Retro Review - Magician Lord

Neo Geo has in its catalog a great list of excellent videogames which can be played today and are even as enjoyable as some years ago, in that time where the arcade machines were the meeting point of the gamers of an old time and although I was not lucky enough to live that experience, fortunately there are emulators that bring to life those excellent games that so much entertained a whole generation, that's why today I will talk about an excellent adventure and platform game that was mainly released in the Neo Geo arcades and then in the Neo Geo CD.

Magician Lord has a simple storyline like many other arcade games, of which only a small introduction of the game's history was enough to know what the game was going to be about, being the storyline, in many video games of the time, a quite dispensable aspect. Magician Lord tells us that in ancient times there was an evil man, whose name is Gal Agiese, who by using his powers invoked some demons to use their powers and dominate the planet, thus causing panic, terror and destruction around the world, however, things were not going to end there, since Gal Agiese could invoke the most powerful demon of all: Az Atorse, who having him on his side, the world domination was too easy, however, luckily for the humanity, appeared a magician who using his powerful skills managed to seal Gal Agiese and Az Atorse in some books, while he was in charge of defeating the remaining demons, before such act of courage and heroism, the peace prevailed for several years.

But as it was expected, Gal Agiese managed to free himself from the seal and once again planned the total domination. But in every time of danger, the hero that will put an end to the evil of the world will appear, and it is the wizard Elta, protagonist of the game, who will be in charge of defeating the evil once and for all.

The graphic style that we can see in Magician Lord is very remarkable, remember that this game is originally from the arcade and many of these games had a pretty good graphic style. In this game we will see a color palette quite varied, with many bright colors that give life to many of its varied scenarios, as Magician Lord has a good set of scenarios of different types, decorated in a fairly acceptable that in certain places, with good details and settings as the situation, as in this game we can see from castles, forests, caves, dungeons, in short, a variety of scenarios that are necessary in a game of this style.

Magician Lord also has cutsenes that show certain events of the game, these cutscenes despite being simple, are very well implemented in the game, with a fairly decent quality of drawing and contribute much in the way how the story is being told in this game. The character design is quite good, although with sprites of a relatively small size, despite that, the developers of Magician Lord managed to create character designs with good style and with quite acceptable details. The enemies also have very good designs, although many of them are the typical creatures that we can find in a game set in a medieval era, however, some of them, being demons are very well designed, although they will be repeated quite a lot throughout the game.

The music is very good and plays a very important role in this game, it serves as an accompaniment during the adventure and also serves to "decorate" the stages. The melodies are typical tones of medieval times and fantasy, so there will be no lack of epic music and full of action. In general, all the musical repertoire of Magician Lord is very well composed and it is really one of those games where you can notice a great effort by the developers to create an atmosphere according to the argument of the game thanks to its music. The sound effects are also good, is listen with good definition and as with the music, serves as accompaniment and decoration on the stages, all these elements are able to create a quite entertaining game experience.

Magician Lord is a game of the genre action, adventure and also platforms with a gameplay quite easy, intuitive and fun that will give us a few hours of fun. Along this mission to save the world, we will have to cross a series of plagued scenarios of demons that we must defeat up to coming to the final boss. The game has 8 levels, in each of them there will be a final boss that logically we must defeat, the difficulty of these bosses is going to increase as we go along, they have a level of difficulty a little bit high, so they mean that this game is a challenge to our abilities, but they are still very entertaining to fight against.

Our protagonist will be able to jump and attack using his magic in different directions in his normal state, since Elta can have different transformations using some orbs that we will be able to find in the scenarios, having these transformations different abilities and aspects between them:

Shinobi: Elta will be able to transform herself into a skillful Ninja, capable of performing fireball attacks, as well as having greater speed and a jump that reaches greater height.

Samurai: In this form she is able to use a sword and perform very strong attacks with it, being able to perform wind attacks with it as well.

Waterman: When he obtains this form, our protagonist, as his name indicates, can perform water attacks, as if he were a Squirtle.

Dragon Warrior: As its name indicates, when taking this form, Elta transforms herself into a hybrid of a dragon and a human, being able to perform fire attacks.

Raijin: Elta transforms into the very Japanese God of thunder and lightning, being able to perform such attacks.

Poseidon: Another god in which our protagonist can transform, in spite of being the slowest of all, this form is capable of performing stronger water attacks than Waterman, besides being able to use freezing abilities.

Magician Lord is an excellent game from an ancient era, which despite having quite basic mechanics, is due to the addition of being able to have different transformations, each with its own characteristic skills, makes this an entertaining title and due to this mode brings variety to the gameplay.