff, which is annoying considering once you bought it in Dark Witch 1 and 2, you unlocked everything.
 * 3) Some songs are terrible/average, such as "Hello Samurai Ninja (arranged)" or 'Differential, Infinitesimal (arranged)".
 * 4) Some people may see some of the changes and removals disappointing. Fan favorites were removed in the favor of the newer formula. Some examples would be:
 * 5) Other than the Liner Shot and Lord Attack, you cannot learn any new abilities. This is one of, if not the most controversial changes in Dark Witch 3.
 * 6) The Syega Shop was booted.
 * 7) The blocking system got blocked.
 * 8) The Revenge Attacks are inaccessible for the player. However, bosses can use them, so it's really weird. Even Zizou (the main character) uses these in her boss fight in Day's story, which makes it even more peculiar why these were removed.
 * 9) The level-up system was a stupid idea. It allows you to buy better abilities depending on how much Syega you have. The first and second game only limited you out of slots.
 * 10) The Lord Attack is extremely risky to use. If you touch a single enemy while in the dash state, Zizou goes into free fall. This is not a bad thing on it's own, but sometimes it can be inconvenient when you fall straight into a pit, or into an incoming bullet.
 * 11) The mini-bosses are terrible and tedious. Every one of them are bullet sponges that fire easy to dodge bullets. To add insult to injury, they all are nearly the same with little changes between them. To make matters even worse, they have no reason why they are there, so it makes them feels like they were introduced to pad out game time.
 * 12) Some levels drag for 10+ minutes, which is absolutely too long for a Dark Witch level. For comparison, the average Dark Witch 2 level took around 2 - 4 minutes, depending on the difficulty.
 * 13) Playing as Day sucks. Her shot is extremely short ranged, and it's impossible to kill anything from a distance, not helping the fact that using the Lord Attack is risky to use.
 * 1) Playing as Day sucks. Her shot is extremely short ranged, and it's impossible to kill anything from a distance, not helping the fact that using the Lord Attack is risky to use.

Reception
The Legend of Dark Witch Episode 3 received a mixed-to-positive reception from players and a critic. Video Chums gave it a 8.4/10, saying that it was fun, but easy. On GameFAQs. it earned a 3.5/5. Later, it was positively reviewed.