The Legend of Dark Witch Review (Covers Dark Witch 1/Renovation, 2, Brave Dungeon/Combat, Rudymical, 3, The Meaning of Justice
In ancient times, before the onset of conflicts between humans and beastkin, the realm of Beatus was a haven of peace. The Fae, as the world's only inhabitants, were beings of great intelligence and amiability, nurturing their world with their innate magical abilities. They sculpted the land, securing prosperity for not only their own kind but also for other races that would emerge and walk in their footsteps. Among the Fae, one individual arose with the vision of creating a form of magic accessible to all, delving into chemistry, biology, geology, and archaeology to discover the proper method to craft such a crystal. This Fae was willing to sacrifice a portion of their own magic to forge Syega. Regrettably, this Fae was apprehended, under the false belief that Syega would enable future generations to annihilate the Fae, and was condemned to execution. Yet, it was already too late. Having embedded Syega into the world days prior, it proliferated, reaching the animals and transforming those in contact into Fae-like beings which retain or lose their intelligence and sentience, yet with a permanent loss of the Fae's magic.. They named these new beings 'Beastmen,' distinguishing them from both the original beasts and the Fae themselves.
The arrival of a human in Beatus followed a certain phenomenon, yet among all the historical documents of Beatus, this event remains an enigma. The scant details available pertain to Zizou Olympia, the "goddess" who, alongside her "sister" goddess Mati, safeguarded the world to prevent the disruption of Beatus's tranquility. No one, not even themselves remember their origins on the introduction to them and humankind. They managed different regions to distribute the responsibilities, with Mati overseeing a more lenient area compared to the Old Islands, which were under Zizou's vigilance. The Old Islands have been the site of numerous conflicts, as chronicled in 'Dark Witch 1, 2, and 2.5 (another idea that I'd had)'. Today, history repeated itself.
Simeone, one of the most powerful Fae in Beatus, has been stirring conflict among humans, accusing them of causing an imbalance between the races and harboring prejudice against the Fae, believing that the extermination of the Fae is necessary for humans to become the dominant race in Beatus. As war erupted, the Fae easily underestimated and inflicted harm upon many humans until the Magic Lion Corps came into the picture. The Corps comprised Al, a renowned treasure hunter; Cholesy, a hermit crab and arrogant mind researcher; Neville, the assistant to the chief of Heaven’s Garden; Rio, a lively sprout adept with yo-yos; Seama, a brilliant mechanic behind numerous key inventions; Teddy, who enjoyed impersonating the Fae; Miah, a doomed but noble thief; and Yuki/Wonder Girl (not the DC Superhero of the same name), a young and bold hero. They were led by Day, a determined--yet stupid girl focused on just getting things done. Despite having Teddy, Rio, and Yuki, the Corps was among the strongest human groups wielding Syega. Day, having suffered injustice at the hands of the Fae for decades, aimed to eradicate them completely. However, during the war, Fae cast a corrupting spell on her, turning her against the Magic Lion Corps using her own powers. Consequently, she was forced to step down as leader and disband the Corps.
Years have passed, and although the war has calmed since its peak, it still rages on. Day, tainted by the Fae, returns from the Old Islands seeking vengeance against the Magic Lion Corps. Meanwhile, Zizou, unable to bear the war any longer, decides to end it herself. She seeks to understand why the Corps ostracized her, uncover Simeome's true motives, and resolve the conflict once and for all. As Zizou, players will confront the Corps, face the Fae sent by Simeone, and ultimately encounter the corrupted Day. In the surprising twist, Simeone comes out of nowhere, and I kid you not, throws Day to oblivion as opposed to knocking her out, accusing Zizou that she is in the way of the Fae winning the war, but after you're done beating her, she quickly moves to space before she is able to be defeated, and the credits play.
In Day's narrative, players experience her corruption, her wrath against the Corps, and their realization that something is amiss with her corruption, which she neither understands nor accepts. After battling three Fae sent by Simeone and a familiar human (Aoi replaces Claudia in this revised tale to expand on Hiroto's initial ties to the Magic Lion Corps), Day confronts Zizou, defeats her, and then encounters Mati, who purges the corruption within her. Despite this, Mati engages Day in battle for harming Zizou, but instead of defeat, Mati takes a nap on the floor, prompting Day to question if her actions were justified. The rest remains unchanged from the original Dark Witch 3 where she is alone, the corps come in to make up her mind, and the Magic Lion Corps come into happiness, although at the end, you'll see the corps sitting on a bunch of rocks in Folkstone, watching the sunset pass.
What have you read is my revised story for the review that is getting featured today: The Legend of Dark Witch 3: Wisdom and Lunacy, the 2017 3DS-Exclusive entry to the Dark Witch series. Being the last entry that I'm working on for this series (I said in my Chronicle 2D Act review that I'm not reviewing Brave Dungeon and it's sequel due to me being forced to play a bad RPG against my will), I shall conclude this short review journey with not only how this game could be improved, but why this game was the fall of the series overall, and how my ties with NAN-A and his community had come to a complete end early 2023. However, for the reason I started off this review like this was not only cause it's obviously the only story-enriched Dark Witch game, but also because it's like the other games where I address things that could be fixed for the game's story based on my initial interpretations of, while Giving credit where credit is due. the story for this game isn't bad, but being under the hands of NAN-A, some elements of the story still doesn't explain some things that happen (like Simeone and her allies' sudden appearance and what made Day get exiled off the Old Islands) and that's just something that I cannot take anymore for this series. I've explained the personal bias that the Fae has for humans, the introduction to Beastmen, and humans and why the Fae hate the humans so much. But this doesn't mean that I'm ending this review. No, this is just the very beginning. I haven't even talked about how the original the story went! So in this review, I'll be talking about the controversial game in the series, and how this game led to the series' slow decline.
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Story
So, funny thing... What I've written for the revision is actually the same story for this game! Minus the introduction to Beatus and such. Where the story actually begins is when I've said, "Simeone, one of the most powerful Fae in Beatus, has been stirring conflict among humans," except in the original game, Simeone and her presence isn't mentioned until once you reach the middle of the game. However, just for the fun of it, I'm going to talk about what the original had in mind: For the fourth time in the series, the game makes the introduction to Syega, but before that, it explains Magic, "the absolute power that only the [Fae] (mistakenly the Beastmen in the original game) could use." This is obviously referring to their magic, and how they were able to rule the world for a long period of time. With the introduction to Syega (which one again, are crystals that allow humans to use magic, can't get any simpler than that), humans decided to be on equal footing with the fae, and were successful. (You see that I'm taking parts of the original story and putting it in here? ??)
The immediate difference from vanilla and my revision is that I explain how Beatus is formed, and how the Fae were originally the first "people '' to roam this game's form of Earth. I also explained how Syega was formed; no other game in this series have yet to explain other than being crystals, and the reason I said that it was formed the way that it was is because it's the most logical way considering that Beatus is Dark Witch's Earth, and I've wanted to make the most realistic approach to it, instead of having a meteor of unknown origin popping into the world with, "here everyone, your Syega."
I'd like to take a moment to clarify the characters who are canonically Fae in this series from the first game to the third game including Brave Dungeon (excluding enemies/bosses): Stoj, Simeone, Brujita, Zanetti, Claudia, and Patty. This is relevant to the ongoing debate within the community about the nature of beastmen because it's difficult to even understand what the difference between a human, Fae, or Beast is. The game also confuses me in terms of which becsuse I'm starting to believe that the only races in this game are humans and fae. Why?
