The Genesis games keep on coming! This one’s pretty fun but the gameplay is a bit weaker than some of the other titles. It’s missing features that I would consider to be fairly basic. Like they’re just not around at all which doesn’t make a ton of sense. With them in place this game could have gone a little farther, but as it is this is still a game that I would recommend checking out while you have the Switch Online.

You play as Alisia who can shoot lightning while also commanding different familiars to fight by her side. You get 4 of these before the game ends and you can switch them in/out as needed. They do help a tiny bit with their fire blasts but don’t expect them to be providing you backup for too long. In general they just like getting in one shot and then dipping out. You need to count on yourself at the end of the day to take the win.

There are only around 8 levels so the game isn’t too long. It is on the harder side for Genesis though. It feels like there is a different threat around every corner. Your health goes down very quickly and while the lightning is a great attack there is no indicator when it is doing damage. So you know that you are injuring the opponent but you don’t know how long you have to keep the blast up. This means you have to just keep running and dodging until he goes down but without some kind of timer, you sometimes have doubts that maybe this enemy is invincible to magic and you need a special way to injure him. It certainly felt that way during some of the later boss fights where their health is absolutely massive.

So I guess the best advice for me to give you is to just keep on blasting. Even if it doesn’t feel like i’ working, it is. There are no bosses in the game who are immune to the electricity so you can just keep that in mind. Beyond that, get used to jumping, ducking, and dodging because you have to do so much of that. Some bosses got me over and over again because it’s super hard to judge the trajectory of their attacks. I would wind up walking right into them several times which was pretty rough. Alisia is fairly big so she covers a lot of space on the screen.

Meanwhile the graphics are good here. Perhaps not quite as top tier as some of the last ones that I played but it definitely looks nice. The soundtrack is more on the unmemorable side so I can’t say that there are any tracks here that will really stick out for you. They’re not bad or anything like that but they are very forgettable which can be similar at times. The game will have to succeed without the music this time.

Really the weakest part is the actual platforming here. Your cool thunder laser will take care of the enemies as you go through but the levels are really tight so in many cases you bump into an enemy while you are trying to proceed. It’s often difficult to stop before you bump into the enemy because of close they are so taking a lot of damage feels inevitable. If the platforming were a bit smoother then I feel like you could have gone around this but instead the game is just a little bit too sluggish.

Also they definitely could have leveled up the familiars a little bit. They don’t shoot as often as they should and they go down so quickly when it counts. Half the time you really are on your own so this is like a complete aspect of the game that you miss out on as a result. Easy way to fix is to either make the enemies unable to hit the familiar or again just make him more of a tank. So he can endure a good amount of shots while backing you up. That’s the kind of dynamic that I would want to see. It would also reinforce the teamwork/friendship angles.

The game’s about an hour or so long so you will beat it fairly quick. As par for the course with Genesis titles, there isn’t really a post game here. You complete the game and then the day is saved. It lasts you long enough when you factor in the difficulty so it’s not a bad amount of value. It’ll also help teach you a lot about strategy as you monitor your lightning’s power. You’re incentivized to give the blasts a break every now and again to give it a further boost.

Overall, Alisia Dragoon is a good game. It would have been great if you could see the damage you were doing and maybe throwing in another kind of attack as well. The electricity is super handy and better than most standard guns in a game like this but at the same time you still need something a bit more than that. Maybe if the gameplay was a bit smoother or something but this one is such a difficult game to play that it does occasionally overwhelm the fun factor and you never want that to happen.

Overall 6/10