#69: Magic Sword

RAWR!

Magic Sword is a game I didn't think I'd heard of, and I know I didn't play it as a kid. But the more I played it today, the more familiar it seemed. I feel like maybe I played it on an emulator at University? Or maybe I played a sequel/spin-off? I'm not sure, but it was definitely interesting.

Level Select at the start of the game?

Magic Sword is a single player platformer where you take the role of a scantily clad, muscle bound blonde with a big sword and a shield. There are three buttons. Jump, swing sword, and hurt yourself. I'm sure the hurt myself button pulled off some sort of super move but I never saw it do anything except drain my own health so I stopped using it. The twist for the game is the ability to get an ally who follows you around jumping/attacking when you jump/attack. There seemed to be a large number of potential allies. I know I saw a ninja, a thief, a white mage, a black mage, an ogre, a dragon, a knight, and a girl.

He-Man and She-Ra?

On top of that, there's an item slot which holds one item at a time. What those items do was not clear to me, and I just picked everything up indiscriminately. When an item dropped it was never clear if it was going to be worth points, or restore health, or go into my inventory slot. Or hurt me? I know I lost health sometimes without knowing why. So I just took them all.

The gameplay reminded me a bit of ActRaiser. ActRaiser is my second highest rated game thus far, so that sounds like it should be high praise. But the platforming in ActRaiser was not great. It got such a high rating for the world building and the awesome integration between the two. The platforming here is playable, but with nothing special going on. Jump, attack. Jump, attack. Awkward dodge. Hardware slowdown. Attack.

After each level the game would give little tips about what was going on. So eventually I learned the diamond ring is used to recruit the dragon. The gold book is used to earn more points. The white mage can damage undead while the black mage cannot. Thieves detect trapped treasure chests. Those are the sorts of things I would have written down if I'd rented this game as a kid back in the pre-internet days. And probably would have been enough to let me figure out what was going on. That would add a lot of replayability to the game. I don't really want to keep playing it now, but I think I would have played it a lot back then.

The music is also very good. And also reminded me of ActRaiser. I think it's the organ base to the music maybe? It really fit in with the idea of climbing a tower and killing the undead. I like it.

Rating: A+