Mystic Defender
Genesis
Nostalgia Factor:
One thing I really want to do going forward with this blog is to step out of my comfort zone and play some games I’ve never played before. Mystic Defender is one such game. Despite being a Genesis owner as a kid, I had never played (or even heard of) Mystic Defender my entire life. I recently watched a random SNES Drunk YouTube video about the game, and I thought it looked pretty decent. I thought why not? Let’s give it a try.
Continue reading for my thoughts on the game!
Story:
Taking place in an ancient Japanese fantasy setting, you play as a… well… mystic defender as he tries to stop a bad guy from using human sacrifice to resurrect an even badder guy with world domination on the mind. You fight through a series of stages filled with demonic enemies until you make it to the end of the game, where you rescue the woman who is about to be sacrificed (naked titties and all). After saving her, you defeat the final boss and save the world from utter ruin.
Yay.
As you can see, nothing special to report here. Except for the naked titties part, maybe. But we’ll get to that soon enough.
Gameplay:
Mystic Defender is a 2D side-scrolling platformer where your main method of attack is launching spell-based projectiles at your enemies. The best comparison I can make with this game is that it feels a bit like a weird hybrid between Shinobi and Kid Dracula. Shinobi seems like the most obvious comparison. It’s a slower paced game. The jumping mechanics are similar. The way you fire projectiles ahead of you is similar to how you toss shurikens in Shinobi. You have to move slowly. You have to proceed cautiously. There’s some precise platforming action. You fight bosses at the end of each stage. Yeah. Shinobi.
It compares to Kid Dracula not necessarily in its base gameplay but in its weapon progression system. You start out with your basic pea-shooter spell magic. You hold the shoot button to charge up your attack, and releasing it launches an extra powerful blast at your opponent. As you play, you’ll pick up different spell scrolls which allow you to diversify your attack portfolio. Examples of these other spells are a useful flame attack which allows you to fire in all directions, and a spherical attack that launches bouncing shards of magic across the screen in a random pattern. I guess this brings Kid Dracula to my mind because in that game, like this one, you have to constantly hold the attack button and charge it up otherwise your weapons either do nothing or are relatively useless without that little extra jolt.
This is a pretty tough game. I played on the default difficulty setting, and by the end of the second level I had already burned through all of my lives and all three of my continues. The second level! Patience is your main key to success. You can’t play this game like you would other 2D platformers. You can’t try to rush through levels, absorbing enemy attacks like a sponge. No, no. You only get three hits before you are killed. You have to move cautiously, and you have to plan your next move in advance. You never know where an enemy is going to come from, so you always have to be alert. The more you play and the more you die, the more you’re able to memorize things, so the game does get easier the more you play it. But like I said, you have to be patient.
There are some power ups to collect as you play. The main one is your standard health item, which restores one bar of health. There’s a blue item that improves your speed when charging one of your attacks, which is nice since by the end of the game you basically have to charge every single attack if you want to make it through your enemies. There are 1-ups. And then there is the dragon scroll, which acts as your basic 2D side-scroller staple that wipes all enemies off the screen. I only encountered two or three of these as I played, so try to hang onto them and only use them if absolutely necessary.
Before we move on to the next segment of the game, I have to mention what I consider to be Mystic Defender’s biggest flaw: the platforming. Your character is pretty stiff and hard to maneuver when he’s in mid-air. Normally this isn’t a problem, but there is a stage past the halfway point of the game where you have to jump across rock pillars floating in lava (with flying enemies attacking you every step of the way). The jumping is SO imprecise that it resulted in more deaths than I can even imagine. The knockback you suffer when getting hit by an enemy doesn’t help things either. All I can say is thank god for save states. I can just picture myself playing this as a kid, playing through the whole game extra cautious and safe, only to waste every single one of my lives and all of my continues on this one spot. No thanks!
While I’m griping, I’d also like to point out that you can’t charge your weapon when you are moving. If you aren’t standing still, that meter ain’t filling up. During boss fights when you are constantly on the run from enemy projectiles, it makes it VERY hard to charge your attack and in turn VERY hard to defeat that enemy. Who thought that was a good idea?
Graphics:
This game doesn’t necessarily look like anything special, but you have to take into account that this was one of the first Sega Genesis titles ever released, coming out in the year 1989. The graphics certainly don’t look bad, giving you some rich colors and some nice atmospheric stage effects. The demonic characters you fight against are weird and creepy if you really stop to look at some of them. This game easily looks like it could have come out at the end of the Genesis’ life cycle, not at the front end of it.
Some of the story sequences and cutscenes look really cool. Like the castle rising out of the water? Amazing. I like how in between stages it shows a little animation of your character charging up an attack and firing it at the camera. That looks pretty sweet, too. It reminds me of how indie game developers go out of their way to try and make games look old, but still cool at the same time. Mystic Defender pulls off that look perfectly.
Sound:
“I don’t really remember anything about this game’s sound, good or bad. If it was bad, it would probably stick out or I’d remember it. So it must not have been that terrible.”
*sigh*
Long time readers of this blog will know why I’m sighing. New readers won’t get the joke. I’ll let you figure out where you land on that spectrum.
Overall:
Mystic Defender is an interesting piece of Sega Genesis history, for sure. Looking at this game, you would never guess it was one of the first Genesis titles ever released. It looks and feels much better than many games that came out for the system, some of those games years and years later. What I really care about is if it is enjoyable or not, and all I can say is that this is an okay game. I wasn’t too thrilled about it, but I didn’t hate it either. I think if the game had better controls and if it had eased up on its platforming sections just a bit, I would have had a much nicer time with it. Will I ever come back to this game someday? Probably not. But I can say I am glad that I played it.
If you like Shinobi style side-scrollers, you might like Mystic Defender. If you come into it with low expectations, you may be pleasantly surprised. Just don’t expect it to be as good as Shinobi – or really any of the games that you may think it looks like from the screenshots (Contra: Hard Corps, Castlevania, etc). It is certainly not on par with any of those titles. It’s good. It’s decent. It’s slightly above average. I think the grade it’s about to get sums it up perfectly.
Final Score:
C+
PS: because I said there would be more to come on this later, here you go:
If you liked this review, check out some of my other game reviews:
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