Dahna Megami Tanjou (Sega Mega Drive, IGS Corp, 1991)

Put shortly, Dahna Megami Tanjou certainly should be an awesome game. The first level has you riding on the back of an ogre for crying out loud !

Screenshot from the shortest level in the game.
It lasts about 40 seconds. No I don't know either.

But....it's not. The main reason for that is the control scheme. You have your standard attack and magic (with three spells, but you only have access to the one you have enough MP for, so if you have full MP you can't use the invincibility spell, period), normal jump and high jump. You can also stab downwards (which I found rarely usefull) and upwards (which I never found a use for). There's a "leveling" system, but all that does is give you an HP increase every time you hit another several hundred thousand points, so honestly you won't be seeing it do anything that often.

Now this all seems well and good, but the problem is the game can't seem to handle two actions happening at once or in close succession. For example, many many times will you run into a situation where you will trigger an enemy on both sides of the screen. Sometimes you can tip toe around to take them down one by one, but there are times when this simply doesn't work.

Hands down the most annoying part of the game.

And this is where the problem comes in. Often you will turn around and stab the enemy behind you, not wanting to trigger even more enemies to come onscreen, and then try to jump out of the other enemy's reach and get stabbed mid jump. This is due to the game taking about half a second after your previous action to get to performing the next one. Or worse you do manage to make the jump, hug the left hand wall, press right and and then the attack button and....you just keep pummeling the left wall as the enemy effortlessly walks up to you and stabs you in the neck. This is made worse by the fact that because the response is delayed, your attack commands can "pile up", in a sense, so it continues to do one thing while you're already holding a completely different button. In regular mode you can sacrifice a bit of magic to get out of this bind, but you simply can't use any while riding the ogre or horse.





But worst of all, this is made exponentialy worse by the fact that one stage is literaly 90 % nothing but a long straight line with enemies constantly popping up from both sides, and the whole linear section of the level you're forced to play with the Ogre. You can't even chose to dismount and take care of the bad guys yourself, hell there's not even any apparent in-game need for you to be using the Ogre in this part, as you have already played through sections like this before and there's sections like this later on as well.

Tis but a Monty Python Refference !

The gimmick levels (the horse ride and the scrolling shooter level with the eagle) control alot better, since in one you can accelerate and get a high jump (even if the inability to attack enemies coming from behind is a bit baffling) and in the other you have two different attacks at your disposal, plus the ability to fly. The more standard levels, when not being as cheap as described above, are fairly manageable (Except for the fat guy with the club. He's the first mini boss and shows up several times throughout the game. He's okay to deal with until he suddenly freaks out when he starts running across the screen like a madman swaying his sword around and I never found a good way to beat him without getting hurt, minus using magic). There's an amusing four armed and two headed boss who'se limbs you cut off at one point, then he comes back until you cut off his head and then his remaining arm and only then is he finaly dead. However the end of the game is a different story.

After fighting through a short corridor you're faced with - ah, realy, they were this dry for ideas ?

I have a feeling some programmed wanted to go have lunch early.

Oddly, even if you have a full magic meter the game doesn't allow you to use any magic here for some reason. And then in the next fight. And in the next.

What's the point of even having magic if you're not allowed to use it for half the game, and can't utilise it even during the final boss fight ?

This would be realy cool....if you actualy got to fight it.

Speaking of which, you fight some generic wizard dude who flies around and shoots very weak fireballs that dissapear after a few feet. Then when you beat him a shadow comes out, the whole screen starts to writhe and undulate and you're presented with a huge shadowy golem figure in the background, who summons some enemies you've already fought. This part is tricky because he summons up to four at a time, you can't use any magic, and the second thing he summons are two fat guys with clubs. But after you beat them all he....swirls around and dissapears.

Can we say letdown ?

The final section of the game is a short moving platform section where you're saving the wizard from before. I'm not sure why, but they hold hands at the end, so I guess it makes sense.

Overall, this game would have been realy realy good, were it not for the fact you get mercilessly slaughtered by people heroicaly stabbing you in the kidneys while you brutaly assault the left side of the screen.