Humans are people that don't have magic in them, Fae are people that have magic in them, and the beasts according to Brave Dungeon 2, are a mix of them, but they choose to use Syega nonetheless. So, what am I going to do for my revision? Completely overhaul the meaning of what a Beastmen is. A Beastmen in my revision is a mix of an animal and the Fae. A human is a human that are the most intelligent beings of an animal, and a Fae is a Fairy that possesses half the traits of a human bit can still be taught by one or their race to become even more. They can choose to have the ability to use Syega, but they don't have to as they have their own form of Magic. As Beastmen, they are able to think like an animal, and like a Fae, due to how they possess the intelligence of one, but due to how they are also the animal of their specific origin, that makes them 3rd place in terms of possessing this trait overall. . Consider Papelne in the original Dark Witch; you can tell from her dialogue that she irrationally thinks about humans believing that everything is their fault when that's obviously untrue. Due to the Beastmen being a mix of the two, they LOSE their ability from the fae side of them to have their own magic, which prompts them to use Syega as an alternative. The Syega that they used was used to fuse the two races into that one being, if you're going to ask if they have the natural ability to use Syega. I think this should be the best way to address this issue, and because of this, we're moving onto the rest of the original story.
The vanilla then goes to show that the humans and the fae have lived normal lives, but strife still broke out on occasion, and how the Old Islands, like Pennsylvania, new Mexico, and even New York have issues all of the time, and how disputes between human and Fae took the most place. The Old Islands has the Magic Lion Corps, which with their assistance Day, and she and the rest of the humans on the island plan to wipe out the fae once and for all, until "a single traitor" had to ruin everything, and life went normal for a split second but the bad guy switch turned back on as she goes back there with flames burning in her eyes, with Zizou having to descend to finish the rubbus. But.. Why...? Of course that traitor has got to be Simeone, but from my knowledge, the game makes no implication as to how Day got exiled in the first place, and why Simeone literally appears only through the mentions of her minions (reminder that it's Brujita, Zanetti, Claudia, and Patty) and the final boss, and on top of that, this game also doesn't make the explanation to say where her minions come from to attack Zizou and Day during their Journeys. However for Simeone, I'd like to give you a quote from @Yuzrnaime as to why this part of her arc is pointless:
“The MAIN BAD GUY, Simeone, just shows up out of nowhere and just tells us that she tricked Day, and that’s it!!! That’s ALL SHE DOES! NOWHERE does she even APPEAR in the ending! And while we were actually ON to something with Day coming to terms with why she’s getting Revenge on the Magic Lion Corps, THAT’S when Simeone shows up and spouts her bullshit. She doesn’t even say anything about who she is or what she does or anything like that, just, “I tricked Day, and I hate humans”. No shit, it’s not HARD to trick Day, she’s canonically fucking stupid! She’s literally called STUPID GIRL on her FUCKING STAGE SELECT!!!”
In my revision after you beat Yuki/Wonder Girl (or whoever your last Lion Corp member was), the usual Zizou saying that "day didn't do anything bad!" Happens, but right after, Simeone comes in informing her that she's getting "in the way of my business," sending four of the Fae to come across her. Skipping that to when you fight and defeat her, she doesn't die like the rest of them but rather flees to space before she is able to be finished. Like vanilla, she doesn't appear in neither endings but to compensate for her going to space, in the credits for Day’s story, not only the Corps are sitting on rocks watching the sunset, but Day sees a pink star moving towards the surface, but before she was able to go see it, Cholesy, sitting next to her and Al, prevent her from doing so, but eventually you'll unlock the final after talk which has her and Simeone talking about the conflict more, and her thoughts about the whole thing as it happened. That's where she'll appear.
Speaking of Day, how is her route in vanilla? take what I said in my revision, but remove the presence of the corruption, and keep it simple as: You're okay, everything is fine.
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Gameplay
Features such as Technical Skills (the Megaman part of beating enemies and using their skills), having 3 weapons of different kinds, the blocking mechanic (touching a projectile and pressing right or left upon hitting it immediately), a player revenge attack, an easy way to unlock lunatic mode, a post-game shop, non-upgradable magic items (having the limit of 3 uses maximum) have all been omitted from the last game, The Legend of Dark Witch 2, in an attempt to make the game much more balanced, but for those that are already used to 1 and 2, frustrating and difficult. And honestly, this game reminds me of Gradius with how difficult it truly is. To even comfortably play this game, you have to play on the easiest difficulty because normal, the “intentional way to play the game” feels too hard to play by default, and while you can day that's a skill issue all day, it's honestly not, and you're just boasting about how you're able to be used to the harder difficulties.
The slot bar has been massively reduced to three (speed, wing, and width (a mix of power and linear shot/whatever the hell that day has) and it works akin to Gradius where instead of dolling filling it up using Tres, you now collect Syega Fragments. Tres have been replaced with filling your upgrades in the Papelne trade, and unlocking some Archives found in the game when playing it. The story is also richer, but I don't understand why they had to make this game a lot more serious in the first place. I wouldn't say that it's dark because we still have characters like Rio, Teddy Miah, and Yuk–I mean Wonder Girl, but it's more involved.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Folkstone [Day Mark I/Zizou]
I'm adding a Mark I to differentiate it from her re-fight which comes later down the road. This is a simple introduction stage, going in the traces of where you had found Day. As you meet her, she is very slow and dies almost like a Dark Witch 1 and 2 boss, but she changes things up by using a revenge skill dubbed Capacity Zero where she drains your capacity being unable to do more damage to her. You have to die in order to progress, or if you have 1 hit cheat, you can kill her to not get anything special.
As her, you beat Zizou with her using three custom beams that use the sprite of her full linear shot from the second game, Stoj's Tornado Attack, and Lord Attack, followed by another attack that I have completely forgotten about. Since you're the one in control, you just have to simply beat her, and then you continue on with the story, although I don't like how it's addressed that despite being the winner, it registers as if you've used Capacity Zero against her, which is stupid. this obviously gets changed in my revision whereby the press of a button, you're able to use Capacity Zero to get her down.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Millennium Bridge [Al]
Once again, this mf is back inside of the game. Every single DW game has her included in the game somehow. One has her as a boss, two has her as a person selling magic items to aid you, Brave Dungeon has her as a protagonist, COMBAT has her as a Hero card, and she returns her as a boss once again. I wonder why NAN-A wants to reintroduce this character over and over again. But as you talk to her before fighting her, she's into her usual "Treasure fighting" business saying that staying on top of Day is her least priority, and as per usual of Zizou, she has to force her demands on everyone.
As a boss, she's fairly simple. Shoots orbs slowly at the position of you that you can shoot to make them back up a bit, uses her Scythe to summon pillars that go to the wall and on harder difficulties go from wall to her (doesn't hurt her though), and despite using the Scythe as a magic weapon, she comes to you and charges it at you like a Melee weapon, with her either doing two magic shoots, or jump-hits you. Why would NAN-A say that she doesn't use her Scythe for Melee if she does in this game? And considering him, he's probably going to keep this reinstated in the possible port that comes in the future.
Freeze Barrier: fucking freezes herself in an invulnerable state, and breaks it shooting chunks out. Best way to avoid this is to stay far away to avoid hitting the shrapnel. Dies with the same sprite as her hurting sprite from Brave Dungeon.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Neural Reality [Cholesy]
Hey, it's Cholesy! the character that appeared in... oh wait, nevermind. She technically did appear in Dark Witch 2 at some point during 3's early development though. I just got confused with my revised version of DW2-Sola's Journey where she replaced Codino in the second part of the game.
Anyway, Cholesy is your typical introverted character that's so introverted that she made her own dimension just to escape reality, just cause she has enochlophobia. I remember having a friend that was so obsessed with her that she in my friend's story was one of the most important characters in his story.
Anyways, how does she attack? She has a giant circle with Syega embedded in it, and she uses it to summon swords to slash (or jump to flash), guns to shoot daggers/scythes, and a little hand thingy that converts your shots to more daggers. hit her in the back or just wait until the attacks are over.
Field Slash: Smashes the ground, shooting a line of daggers to the floor. Find the most empty space, but you gotta be pixel perfect as no matter what, even if they do hit the ground, you can still get hit by their hitbox.
also for some reason this character reminds me of a person that starts with the letter a that was deadly obsessed with this character that also was borderline a pedophile and a sockpuppet that eventually got himself arrested live from a source that I have no clue about. Oddly specific, I know, right?
