Blog:The Legend of Dark Witch Episode 3: Wisdom and Lunacy (original page)

Note: This is the original Legend of Dark Witch 3 page prior to my partial recreation.

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 average reviews, but the general fan concenseus 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) The level design is fantastic, although it does tend to drag on after a while. Like Dark Witch 2, there are 4 Syega Pieces for you to find in each stage. Instead of using them to level up slots, they now level up your character so you can get better abilities in the shop.
 * 8) *Compared to Dark Witch 1 and 2, there is a lot more verticallity instead on cramped hallways.
 * 9) *These levels are also substantially harder than the second, or even the first game. And not in a bad way - they're all very fair for the most part.
 * 10) Awesome music, which is composed by Raito. Like Dark Witch 2, there are some standout tracks, such as:
 * 11) Dark Witch 3 Theme Song
 * 12) Quiet Footsteps In The Summer Rain
 * 13) Magic Lion Corps in the Now
 * 14) Glide High Sanctuary
 * 15) Tick Tock Up Rock
 * 16) Sweet Green Love (arranged)
 * 17) 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.
 * 18) Great graphics. It follows Dark Witch 2's style of artwork, but it still looks great.
 * 19) This game has a near-perfect difficulty curve. These are thanks to some of the changes in the gameplay.
 * 20) The story is okay. It's a lot easier to follow than Dark Witch 2, and it's.
 * 21) The 3D effect looks decent. It's pretty similar to New Super Mario Bros 2.
 * 22) The Syega pieces are fun to find, although some require game knowledge, see BQ#7.
 * 23) Although the replay value isn't as high as previous games, it's still there, and you can unlock cool concept art.
 * 24) You can now freely select your difficulty, therefore negating the need to create multiple save files just to get achievements.
 * 25) *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.
 * 26) It's by far the longest Dark Witch game taking over 4 hours. And those are pretty good hours at that.

Bad Qualities
NOTE: As stated, many of these changes could be good or bad depending on your view, as the game is somewhat mixed in general.
 * 1) There are some issues regarding Zizou and Day's main moveset.
 * 2) *The Wing ability officially sucks now. Holding Jump will cancel your fall, but only when you are at the peak of your jump. When you fall, the Wing ability does little to nothing to slow your fall.
 * 3) *The capacity meter has been shrunk down exponentially, which is an okay change, but it takes super long to charge. This can lead to frustration if you run out of capacity, and nearly everything uses the meter up. However, Tres now refills it, therfore rewarding the player for playing well.
 * 4) *The blocking ability was removed, which was a risk-reward mechanic where if you pressed right or left at the right time before you got hit, you'd earn Tres and the attack wouldn't hit you. If you messed up the timing, you would get hit and lose Tres. This added to the difficulty, why remove it?
 * 5) *The lord attack has issues of it's own.
 * 6) **If you hit something with the Lord Attack in midair, it sends you into freefall. This isn't bad when you're close to the ground, but it can lead to a lot of unfair cheap shots or pitfalls. This also means you can't activate Wing and potentially save yourself. You could also hit an enemy you didn't intend to, and it is the worst when that happens.
 * 7) **It will damage you if you hit a boss with it during invincibility frames.
 * 8) * Zizou no longer has her revenge magic from Dark Witch 2, which is ironic because when you play as Day, Zizou's bossfight has her Hyper Dark Arm from Dark Witch 2.
 * 9) **Depending on your view, this could be a good quality or bad quality because it makes the game more balanced.
 * 10) **This does make sense for Day, as her Revenge Magic wouldn't make too much sense in main stages and against bosses.
 * 11) There is little to no point to play as Day. Her main weapon is a very short ranged homing shot, you get 2 new bosses, and that's really everything notable.
 * 12) *To be fair to the game, this is somewhat standard across the series.
 * 13) The level up system was somewhat unnecesary. What it does is when you get Pure Syega pieces in the stages, it allows you to buy things at Paplene's shop, but you need to get a ton of Tres to even buy most of the stuff at the shop.
 * 14) *The point of the shop was to help players who needed it, and have some bonuses, why change it for the worse?
 * 15) *Could be good or bad for keeping the difficulty balance, but the Syega pieces are worthless for any other purpose.
 * 16) The minibosses, while a good concept in theory, have no reason to exist, and to make matters worse, they are pretty similar to each other with little changes.
 * 17) Some Syega pieces require some game knowledge.
 * 18) * An exaple in Al's stage is the portals in the first half of the stage. You have to dash into the portal to have momentum to go up in the portal, which is clever, but nothing in the game tells you that.
 * 19) 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. (Again, this could be a good quality or bad quality because it makes the game more fair)
 * 20) The museum requires Tres to unlock stuff, which is annoying considering once you bought it in Dark Witch 1 and 2, you unlocked everything.
 * 21) Some levels can take a little long, sometimes taking up to 10 whole minutes on your first go.
 * 22) A lot of the things that made Dark Witch 1 and 2 distinct and fun were surprisingly removed, some major things being...
 * 23) * Syega Shop (replaced with Tres, although they're mostly useless now),
 * 24) * Boss Abilities (replaced with Lord Attack, which is awesome, but still doesn't compare to Zizou's abilities from Dark Witch 1 and 2),
 * 25) * And the previous install system (Now it's based on how much Syega you have, which sucks.
 * 26) Some songs are terrible/average, such as "Hello Samurai Ninja (arranged)" or 'Differential, Infinitesimal (arranged)"

Reception
Dark Witch 3 is quite mixed in critics' reviews and reception in general. Currently the only review online as of now is a 7.4/10 from Video Chums. They stated while it had a lot going for it, it was a bit of a letdown due to all of the removals. They also stated that the game was very easy. (The original writer has beaten this game 3 times, and I can safely say that statement is just flat-out wrong.) Most people outside of the community also consider this game a mixed bag, however fan reception is much more positive. Generally, the fans liked the level design, the difficulty curve, and music. Unfortunately, not much else.

Blog:Articles by user ZeusDeeGoose