With no prior knowledge of this series, I picked the third one to try. It’s a labour of love, and competently constructed, and has some quirks of its own to keep itself from being too basic of a Rockman clone.
I got interested in trying a Dark Witch game while playing Rockman titles recently. I picked it out but felt I shouldn’t start until after trying Magical Kid’s Doropie, the original Rockman clone that stars a witch. For this third instalment, development duties had been handed off to the venerable M2, who significantly streamlined the existing formula along with adding the “Lord Attack” (a damaging dash move) as a default ability.
This dash was previously an unlockable weapon, in the classic “Robot Master weapon get” style. This whole mechanic has been stripped out here, so Zizou (the goddess of magic, and our protagonist) has the same moveset through the whole game, not counting the incremental power boosts you can buy through the in-game shop. However, there is an intra-stage progression mechanic whereby finding crystals, mainly dropped by glowing enemies, lets you boost your speed, post-jump glide, or your projectile shot (do this first every time!) for the duration of the stage.
Reading about the simplifications M2 made, I feel they were mostly good choices to make this a more approachable experience. There’s still a decent level of customisation between the shop, equippable charms for a limited-use item, and the three easily-swappable difficulty levels. Unfortunately I didn’t end up using the Lord Attack much for combat, as it’s always accompanied by a heavy knockback to the player character that can be dangerous or annoying, and just whaling away with the basic shot is usually more effective. So my hopes of a Zero-like playstyle, or even something like Beck’s dash, were… dashed.
The central mechanic the Dark Witch series is known for is the energy bar, which again M2 has tweaked. Your actions (shooting, gliding, dashing) consume energy, but hitting enemies or other objects releases butterflies which refill it (and are also used for currency in the shop). Higher difficulties grant more butterflies. Your health is presented in discrete chunks, and can only be partially refilled by beating a miniboss (the same basic fight in every stage) or by using one of the equippable items, but your stock can be permanently expanded through the shop, and stages have a few checkpoints each.
Anyway it all comes together well, and tackling the stages is usually fun, each with their own theme and gimmicks. There’s the requisite 8 demanded by the formula, but another four open up before the final stage, which is just a boss rush. The boss characters are a cute, eclectic, and mostly overdesigned group, each with their own over-the-top anime-style personality. It should be mentioned that every character in the game is female, which makes a nice change.
It should also be mentioned that a lot of the game’s content is the result of a collaborative effort with the game’s community. Fan-submitted designs make up much of the enemy cast, which is a zany parody-esque collection of odd creatures including rubber ducks, floating prisms, and adorable anthropomorphic animals. This, combined with stages’ visual designs being strictly split between different artists, can leave the game feeling a bit disjointed at times, but the unlockable gallery’s inclusion of artists’ comments helped me as a player to make a connection to the passion of the creators.
That doesn’t mean I’m married to the game. The story is full of tropes and proper nouns, the localisation could’ve used another pass, and I wasn’t too keen on the character design. The unlockable playable character also wasn’t different enough to Zizou; she seemed to play exactly the same except her main attack had pathetic range. But it was still a fun time, with good 2D action and some collectibles to find. I’m glad I took a punt on it.
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