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Heaven's Garden (Exterior Mark II) [Neville]
oh look. another introvert character. I swear, while I am not being disrespectful towards introverts, most of the time I swear that they don't want to be alive when you speak to them. Neville being in this case. She's another one that I've reworked to be a little more engaging and such, but not too much out of her personality, cause in her after talking with Zizou in vanilla, she's radio silent as she got defeated. I guess even she got some Klinsy into her, but she doesn't want to admit it herself.
She is the queen of flames and standing in one place, though. She throws it in an arc, traveling to the left to where you are, with Klinsy's beams from the first game working similar to that game, but they track your vertical heights. After that, more flames! Also, get too close to her and she tries using a gust of wind to push you away, pushing her back even more.
Dark Zone: She turns the whole screen black! And jumps to have 6, 8-- i forgot the amount of rings towards you, and depending on the difficulty, there can be 1 or 2 rounds of this to keep you on your high knees.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Boleyn Gardens [Rio]
Finally, someone to make the game less agonizing! Yet it still is. She's just a slight french-speaking woman that is hyper. I mean her design looks nice, but still i guess in a calm garden where bombs, giant frogs eating pancakes and shooting them out, there has to be someone to compensate for how insane the garden can be.
She also uses a Yoyo, which she attempts to hit you at your position three times. She then uses the yoyo to swing left and right shooting tiny yoyos that come from her, with the amount varying depending on your difficulty. She then on the floor, tosses her yoyo to the ceiling, tossing tiny yoyos in a circular passion, and then using said yoyo to bring it to the left or to the right with some mini yoyos dropping at random angles.
Rolling Flower: She spins, and guess what? She shoots more mini yo yos at random arcs.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Hivi Clock Tower [Seama]
At first, I wanted to punch her in the fucking face for being rude like all of the other charcaters in this series, but I've learned that she's just very careful with all of her equipnment. She's still a bitch though. Even her sprite makes her look ugly as hell. At least they repurposed her in Brave Dungeon 2 with a completely different design, cause even they knew that her original one was trash.
Depending on your difficulty, she sends one or both (of her mechanical hands forward at angles, bouncing along the floors and walls at high velocity. She also uses her hands to send them in the air to crush you! to then come back at her. She then jumps onto one of her hands and moves across the screen to the other side of the room. She then uses her hands to shoot lasers coming from the fingers.
Destroyer: Same deal as the last attack but the fingers split, and shooting gaster blaster-like lasers towards the player.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Magic Fiber Factory [Teddy]
Look at her, pretending to be a Fae. Too bad she fails at it horribly cause she still uses Syega to her advantage. Does that make her a "beastmen" then? Well, the fans say otherwise because we have Patty that looks like a beast, but works like a Fae, and because of that one conclusion, it's showing that Teddy is just mocking the fae. Although I do want to know what she looks like without that animal costume on. I do want to point out that she's another character that was one of the starting characters during this game's development.
Like Seama being obsessed with her mech arms, or Neville being obsessed with fire, Teddy's specialty is APPLES. But before she uses that, she tries either dashing on the surface or jumping glide-dashing to you, with how fast it is being once again, dependent on your difficulty. Here's where the Apples come in! She throws one, kicks it, splitting into multiple pieces, and she starts throwing multiple, turning into flames eventually to what I believe is the most annoying attack of any boss that I have to fight.
Throughout her "throwing exploding apple" attack, you'll have to hear her say Sonyeh. Sonyeh. Sonyeh. Sonyeh. Konaie! Sonyeh. Sonyeh. Konaie! Konaie!" constantly, and I HATE IT. And don't tell me that it's part of her design to be a yelping sea urchin--your opinion is immediately invalidated and there can be easy circumventions to this. But after that egregious attack, at low health, she'll kick slowly... but then she'll rise up, and do the first attack all over again.
Now I'm getting serious!!: ok buddy nice revenge attack name. spins from left to right adjacent to your position, throwing apples that sonyeh attack.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Muswell Hill [Miah]
Here we go again with another character I believe was just created for the fan service: Miah. She's another airhead to get in everyone's way, coupled with a great design. She is also like the others where she uses another entity to help them fight with her, except this time, its Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes. I can't believe that she has a fantastic taste in having Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes fight for her. How does she use Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes??
She swings her arms up and down, creating portals from the bottom where you are, where Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes will light from one of the portals, swinging in an arc. The portals thankfully don't have a hitbox, but it's still best to be airborne during this attack. She also goes on a portal of her own, flying across the screen, summoning 3 portals on the left and right, summoning more Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes to either come diagonally, or horizontally to get you, with some delays in between.
She summons portals at the top of the arena that travel on the ground swinging and swinging, and falls to the ground, summoning one that pumps right out of the portal she brings out.
Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes Stream Alright, her actual revenge attack is named Campbell StreamI have been poking around about how her little partner is named Campbell. This time, she summons a giant portal above her that Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes comes in an arc, swinging a bit left and right before disappearing.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Stream Mersey [Wonder Girl/Yuki]
Wonder Girl, also known as Yuki in my revision to differentiate the DC Superhero of the name, is presumably the youngest member out of all of them, and is always focused on justice and such. Probably alluding to how her name is based on well.. the DC Superhero of the same name. She is fond of pigs too, which is giving love to them.
She starts off with the second Prismatic Bolt attack from Terraria but replaces the Prismatic Bolts with heart shapes. She spawns several of them to come at the player, and shoots one big one that moves like a wave. She will then somersault onto the player's position with a sword strike, occasionally following up with a second attack depending on the difficulty.
Yuki transforms into a puddle of water, jumping around at random positions. As she lands, she creates water clones of herself that, if not destroyed, will perform a slightly-slower version of the sword strike listed above. Wonder Girl can have up to three clones in play at a time. Unlike Wonder Girl herself, the player can run into an idle clone without taking damage (well except if you get hit by the sword attack)
Instead of doing an immediate revenge, She got the W in her, doing a dash, followed by a Wonder Kick--smashing in your position the moment it does it.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Street Cemetery [Brujita]
"That's Lady Simeone to you!" More like, "That's Mama Luigi to you!"Anyway, here's to the second part of the game, where the game makes no effort to tell you that Simeone's minions are coming to attack. In my revision, at least Simeone tells you beforehand as she notices that you're trying to do something. The typical "leave my business alone" type of situation, leaving these minions to come to attack. I know this ruins her surprise attack later, but who gives a damn.
Brujita is like Kris: They have a normal side, and they have a vicious side. She also has hair covering her face, similar to Kris. The only thing that differentiates is her attacks: Instead of using a knife, she has two wands: Using them to send three crescents at the player in a boomerang like fashion. After she does that, she'll send her pet Chur-i mean Pepper to turn you metal anvil mount from Terraria Thorium Mod where you're pretty much prone to getting damage. Use your linear shot to hit her back to Brujita!
And then she spawns several meteors in three short waves. Low health, she smiles like a little witch and spawns those crescents, sending them originally in an pseudo-infinity symbol-like pattern to crush you.
Violent Star: Spawns a star, with Meteors locating towards it.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Mary Subway [Zanetti]
The Prominence Planet/Cube Rush of Dark Witch 3's Hard/Lunatic Mode. Giant scaley fae that clearly looks like she's a beast, but nah she isn't. She dash attacks (or looks up, dash attacks with a swoop in the air). A gust of wind comes out of her spear in the direction of you. She jumps around the room normally, and sometimes lowers herself. Low health? She summons energy spheres that are borderline impossible to dodge without super hyper reflexes.
Forsaken Moment:She does nothing, but an exclamation point appears and she hits you as soon as it appears. Just timely use your wing, it won't take long.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Lime Park [Claudia]
this is not a park, this is a whole forest. Also I hate this character. I hate people who look physically attractive, to act like they're attractive. I hate how I had this character as my level palace profile picture and Discord profile picture at some point in my life. I hate how I had a frame of her forward facing smiling to the right (or left) that I don't even see in game somewhere on my phone, I also loathe how she is purposely designed to have..... Alright I'm done hating her. Think of her as a Morrigan wannabe, cause everything about her is supposed to be attractive, but nah, I don't like succubuses. Why is there such a thing as a woman demon that promotes men to doing sexual activity with them? Now I know that Claudia doesn't do it herself in this game considering that everyone is a woman, but saying that she'll eat you slowly and surely in an E rated game is suspicious alone.
