Magic Sword (Arcade)
You can’t get much more generic than calling your medieval fantasy game Magic Sword, but Magic Sword does at least have a subtitle that is sometimes appended to it… although it’s not much better. Magic Sword: Heroic Fantasy feels like the placeholder name for a game about a hero in a fantasy world who uses a magic sword, and perhaps it was settled on because it is a clear description of exactly what you’re getting in this game. The generic title is a bit of a portent of things to come though, but let it be said that Capcom at least tried to mix up the basic fantasy ingredients it threw together into this side-scrolling hack and slash arcade game.
The story is as standard as they come though. The dark lord Drokkmar (sometimes spelled with one k) wields a dangerous Blackorb (spelled as one word in the game but split in two in outside marketing) that will allow him to conquer the world. Sitting atop a 50 floor tower, he protects himself with an army of all sorts of creatures from myth and legend, meaning only a powerful hero could stand a chance of taking him down and saving the world. The player is one such hero, the shirtless sword-wielding Conan the Barbarian type champion heading into the tower and fighting his way to the top, joined occasionally along the way by other heroes who were locked up by Drokkmar’s forces. It’s essentially the bare minimum setup a game requires for you to face off with dragons, skeletons, and mythological monsters, so while it is amusing how unambitious the tale is, if you want to experience that typical fantasy journey, then Magic Sword at least provides an unapologetic adaptation of one.
Our hero, sometimes known as the Brave One, isn’t just limited to swinging his sword at whatever foe he might find. The magic in this particular sword can be unleashed when you press the attack button, this manifesting in different forms over the course of your journey. The Brave One will gradually acquire better and better blades on his quest, their magical power increasing into deadlier and more effective forms as he gets these upgrades. However, you can’t just swing the blade wildly to constantly unleash your magic spells. There is a meter in the bottom left of the screen that will fill up any time you aren’t attacking. It’s fairly fast to fill but the game does throw many enemies at you so you can’t always wait for it to build up. If it does change from blue to red then you can execute a weak magical attack, but if it has had the time to fill up fully you’ll execute your strongest magic. Admittedly, these magical attacks are often a fancy name for projectile attacks like hurling knives, but the stronger weapons go from forward launching projectiles to ones that can cover more screen real estate, meaning delaying your strikes can pay off against more flighty foes or groups who can be wiped out by the fully charged spell. Encouraging you to not always swing when you have a chance does make battles with durable foes like the bosses a bit more interesting, but most enemy types do rely on quantity as their strength and delaying your attacks isn’t always a viable option unless you wish to lose health.
Scaling the tower is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, every floor has treasures to find so you’re not just blitzing through them to get to the next level, but on the other, the variation between each of these floors isn’t as diverse as one would hope. They are all, thankfully, pretty small in size, the player able to traverse the length of even the longest ones fairly quickly, but the enemy types don’t provide the best resistance. A lot of what you’ll face are fodder type foes who will keep coming from in either side to harass you in a fairly basic way, the game not even swapping out the pigmen and skeletons who make up this force as you get deeper in the tower. The same can be said of the many flying enemies like the sword wielding cloaked spirits who appear alongside the other generic enemies when you do the initial exterior level and keep appearing until you’ve nearly reached the final boss.
There are definitely efforts to change things up though, different levels of the tower having unique hazards like burning pits, poisonous water, crush traps, and dropping guillotines. New enemies do appear like moai heads, mummies, enemy wizards, and plenty of beasts and bugs, but they’re area specific and often far less abundant than the filler enemies. Only the toughest of these enemies and obstacles really ask for more than the same sword swiping and magic casting you’ll do to clear out the regular baddies too, so Magic Sword does unfortunately slip into generic hacking and slashing for the most part. It doesn’t help that the few bosses in the game are often the same chimera and dragon you fought early on but with small changes to the fight, but they at least made sure the final fight with Drokkmar breaks away from the formulas for a unique climactic battle.
