 I know Capcom and Konami get a lot of love for cranking out tons of great arcade games back in the 80s and 90s, but man, I'd love me some data east. They created some crazy games like the cliffhanger Edward Randy, Boogie Wings, Nitro Ball, just completely off the wall ideas for games, but if they wanted to keep it simple they could do that too, with games like Wizard Fire, also known as Dark Seal 2 which was its original Japanese title. So yeah, this game is a sequel to another game called Gates of Doom, which we'll have to get its own video sometime. Right off the bat we're met with some superb voice acting. You see, it's the year 355 and the Empire of Gaul, but we've got bad guys that want to do away with those good for nothing tricksters, those presumably being the five playable characters, and these anonymous evil doers plan is to kill exactly 101 innocent lives which will somehow unlock the dragon shrine and raise an undead army. There's a surprising amount of text here for an arcade game, and sure enough they've phrased things using words like seith and thao and all kinds of other fake sounding ye old english, but it's all in good fun. As you can see, Wizard Fire is kind of a shoot em up run and gun hybrid with an isometric perspective, but the big thing here is that there's no platforming. Hooray. There's not even a jump button, thank god, so there's none of that goofy sudo 3D platforming that certain games tried and most failed at back in the early 90s. You can move in eight directions, you've got an attack button and a magic spell button, and that's it. Hey, that's all you need. There's five characters to choose from, each with their own weapons, magic spells, and immunities to certain things. What's a little odd about Wizard Fire is that not only are you bombarded with enemies and projectiles and giant bosses and all that, but this game also has a ton of status ailments you have to deal with, and when it comes to picking what character to play as, it's, uh, quite literally pick your poison. For instance, the knight is immune to disease, the bard is resistant to poison, the dwarf resistant to the confusion spell, or you can just dodge as much as you can with the elf since she's faster than the other characters, or you can just nuke the hell out of everything every chance you get with the wizard since she has the most powerful magic. We must stop him! Let's continue! We will make him pay! I freaking love this voice acting, and hey, that's some pretty damn sharp pixel art too. The differences between the 5 characters don't end at just immunities or things like speed, for example both the dwarf and the knight are capable of stronger attacks if you wait a couple seconds before attacking, which you would think is a clever way of keeping the player from just spamming the attack button, but conversely if you mash the hell out of the attack button with the bard or the elf, that unleashes an attack stronger from them. Also the more enemies you destroy the faster the magic meter at the bottom fills up, and it will fill up at different rates depending on who you choose, like obviously the wizard's meter will fill up just a bit faster than the other characters. What's interesting about the magic system is that it's somewhat randomized, as represented by the pages of the book there that flip on their own, you have to hit the spell at the right time to get the spell you want. Again, that's a nice way of preventing mindless button mashing, and there are some oddball spells here to stay the least, like this knight that turns into a mimic and spits out treasure everywhere? Sure, okay. Curse it! Poison water! I'll... I'll get you back! What, you're gonna smash the river to bits? How does that work, you genius? Playing token gives you a health bar to get through six levels and the game is really generous providing all sorts of upgrades to your speed, to your strength, to your weapons, to your magic, all represented by the icons up top. I do have to mention a few flaws though, like how you definitely want to play this one with a second player, and not just because you know most games like this are always more fun with a second player, but jeez Louise, the boss fights in this game take forever! You seriously have to hit these guys somewhere between 100 and 200 times for them to go down, and if you go at this game alone you'll just get downright bored with some of these absurd boss fights. This game also has some damned annoying enemy design. There are flying enemies that are a pain in the ass, and also the sound design gets irritating after a while too, even for an arcade game. I get why games have to be this loud and distinct so they can stand out, but I wanted to mute this one after a while. Otherwise, yeah, Wizard Fire is a good time, a perfectly good multiplayer hack and slash game that gives you lots of options not only between characters, but between magic spells and methods of attacking. There's also upgrades you can find everywhere. The game certainly looks awesome, and while I wouldn't rate it ahead of the two Dungeons & Dragons arcade games from Capcom, Wizard Fire still has a similar vibe that I can appreciate. Even better is that this game is available on the Nintendo Switch's eShop, so go check it out that way if you can. It's worth a playthrough. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!