She spawns some giant thing that slows you down, using a jumping snake bite. She spins around the screen, shooting roses at you. She eventually making dupes of herself that you have to destroy that upon destroying them, it'll shoot a red suicide bullet. And this is the best way to explain how she fights! LMFAO
Fascination: Same thing as Rio, but a flower is in the center, and she swoops down to get you while the attack is still ongoing.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Kinder Hill [Patty]
Discount Papelne. Alright it's a bit more than just that. Despite clearly looking like a Beastmen, she's a Fae! She got ears, she got spiked clothing, and the claws, yet She's still a FAE. Simply because she uses magic instead of Syega. With that in mind, I am already done talking about the characters, so I'm lazily explaining how she fights: She jumps to you, followed by a hadoken (or more depending on difficulty). She then summons a spore-looking thing that shoots lightning hot dogs, followed by a jump slash. She then proceeds to summon tiny versions of her that just do nothing but to get in the way.
Lightning Angry: She turned blue! But most of her attacks become upgraded versions of her basic attacks. Nothing special, if you know what you're doing. Although I will say, her boss is easier than the stage itself which makes her a massive disappointment.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Folkstone [Day Mark II/Simeone] / [Zizou/Mati]
And then we finally reached the place to which we've started in originally. As Zizou, your job is to fufl your status as a goddess and to take things seriously against Day to uncover her true motives and correct her wrong doings, while as Day, it's so so the same thing but you're playing as Day and your final opponent isn't Simeone. As Zizou, before Day even gets a chance to say something, she comes and yeets-i mean smashes her out of the way and tells Zizou that she tricked her with some human manipulation talk going on shortly after and the fight immediately begins. As Day, she has a small talk with Mati about how things needed 5o be clear in terms of what's actually going on in the world with her and stuff, and fight becsuse Day simply hurt Zizou once again.
Simeone smashes a wave of explosions in 1-3 turns, and has the ability to summon enemies and lasers to you. As independing DOOM!!! approaches, she tries to swoop you to take you to your last health. Not an Indra-death attack but it can sure damn be one if you're purposefully aren't careful. Just use the wing properly and you won't be covered in her doom sauce. That's about it though. After defeating Simeone, she doesn't fly into the background like how I thought it would. She just disappears for the entire game and doesn't even have an after-talk with Zizou with the completely bogus requirements that this game has.
For Mati, she's fast as lightning speed first of all, and second, you'll notice that she will purposefully ram into you sometimes during the times when she switches attacks due to the fact that bosses in this game have a hitbox. She also has a chance to teleport and swing at you that if you get hit by it, she can do a series of multiple attacks ending off with one that will send you across the screen.
She then angles herself to a position where she can fire continuous sword waves, and her revenge attack as the same as Day’s: Capacity Zero. works and functions like hers, although it's assuming that she took her powers away in the beginning of the game and such. After you defeat her, she also doesn't make an appearance in the ending and the most depressing thing, she doesn't willingly go to sleep on command of her defeat like my interpretation. I swear, I feel like I need to get to making a fangame that's just a complete rewrite of this entire series…
Something that I haven't mentioned up to this point is how you collect the Syega in this game.. While the first few stages aren't bad, it's up to Seama’s stage where they had to put the Syega pieces in such ridiculous ways for you to traverse through the stage more, and what's worse about this game is that the level design might feel normal, but this is easily defeated by the amount of enemies you're forced to defeat and such. They believe that enemy spam is the way to go, in which it only belonged to Gradius only. Having an enemy span in a Platformer doesn't make it hard, but stressful. And honestly, thank goodness Lunatic is hard locked behind a much more confusing way.
To unlock Lunatic in this game in particular, you have to collect all Syega as a character. And I've already stated how much this can be an easthsome task and such. What's even worse about it is that there's barely any guides that can help you due to how overlooked this series is internationally. Sure there's some and more if you ask in the Discord server but…. Unless you want to have yourself be corrupted by the minds of the idiots there (or use them to your advantage), that's the only reason to be in the Discord. I believe I have made it clear in my Dark Witch 2/Rudymical Review about how much I disliked the community for this game, so I'm not repeating the same information again for this one.
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Graphics
As with Dark Witch 1, 2, Rudymical, and Brave Dungeon, this game features the same pixel artist as those games. The art however, is the same one as Brave Dungeon, going for a more detailed look that I sorta appreciate. They made Zizou have the second best design in the game, with the smile she has being a good addition to it, even though sometimes it makes me believe that she has an evil side to her. But nah, it's just her being jolly like the other games she stars in. I don't believe that she has ever frowned in her main artwork before other than parts of the game where she does.
The only thing that I dislike about the graphics is that the art direction, and it's in an extremely weird way. While I domt hate them, I'd find it jarring to see a game that has been mostly light randomly take a dark narrative that reflects within the characters. The characters also seem that way with Cholesy being reserved to herself, reflecting how she doesn't like being next to people, and Neville with how she is just another silent introvert. Then again, we do have the usual rude characters with Seama, Claudia, and Patty being some, but then there's also lighthearted ones like Rio, Teddy, Brujita, and also Patty too even though she was jntisially aggressive at first. I just find the motion of the characters to be a bit odd in this game, and Brave Dungeon 2 also has this little issue too but eh, I'll talk about that game when it's the perfect time for it.
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Soundtrack
Just like Dark Witch 1, 2, and Brave Dungeon, Raito is the composer for this game, but in my humble opinion, I don't think he cooked well for this game. Not to say that all of the songs are bad, but compared to 1 and 2, they just have a feeling of a straightforward path. I would hoenstly say that my opinions for the soundtrack are similar to Gradius III in the sense that the game's soundtrack isn't bad, but it has a different music direction than Gradius I, Salamanader, or Gradius II. Some of the songs that I like are Al's theme, Cholesy's, Brujita's, and the main menu.
This game also has the constant issue of making songs for charcaters that don't fit the personality of the characters. Examples of such include Neville, Rio, Patty, and Zanetti. Zanetti's stage is so bad in terms of the soundtrack that I wonder what Raito was thinking when creating that song tbh. Or NAN-A, cause he redirects the type of music that the charcater should follow. I also think that the song is taunting me..? In vanilla DW3, Zanetti is the hardest normal boss in the game discounting Mati, the final boss for Day's Route, cause she is fast with all her attacks, has a revenge attack that is pausing and waiting at the right moment to attack exactly where you are--everything about her is just annoying as shit, and I guess why her song sounds and sucks ass.
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Other Thoughts
The reason this game wasn't as successful as Dark Witch 2 is because of the gameplay (and story). overhaul that this game had. Should it kept 2’s mechanics intact, I feel that this game would've been a lot better than what it had to be. It was too early for INSIDE_SYSTEM to experiment with the games series 2 years after perfecting the second game, and that's what caused for the series to fall. After 3, it was mostly waiting for Brave Dungeon 2 to come out, and during that time, we've gotten Dark Witch Connect and Break Block Syega Crystal: two mediocre Mobile games that probably didn't even make a penny for NAN-A, and Dark Witch Renovation, another way to play the first game without much changes other than to feature an artist that consistently do inappropriate art on their Twitter. I swear if you were to look up the artist's name and put it in the google search results, you'll see nothing but stuff you shouldn't be looking at. Other than that, this is The Legend of Dark Witch 3: Wisdom and Lunacy.
Also this game is still trapped under the defunct 3DS and there's still no implications made by NAN-A that this game will be brought back.. But that's it for the Dark Witch Reviews. Brave Dungeon and the sequel are coming in the future, but I am taking a break from taking about this series. It's been exhausting and I need to complete my Gradius series. Stay tuned for those, and have an awesome day!