The onslaught of enemies, even if they are a bit too similar to each other, pairs well enough with dangerous environments to give the game a decent difficulty level, and success is often earned by exploring the floors for the different treasures and advantages you can gain by being thorough. The most interesting way to gain an edge is by opening the locked doors found throughout the tower. By collecting different types of keys you can pop open the doors and receive whatever waits inside. Usually these will be other helpful heroes with their own health bar and unique attack styles, a second player even able to join in and play as these assistants. If you go on your own though the game will set their attacks to your rhythm, these allies also using different skills based on how full your magic meter is. There is a leveling system for keeping a specific ally with you long enough, but there is definitely a hierarchy to which ones are the most useful companions. Characters like the Ninja and Wizard cover a lot of screen real estate with their magic when they’ve had time to grow, but the axe-wielding Big Man and crossbow-firing Amazon are only able to fire magic in a straight line in front of them even at their strongest. Some characters like the Knight are very strong even when they use their basic attacks, while magic users like the priest can only act when you’ve got enough magic for them to unleash their skills. Situational ones like the thief who can find secrets and the Lizardman who must be unlocked with a special item round out the cast, but the important detail of these allies is no matter who you get, they are all good assistants. They’re much better than opening the door and finding enemies instead, and even if you don’t want the specific ally who was waiting inside, they always drop a helpful item when they appear.
Treasure chests are scattered around the floors of the tower, containing both keys for unlocking doors and items that can be equipped one at a time, but these items unfortunately aren’t felt that strongly. You’re already strong enough without an item boosting to your physical or magical strength, the protection of a crown isn’t felt when your health isn’t often lost outside of the gradual decrease the game places on you to keep you moving, and items that increase your score are much less preferred over an item like the diamond ring that will let you find the Lizardman. Treasure chests can contain healing food though and some items can do things like give you a brief period of full magic, so there is still a decent incentive to check these freely opened and usually beneficial chests. Along with secret doors that let you skip floors, Magic Sword does give you a lot to do on the tower’s different levels, but it’s not really substantial enough to make that process all that exciting.
THE VERDICT: Magic Sword’s generic heroic fantasy unfortunately ends up a generic hack and slash game despite having some elements that tried to avoid this fate. The magic meter urges you to not just slash at every opportunity, recruiting different allies is an interesting mechanic, and there are a few interesting enemies to fight on this adventure, but the fifty floor climb through the tower unfortunately recycles too many enemies and bosses to fill those floors. Your power level ends up being too high for most of what you face as well, meaning that things do end up slipping into repetitive fighting on familiar floors a little too easily and too often. The action could have worked in Magic Sword, but the game is too plain for its own good.
And so, I give Magic Sword for arcade machines…
An OKAY rating. Fighting the many basic baddies in Magic Sword never gets so repetitive that the game becomes an outright bore, but the lack of imagination in its design unfortunately keeps the few good ideas from reaching their potential. Waiting to fill up your magic meter and using the right ally could have received more emphasis to make more enemy encounters last longer than the quick weapon swing after a hasty meter refill, something that could have been achieved with the game focusing on more engaging enemies instead of just repeating the same foes start to finish. Bosses could have been the highlight where these mechanics shine brightest but instead the chimera and dragon keep coming out with only small changes to fill those roles, leaving the player hungry for something that will really push them to move and strike more carefully. The game does achieve some challenging moments with its hazards and the stronger late game foes, but since most of the game leans on the same few concepts over and over, the tower certainly feels its height.
Magic Sword’s embrace of the generic tropes and creatures of high fantasy didn’t have to be a negative. Games like Castlevania include a lot of familiar monsters and Mario has been saving the same princess for decades. For an idea to become generic often means it was a successful ingredient in many other works, but that leaves the gameplay to carry the experience here, and the good ideas aren’t explored enough thanks to unimaginative design choices elsewhere. Magic Sword turns out average not because it truly chose to be, but because its average ideas end up being the most emphasized parts of it.