WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Dark Wizard

Publisher: Sega Developer: Sega Released: 1993

Finally we get to one of the Sega CD's rare yet awesome RPGs.

The land of Cheshire used to be a beautiful place where the powers of light and dark were in perfect balance, and the people prospered under the rule of a just king. That was 300 years ago, before the king's high priest tried to disturb the balance by giving the dark god Arliman form. A war that lasted 10,000 days followed. This war resulted in the death of the king, and the emergence the heroic warrior Armer, who ultimately succeeded the dead king.

As peace and prosperity came back to Cheshire, the high priest's apprentice plotted against the land and its people. Velonese had been charged with guarding over the imprisoned Arliman, and as the decades went by, his hatred for Cheshire grew. He has finally grown powerful enough to command his own army, which is trying to conquer Cheshire while he concentrates on freeing the dark god Arliman once again.

Dark Wizard is a strategy RPG where players get to assume the role of one of four heroes and try to stop Velonese from carrying out his evil plan.

Amer IX is the son and heir to the throne of his father, Armer VIII; Robin is the finest warrior in Cheshire and will give her life to save it; Amon is a vampire – the ruler of Cheshire's undead who kills Armer VIII and assumes his identity in an attempt to control Arliman himself; and Krystal is an entrantress who is tricked by Velonese into killing Armer VIII, and who ultimately sets out to right her wrong by killing the dark wizard instead.

No matter who you pick, poor Armer VIII meets his end right at the beginning of the story, and Velonese's forces have pretty much overrun Cheshire.

Unlike a lot of other RPGs that feature multiple main characters, each story in Dark Wizard shares nothing but the background – there is no canonical link between the four tales. What you do get is different basic attributes, resources, and a handful of character-specific allies based on your actions during the story.

Dark Wizard's claim to fame back in the day, besides the fact that it was one of the few strategy RPGs on the console, was its lengthy animated cut-scenes. These were sprite based rather than full-motion video, so they looked generally excellent. Along with the game's robust intro, each character had a lengthy intro cinema, as well as an animated ending.

Honestly, that's the main thing that sold me on the game when it first came out. I'm a bit embarassed to say that I never actually got all that far in Dark Wizard, however. This is pretty much the game that I'm not really into strategy RPGs that go much deeper than something like, say, Shining Force or Vandal Hearts.

Dark Wizard features hex-based maps, where the player must move their troops over all sorts of terrain, visiting castles and cities along the way in order to restock equipment, buy weapons and armor, recruit new soldiers or summon new monsters. Each character's army is made up mostly of one or the other based largely on whether they have a lot of MP or bring in a lot of tax revenue.

Army units on the field each have their own specific attributes, as well, and can be leveled up. So you really didn't want to simply overpower your enemies with sheer numbers, as it was worthwhile to keep your soldiers around as long as possible.

For all the graphical splendor on display during the story scenes, Dark Wizard is disappointingly mediocre to look at much of the time. The overhead map screens are understandably simplistic, since there are usually a lot of units and terrain to represent. The battle scenes, though, are impressively ugly   - the beautiful, anime-inspired style does not seem to carry over.

That doesn't really matter, though. Every battle scene in Dark Wizard features a little bit of loading time, followed by a bit more as the game switches back to the overhead map. This adds a significant amount of time to the overall length of every battle, so I personally leave them turned off almost all of the time.

For people who aren't stratRPG wimps like me, there is a whole lot to love in Dark Wizard. The variety of units and level of depth is not something we were used to seeing on a console game outside of Koei's library back in '93, so it really spoke to some people. It's kind of a shame the system itself wasn't more popular, as I'm sure Dark Wizard could have had a really wide audience.

Oh, and I can't say enough about the soundtrack. It's fairly limited for a game this size, but the music that's here is fantastic. It's actually another reason to turn off the battle scenes, as they would constantly interrupt the great general themes that would play in the overhead map.

One more bit of interesting trivia - the original concept for Dark Wizard came courtesy of Kenji Terada. Anime fans may know his name, but Final Fantasy fans should definitely know his name: he wrote the first three games in the series.

This is one of the true hidden gems on the Sega CD. Those who love it feel a sort of pride about having played this great game that relatively few people got to experience. Even speaking as someone who never got that into Dark Wizard, I count this as one of the reasons the Sega CD is one of the greatest consoles known to man.