In ancient times, before the onset of conflicts between humans and beastkin, the realm of Beatus was a haven of peace. The Fae, as the world's only inhabitants, were beings of great intelligence and amiability, nurturing their world with their innate magical abilities. They sculpted the land, securing prosperity for not only their own kind but also for other races that would emerge and walk in their footsteps. Among the Fae, one individual arose with the vision of creating a form of magic accessible to all, delving into chemistry, biology, geology, and archaeology to discover the proper method to craft such a crystal. This Fae was willing to sacrifice a portion of their own magic to forge Syega. Regrettably, this Fae was apprehended, under the false belief that Syega would enable future generations to annihilate the Fae, and was condemned to execution. Yet, it was already too late. Having embedded Syega into the world days prior, it proliferated, reaching the animals and transforming those in contact into Fae-like beings which retain or lose their intelligence and sentience, yet with a permanent loss of the Fae's magic.. They named these new beings 'Beastmen,' distinguishing them from both the original beasts and the Fae themselves.
The arrival of a human in Beatus followed a certain phenomenon, yet among all the historical documents of Beatus, this event remains an enigma. The scant details available pertain to Zizou Olympia, the "goddess" who, alongside her "sister" goddess Mati, safeguarded the world to prevent the disruption of Beatus's tranquility. No one, not even themselves remember their origins on the introduction to them and humankind. They managed different regions to distribute the responsibilities, with Mati overseeing a more lenient area compared to the Old Islands, which were under Zizou's vigilance. The Old Islands have been the site of numerous conflicts, as chronicled in 'Dark Witch 1, 2, and 2.5 (another idea that I'd had)'. Today, history repeated itself.
Simeone, one of the most powerful Fae in Beatus, has been stirring conflict among humans, accusing them of causing an imbalance between the races and harboring prejudice against the Fae, believing that the extermination of the Fae is necessary for humans to become the dominant race in Beatus. As war erupted, the Fae easily underestimated and inflicted harm upon many humans until the Magic Lion Corps came into the picture. The Corps comprised Al, a renowned treasure hunter; Cholesy, a hermit crab and arrogant mind researcher; Neville, the assistant to the chief of Heaven’s Garden; Rio, a lively sprout adept with yo-yos; Seama, a brilliant mechanic behind numerous key inventions; Teddy, who enjoyed impersonating the Fae; Miah, a doomed but noble thief; and Yuki/Wonder Girl (not the DC Superhero of the same name), a young and bold hero. They were led by Day, a determined--yet stupid girl focused on just getting things done. Despite having Teddy, Rio, and Yuki, the Corps was among the strongest human groups wielding Syega. Day, having suffered injustice at the hands of the Fae for decades, aimed to eradicate them completely. However, during the war, Fae cast a corrupting spell on her, turning her against the Magic Lion Corps using her own powers. Consequently, she was forced to step down as leader and disband the Corps.
Years have passed, and although the war has calmed since its peak, it still rages on. Day, tainted by the Fae, returns from the Old Islands seeking vengeance against the Magic Lion Corps. Meanwhile, Zizou, unable to bear the war any longer, decides to end it herself. She seeks to understand why the Corps ostracized her, uncover Simeome's true motives, and resolve the conflict once and for all. As Zizou, players will confront the Corps, face the Fae sent by Simeone, and ultimately encounter the corrupted Day. In the surprising twist, Simeone comes out of nowhere, and I kid you not, throws Day to oblivion as opposed to knocking her out, accusing Zizou that she is in the way of the Fae winning the war, but after you're done beating her, she quickly moves to space before she is able to be defeated, and the credits play.
In Day's narrative, players experience her corruption, her wrath against the Corps, and their realization that something is amiss with her corruption, which she neither understands nor accepts. After battling three Fae sent by Simeone and a familiar human (Aoi replaces Claudia in this revised tale to expand on Hiroto's initial ties to the Magic Lion Corps), Day confronts Zizou, defeats her, and then encounters Mati, who purges the corruption within her. Despite this, Mati engages Day in battle for harming Zizou, but instead of defeat, Mati takes a nap on the floor, prompting Day to question if her actions were justified. The rest remains unchanged from the original Dark Witch 3 where she is alone, the corps come in to make up her mind, and the Magic Lion Corps come into happiness, although at the end, you'll see the corps sitting on a bunch of rocks in Folkstone, watching the sunset pass.
What have you read is my revised story for the review that is getting featured today: The Legend of Dark Witch 3: Wisdom and Lunacy, the 2017 3DS-Exclusive entry to the Dark Witch series. Being the last entry that I'm working on for this series (I said in my Chronicle 2D Act review that I'm not reviewing Brave Dungeon and it's sequel due to me being forced to play a bad RPG against my will), I shall conclude this short review journey with not only how this game could be improved, but why this game was the fall of the series overall, and how my ties with NAN-A and his community had come to a complete end early 2023. However, for the reason I started off this review like this was not only cause it's obviously the only story-enriched Dark Witch game, but also because it's like the other games where I address things that could be fixed for the game's story based on my initial interpretations of, while Giving credit where credit is due. the story for this game isn't bad, but being under the hands of NAN-A, some elements of the story still doesn't explain some things that happen (like Simeone and her allies' sudden appearance and what made Day get exiled off the Old Islands) and that's just something that I cannot take anymore for this series. I've explained the personal bias that the Fae has for humans, the introduction to Beastmen, and humans and why the Fae hate the humans so much. But this doesn't mean that I'm ending this review. No, this is just the very beginning. I haven't even talked about how the original the story went! So in this review, I'll be talking about the controversial game in the series, and how this game led to the series' slow decline.
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Story
So, funny thing... What I've written for the revision is actually the same story for this game! Minus the introduction to Beatus and such. Where the story actually begins is when I've said, "Simeone, one of the most powerful Fae in Beatus, has been stirring conflict among humans," except in the original game, Simeone and her presence isn't mentioned until once you reach the middle of the game. However, just for the fun of it, I'm going to talk about what the original had in mind: For the fourth time in the series, the game makes the introduction to Syega, but before that, it explains Magic, "the absolute power that only the [Fae] (mistakenly the Beastmen in the original game) could use." This is obviously referring to their magic, and how they were able to rule the world for a long period of time. With the introduction to Syega (which one again, are crystals that allow humans to use magic, can't get any simpler than that), humans decided to be on equal footing with the fae, and were successful. (You see that I'm taking parts of the original story and putting it in here? ??)
The immediate difference from vanilla and my revision is that I explain how Beatus is formed, and how the Fae were originally the first "people '' to roam this game's form of Earth. I also explained how Syega was formed; no other game in this series have yet to explain other than being crystals, and the reason I said that it was formed the way that it was is because it's the most logical way considering that Beatus is Dark Witch's Earth, and I've wanted to make the most realistic approach to it, instead of having a meteor of unknown origin popping into the world with, "here everyone, your Syega."
I'd like to take a moment to clarify the characters who are canonically Fae in this series from the first game to the third game including Brave Dungeon (excluding enemies/bosses): Stoj, Simeone, Brujita, Zanetti, Claudia, and Patty. This is relevant to the ongoing debate within the community about the nature of beastmen because it's difficult to even understand what the difference between a human, Fae, or Beast is. The game also confuses me in terms of which becsuse I'm starting to believe that the only races in this game are humans and fae. Why?
Humans are people that don't have magic in them, Fae are people that have magic in them, and the beasts according to Brave Dungeon 2, are a mix of them, but they choose to use Syega nonetheless. So, what am I going to do for my revision? Completely overhaul the meaning of what a Beastmen is. A Beastmen in my revision is a mix of an animal and the Fae. A human is a human that are the most intelligent beings of an animal, and a Fae is a Fairy that possesses half the traits of a human bit can still be taught by one or their race to become even more. They can choose to have the ability to use Syega, but they don't have to as they have their own form of Magic. As Beastmen, they are able to think like an animal, and like a Fae, due to how they possess the intelligence of one, but due to how they are also the animal of their specific origin, that makes them 3rd place in terms of possessing this trait overall. . Consider Papelne in the original Dark Witch; you can tell from her dialogue that she irrationally thinks about humans believing that everything is their fault when that's obviously untrue. Due to the Beastmen being a mix of the two, they LOSE their ability from the fae side of them to have their own magic, which prompts them to use Syega as an alternative. The Syega that they used was used to fuse the two races into that one being, if you're going to ask if they have the natural ability to use Syega. I think this should be the best way to address this issue, and because of this, we're moving onto the rest of the original story.
The vanilla then goes to show that the humans and the fae have lived normal lives, but strife still broke out on occasion, and how the Old Islands, like Pennsylvania, new Mexico, and even New York have issues all of the time, and how disputes between human and Fae took the most place. The Old Islands has the Magic Lion Corps, which with their assistance Day, and she and the rest of the humans on the island plan to wipe out the fae once and for all, until "a single traitor" had to ruin everything, and life went normal for a split second but the bad guy switch turned back on as she goes back there with flames burning in her eyes, with Zizou having to descend to finish the rubbus. But.. Why...? Of course that traitor has got to be Simeone, but from my knowledge, the game makes no implication as to how Day got exiled in the first place, and why Simeone literally appears only through the mentions of her minions (reminder that it's Brujita, Zanetti, Claudia, and Patty) and the final boss, and on top of that, this game also doesn't make the explanation to say where her minions come from to attack Zizou and Day during their Journeys. However for Simeone, I'd like to give you a quote from @Yuzrnaime as to why this part of her arc is pointless:
“The MAIN BAD GUY, Simeone, just shows up out of nowhere and just tells us that she tricked Day, and that’s it!!! That’s ALL SHE DOES! NOWHERE does she even APPEAR in the ending! And while we were actually ON to something with Day coming to terms with why she’s getting Revenge on the Magic Lion Corps, THAT’S when Simeone shows up and spouts her bullshit. She doesn’t even say anything about who she is or what she does or anything like that, just, “I tricked Day, and I hate humans”. No shit, it’s not HARD to trick Day, she’s canonically fucking stupid! She’s literally called STUPID GIRL on her FUCKING STAGE SELECT!!!”
In my revision after you beat Yuki/Wonder Girl (or whoever your last Lion Corp member was), the usual Zizou saying that "day didn't do anything bad!" Happens, but right after, Simeone comes in informing her that she's getting "in the way of my business," sending four of the Fae to come across her. Skipping that to when you fight and defeat her, she doesn't die like the rest of them but rather flees to space before she is able to be finished. Like vanilla, she doesn't appear in neither endings but to compensate for her going to space, in the credits for Day’s story, not only the Corps are sitting on rocks watching the sunset, but Day sees a pink star moving towards the surface, but before she was able to go see it, Cholesy, sitting next to her and Al, prevent her from doing so, but eventually you'll unlock the final after talk which has her and Simeone talking about the conflict more, and her thoughts about the whole thing as it happened. That's where she'll appear.
Speaking of Day, how is her route in vanilla? take what I said in my revision, but remove the presence of the corruption, and keep it simple as: You're okay, everything is fine.
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Gameplay
Features such as Technical Skills (the Megaman part of beating enemies and using their skills), having 3 weapons of different kinds, the blocking mechanic (touching a projectile and pressing right or left upon hitting it immediately), a player revenge attack, an easy way to unlock lunatic mode, a post-game shop, non-upgradable magic items (having the limit of 3 uses maximum) have all been omitted from the last game, The Legend of Dark Witch 2, in an attempt to make the game much more balanced, but for those that are already used to 1 and 2, frustrating and difficult. And honestly, this game reminds me of Gradius with how difficult it truly is. To even comfortably play this game, you have to play on the easiest difficulty because normal, the “intentional way to play the game” feels too hard to play by default, and while you can day that's a skill issue all day, it's honestly not, and you're just boasting about how you're able to be used to the harder difficulties.
The slot bar has been massively reduced to three (speed, wing, and width (a mix of power and linear shot/whatever the hell that day has) and it works akin to Gradius where instead of dolling filling it up using Tres, you now collect Syega Fragments. Tres have been replaced with filling your upgrades in the Papelne trade, and unlocking some Archives found in the game when playing it. The story is also richer, but I don't understand why they had to make this game a lot more serious in the first place. I wouldn't say that it's dark because we still have characters like Rio, Teddy Miah, and Yuk–I mean Wonder Girl, but it's more involved.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Folkstone [Day Mark I/Zizou]
I'm adding a Mark I to differentiate it from her re-fight which comes later down the road. This is a simple introduction stage, going in the traces of where you had found Day. As you meet her, she is very slow and dies almost like a Dark Witch 1 and 2 boss, but she changes things up by using a revenge skill dubbed Capacity Zero where she drains your capacity being unable to do more damage to her. You have to die in order to progress, or if you have 1 hit cheat, you can kill her to not get anything special.
As her, you beat Zizou with her using three custom beams that use the sprite of her full linear shot from the second game, Stoj's Tornado Attack, and Lord Attack, followed by another attack that I have completely forgotten about. Since you're the one in control, you just have to simply beat her, and then you continue on with the story, although I don't like how it's addressed that despite being the winner, it registers as if you've used Capacity Zero against her, which is stupid. this obviously gets changed in my revision whereby the press of a button, you're able to use Capacity Zero to get her down.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Millennium Bridge [Al]
Once again, this mf is back inside of the game. Every single DW game has her included in the game somehow. One has her as a boss, two has her as a person selling magic items to aid you, Brave Dungeon has her as a protagonist, COMBAT has her as a Hero card, and she returns her as a boss once again. I wonder why NAN-A wants to reintroduce this character over and over again. But as you talk to her before fighting her, she's into her usual "Treasure fighting" business saying that staying on top of Day is her least priority, and as per usual of Zizou, she has to force her demands on everyone.
As a boss, she's fairly simple. Shoots orbs slowly at the position of you that you can shoot to make them back up a bit, uses her Scythe to summon pillars that go to the wall and on harder difficulties go from wall to her (doesn't hurt her though), and despite using the Scythe as a magic weapon, she comes to you and charges it at you like a Melee weapon, with her either doing two magic shoots, or jump-hits you. Why would NAN-A say that she doesn't use her Scythe for Melee if she does in this game? And considering him, he's probably going to keep this reinstated in the possible port that comes in the future.
Freeze Barrier: fucking freezes herself in an invulnerable state, and breaks it shooting chunks out. Best way to avoid this is to stay far away to avoid hitting the shrapnel. Dies with the same sprite as her hurting sprite from Brave Dungeon.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Neural Reality [Cholesy]
Hey, it's Cholesy! the character that appeared in... oh wait, nevermind. She technically did appear in Dark Witch 2 at some point during 3's early development though. I just got confused with my revised version of DW2-Sola's Journey where she replaced Codino in the second part of the game.
Anyway, Cholesy is your typical introverted character that's so introverted that she made her own dimension just to escape reality, just cause she has enochlophobia. I remember having a friend that was so obsessed with her that she in my friend's story was one of the most important characters in his story.
Anyways, how does she attack? She has a giant circle with Syega embedded in it, and she uses it to summon swords to slash (or jump to flash), guns to shoot daggers/scythes, and a little hand thingy that converts your shots to more daggers. hit her in the back or just wait until the attacks are over.
Field Slash: Smashes the ground, shooting a line of daggers to the floor. Find the most empty space, but you gotta be pixel perfect as no matter what, even if they do hit the ground, you can still get hit by their hitbox.
also for some reason this character reminds me of a person that starts with the letter a that was deadly obsessed with this character that also was borderline a pedophile and a sockpuppet that eventually got himself arrested live from a source that I have no clue about. Oddly specific, I know, right?
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Heaven's Garden (Exterior Mark II) [Neville]
oh look. another introvert character. I swear, while I am not being disrespectful towards introverts, most of the time I swear that they don't want to be alive when you speak to them. Neville being in this case. She's another one that I've reworked to be a little more engaging and such, but not too much out of her personality, cause in her after talking with Zizou in vanilla, she's radio silent as she got defeated. I guess even she got some Klinsy into her, but she doesn't want to admit it herself.
She is the queen of flames and standing in one place, though. She throws it in an arc, traveling to the left to where you are, with Klinsy's beams from the first game working similar to that game, but they track your vertical heights. After that, more flames! Also, get too close to her and she tries using a gust of wind to push you away, pushing her back even more.
Dark Zone: She turns the whole screen black! And jumps to have 6, 8-- i forgot the amount of rings towards you, and depending on the difficulty, there can be 1 or 2 rounds of this to keep you on your high knees.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Boleyn Gardens [Rio]
Finally, someone to make the game less agonizing! Yet it still is. She's just a slight french-speaking woman that is hyper. I mean her design looks nice, but still i guess in a calm garden where bombs, giant frogs eating pancakes and shooting them out, there has to be someone to compensate for how insane the garden can be.
She also uses a Yoyo, which she attempts to hit you at your position three times. She then uses the yoyo to swing left and right shooting tiny yoyos that come from her, with the amount varying depending on your difficulty. She then on the floor, tosses her yoyo to the ceiling, tossing tiny yoyos in a circular passion, and then using said yoyo to bring it to the left or to the right with some mini yoyos dropping at random angles.
Rolling Flower: She spins, and guess what? She shoots more mini yo yos at random arcs.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Hivi Clock Tower [Seama]
At first, I wanted to punch her in the fucking face for being rude like all of the other charcaters in this series, but I've learned that she's just very careful with all of her equipnment. She's still a bitch though. Even her sprite makes her look ugly as hell. At least they repurposed her in Brave Dungeon 2 with a completely different design, cause even they knew that her original one was trash.
Depending on your difficulty, she sends one or both (of her mechanical hands forward at angles, bouncing along the floors and walls at high velocity. She also uses her hands to send them in the air to crush you! to then come back at her. She then jumps onto one of her hands and moves across the screen to the other side of the room. She then uses her hands to shoot lasers coming from the fingers.
Destroyer: Same deal as the last attack but the fingers split, and shooting gaster blaster-like lasers towards the player.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Magic Fiber Factory [Teddy]
Look at her, pretending to be a Fae. Too bad she fails at it horribly cause she still uses Syega to her advantage. Does that make her a "beastmen" then? Well, the fans say otherwise because we have Patty that looks like a beast, but works like a Fae, and because of that one conclusion, it's showing that Teddy is just mocking the fae. Although I do want to know what she looks like without that animal costume on. I do want to point out that she's another character that was one of the starting characters during this game's development.
Like Seama being obsessed with her mech arms, or Neville being obsessed with fire, Teddy's specialty is APPLES. But before she uses that, she tries either dashing on the surface or jumping glide-dashing to you, with how fast it is being once again, dependent on your difficulty. Here's where the Apples come in! She throws one, kicks it, splitting into multiple pieces, and she starts throwing multiple, turning into flames eventually to what I believe is the most annoying attack of any boss that I have to fight.
Throughout her "throwing exploding apple" attack, you'll have to hear her say Sonyeh. Sonyeh. Sonyeh. Sonyeh. Konaie! Sonyeh. Sonyeh. Konaie! Konaie!" constantly, and I HATE IT. And don't tell me that it's part of her design to be a yelping sea urchin--your opinion is immediately invalidated and there can be easy circumventions to this. But after that egregious attack, at low health, she'll kick slowly... but then she'll rise up, and do the first attack all over again.
Now I'm getting serious!!: ok buddy nice revenge attack name. spins from left to right adjacent to your position, throwing apples that sonyeh attack.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Muswell Hill [Miah]
Here we go again with another character I believe was just created for the fan service: Miah. She's another airhead to get in everyone's way, coupled with a great design. She is also like the others where she uses another entity to help them fight with her, except this time, its Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes. I can't believe that she has a fantastic taste in having Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes fight for her. How does she use Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes??
She swings her arms up and down, creating portals from the bottom where you are, where Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes will light from one of the portals, swinging in an arc. The portals thankfully don't have a hitbox, but it's still best to be airborne during this attack. She also goes on a portal of her own, flying across the screen, summoning 3 portals on the left and right, summoning more Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes to either come diagonally, or horizontally to get you, with some delays in between.
She summons portals at the top of the arena that travel on the ground swinging and swinging, and falls to the ground, summoning one that pumps right out of the portal she brings out.
Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes Stream Alright, her actual revenge attack is named Campbell StreamI have been poking around about how her little partner is named Campbell. This time, she summons a giant portal above her that Quality Soups, Sauces, Food & Recipes comes in an arc, swinging a bit left and right before disappearing.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Stream Mersey [Wonder Girl/Yuki]
Wonder Girl, also known as Yuki in my revision to differentiate the DC Superhero of the name, is presumably the youngest member out of all of them, and is always focused on justice and such. Probably alluding to how her name is based on well.. the DC Superhero of the same name. She is fond of pigs too, which is giving love to them.
She starts off with the second Prismatic Bolt attack from Terraria but replaces the Prismatic Bolts with heart shapes. She spawns several of them to come at the player, and shoots one big one that moves like a wave. She will then somersault onto the player's position with a sword strike, occasionally following up with a second attack depending on the difficulty.
Yuki transforms into a puddle of water, jumping around at random positions. As she lands, she creates water clones of herself that, if not destroyed, will perform a slightly-slower version of the sword strike listed above. Wonder Girl can have up to three clones in play at a time. Unlike Wonder Girl herself, the player can run into an idle clone without taking damage (well except if you get hit by the sword attack)
Instead of doing an immediate revenge, She got the W in her, doing a dash, followed by a Wonder Kick--smashing in your position the moment it does it.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Street Cemetery [Brujita]
"That's Lady Simeone to you!" More like, "That's Mama Luigi to you!"Anyway, here's to the second part of the game, where the game makes no effort to tell you that Simeone's minions are coming to attack. In my revision, at least Simeone tells you beforehand as she notices that you're trying to do something. The typical "leave my business alone" type of situation, leaving these minions to come to attack. I know this ruins her surprise attack later, but who gives a damn.
Brujita is like Kris: They have a normal side, and they have a vicious side. She also has hair covering her face, similar to Kris. The only thing that differentiates is her attacks: Instead of using a knife, she has two wands: Using them to send three crescents at the player in a boomerang like fashion. After she does that, she'll send her pet Chur-i mean Pepper to turn you metal anvil mount from Terraria Thorium Mod where you're pretty much prone to getting damage. Use your linear shot to hit her back to Brujita!
And then she spawns several meteors in three short waves. Low health, she smiles like a little witch and spawns those crescents, sending them originally in an pseudo-infinity symbol-like pattern to crush you.
Violent Star: Spawns a star, with Meteors locating towards it.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Mary Subway [Zanetti]
The Prominence Planet/Cube Rush of Dark Witch 3's Hard/Lunatic Mode. Giant scaley fae that clearly looks like she's a beast, but nah she isn't. She dash attacks (or looks up, dash attacks with a swoop in the air). A gust of wind comes out of her spear in the direction of you. She jumps around the room normally, and sometimes lowers herself. Low health? She summons energy spheres that are borderline impossible to dodge without super hyper reflexes.
Forsaken Moment:She does nothing, but an exclamation point appears and she hits you as soon as it appears. Just timely use your wing, it won't take long.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Lime Park [Claudia]
this is not a park, this is a whole forest. Also I hate this character. I hate people who look physically attractive, to act like they're attractive. I hate how I had this character as my level palace profile picture and Discord profile picture at some point in my life. I hate how I had a frame of her forward facing smiling to the right (or left) that I don't even see in game somewhere on my phone, I also loathe how she is purposely designed to have..... Alright I'm done hating her. Think of her as a Morrigan wannabe, cause everything about her is supposed to be attractive, but nah, I don't like succubuses. Why is there such a thing as a woman demon that promotes men to doing sexual activity with them? Now I know that Claudia doesn't do it herself in this game considering that everyone is a woman, but saying that she'll eat you slowly and surely in an E rated game is suspicious alone.
She spawns some giant thing that slows you down, using a jumping snake bite. She spins around the screen, shooting roses at you. She eventually making dupes of herself that you have to destroy that upon destroying them, it'll shoot a red suicide bullet. And this is the best way to explain how she fights! LMFAO
Fascination: Same thing as Rio, but a flower is in the center, and she swoops down to get you while the attack is still ongoing.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Kinder Hill [Patty]
Discount Papelne. Alright it's a bit more than just that. Despite clearly looking like a Beastmen, she's a Fae! She got ears, she got spiked clothing, and the claws, yet She's still a FAE. Simply because she uses magic instead of Syega. With that in mind, I am already done talking about the characters, so I'm lazily explaining how she fights: She jumps to you, followed by a hadoken (or more depending on difficulty). She then summons a spore-looking thing that shoots lightning hot dogs, followed by a jump slash. She then proceeds to summon tiny versions of her that just do nothing but to get in the way.
Lightning Angry: She turned blue! But most of her attacks become upgraded versions of her basic attacks. Nothing special, if you know what you're doing. Although I will say, her boss is easier than the stage itself which makes her a massive disappointment.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Folkstone [Day Mark II/Simeone] / [Zizou/Mati]
And then we finally reached the place to which we've started in originally. As Zizou, your job is to fufl your status as a goddess and to take things seriously against Day to uncover her true motives and correct her wrong doings, while as Day, it's so so the same thing but you're playing as Day and your final opponent isn't Simeone. As Zizou, before Day even gets a chance to say something, she comes and yeets-i mean smashes her out of the way and tells Zizou that she tricked her with some human manipulation talk going on shortly after and the fight immediately begins. As Day, she has a small talk with Mati about how things needed 5o be clear in terms of what's actually going on in the world with her and stuff, and fight becsuse Day simply hurt Zizou once again.
Simeone smashes a wave of explosions in 1-3 turns, and has the ability to summon enemies and lasers to you. As independing DOOM!!! approaches, she tries to swoop you to take you to your last health. Not an Indra-death attack but it can sure damn be one if you're purposefully aren't careful. Just use the wing properly and you won't be covered in her doom sauce. That's about it though. After defeating Simeone, she doesn't fly into the background like how I thought it would. She just disappears for the entire game and doesn't even have an after-talk with Zizou with the completely bogus requirements that this game has.
For Mati, she's fast as lightning speed first of all, and second, you'll notice that she will purposefully ram into you sometimes during the times when she switches attacks due to the fact that bosses in this game have a hitbox. She also has a chance to teleport and swing at you that if you get hit by it, she can do a series of multiple attacks ending off with one that will send you across the screen.
She then angles herself to a position where she can fire continuous sword waves, and her revenge attack as the same as Day’s: Capacity Zero. works and functions like hers, although it's assuming that she took her powers away in the beginning of the game and such. After you defeat her, she also doesn't make an appearance in the ending and the most depressing thing, she doesn't willingly go to sleep on command of her defeat like my interpretation. I swear, I feel like I need to get to making a fangame that's just a complete rewrite of this entire series…
Something that I haven't mentioned up to this point is how you collect the Syega in this game.. While the first few stages aren't bad, it's up to Seama’s stage where they had to put the Syega pieces in such ridiculous ways for you to traverse through the stage more, and what's worse about this game is that the level design might feel normal, but this is easily defeated by the amount of enemies you're forced to defeat and such. They believe that enemy spam is the way to go, in which it only belonged to Gradius only. Having an enemy span in a Platformer doesn't make it hard, but stressful. And honestly, thank goodness Lunatic is hard locked behind a much more confusing way.
To unlock Lunatic in this game in particular, you have to collect all Syega as a character. And I've already stated how much this can be an easthsome task and such. What's even worse about it is that there's barely any guides that can help you due to how overlooked this series is internationally. Sure there's some and more if you ask in the Discord server but…. Unless you want to have yourself be corrupted by the minds of the idiots there (or use them to your advantage), that's the only reason to be in the Discord. I believe I have made it clear in my Dark Witch 2/Rudymical Review about how much I disliked the community for this game, so I'm not repeating the same information again for this one.
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Graphics
As with Dark Witch 1, 2, Rudymical, and Brave Dungeon, this game features the same pixel artist as those games. The art however, is the same one as Brave Dungeon, going for a more detailed look that I sorta appreciate. They made Zizou have the second best design in the game, with the smile she has being a good addition to it, even though sometimes it makes me believe that she has an evil side to her. But nah, it's just her being jolly like the other games she stars in. I don't believe that she has ever frowned in her main artwork before other than parts of the game where she does.
The only thing that I dislike about the graphics is that the art direction, and it's in an extremely weird way. While I domt hate them, I'd find it jarring to see a game that has been mostly light randomly take a dark narrative that reflects within the characters. The characters also seem that way with Cholesy being reserved to herself, reflecting how she doesn't like being next to people, and Neville with how she is just another silent introvert. Then again, we do have the usual rude characters with Seama, Claudia, and Patty being some, but then there's also lighthearted ones like Rio, Teddy, Brujita, and also Patty too even though she was jntisially aggressive at first. I just find the motion of the characters to be a bit odd in this game, and Brave Dungeon 2 also has this little issue too but eh, I'll talk about that game when it's the perfect time for it.
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Soundtrack
Just like Dark Witch 1, 2, and Brave Dungeon, Raito is the composer for this game, but in my humble opinion, I don't think he cooked well for this game. Not to say that all of the songs are bad, but compared to 1 and 2, they just have a feeling of a straightforward path. I would hoenstly say that my opinions for the soundtrack are similar to Gradius III in the sense that the game's soundtrack isn't bad, but it has a different music direction than Gradius I, Salamanader, or Gradius II. Some of the songs that I like are Al's theme, Cholesy's, Brujita's, and the main menu.
This game also has the constant issue of making songs for charcaters that don't fit the personality of the characters. Examples of such include Neville, Rio, Patty, and Zanetti. Zanetti's stage is so bad in terms of the soundtrack that I wonder what Raito was thinking when creating that song tbh. Or NAN-A, cause he redirects the type of music that the charcater should follow. I also think that the song is taunting me..? In vanilla DW3, Zanetti is the hardest normal boss in the game discounting Mati, the final boss for Day's Route, cause she is fast with all her attacks, has a revenge attack that is pausing and waiting at the right moment to attack exactly where you are--everything about her is just annoying as shit, and I guess why her song sounds and sucks ass.
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Other Thoughts
The reason this game wasn't as successful as Dark Witch 2 is because of the gameplay (and story). overhaul that this game had. Should it kept 2’s mechanics intact, I feel that this game would've been a lot better than what it had to be. It was too early for INSIDE_SYSTEM to experiment with the games series 2 years after perfecting the second game, and that's what caused for the series to fall. After 3, it was mostly waiting for Brave Dungeon 2 to come out, and during that time, we've gotten Dark Witch Connect and Break Block Syega Crystal: two mediocre Mobile games that probably didn't even make a penny for NAN-A, and Dark Witch Renovation, another way to play the first game without much changes other than to feature an artist that consistently do inappropriate art on their Twitter. I swear if you were to look up the artist's name and put it in the google search results, you'll see nothing but stuff you shouldn't be looking at. Other than that, this is The Legend of Dark Witch 3: Wisdom and Lunacy.
Also this game is still trapped under the defunct 3DS and there's still no implications made by NAN-A that this game will be brought back.. But that's it for the Dark Witch Reviews. Brave Dungeon and the sequel are coming in the future, but I am taking a break from taking about this series. It's been exhausting and I need to complete my Gradius series. Stay tuned for those, and have an awesome day!