LIGHTBRINGER
Original Release: Taito, Arcade, 1993
Other Releases: PC/Xbox/PS2 (in Taito Legends 2, 2006)
Aka "Dungeon Magic," this was Taito's entry into a general trend of arcade sword-and-sorcery beat-em-ups with mild RPG elements in the early 90s
Lightbringer (Arcade, Taito, 1993)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
1989 was a watershed year for beat-em-ups, as three releases split the genre into three fundamental branches: Golden Axe established the slower-paced and more deliberate (and dark/bloody) weapons-based brawler, TMNT gave us "light weapons" and a graphical/audio tour de force with oversized boss fights as the standard for cartoon and comic licenses, and Final Fight carried on with the work Double Dragon and Renegade started but with more modern and smoother gameplay.
Lightbringer, which came out a few years later, kinda mushes together all three categories. And on top of that, it adds an isometric perspective that makes it kinda reminiscent of Sega's Landstalker (which came out about a year earlier).
The game opens with some lizard army attacking ye olde castle-town, and we must swiftly commit to one of four characters and jump into the action. You got your slashy knight who is best at basic power attacks, a sexy jumpy elf archer, an 88 year old wizard, and the most unique character is a brawler (kinda like a Final Fantasy "black belt") who basically has Mike Haggar's move set.
The action is limited to two buttons, but each character has a decent variety of moves. You have one basic combo attack, but can execute a couple of (ostensibly) more powerful attacks by holding the button down and charging a while first. Characters also have jump and dash attacks, can pick up assorted temporary weapons and shields, an A+B "power attack" that can be used only three times per life, and can gradually upgrade their moves (and add elemental effects) by finding better weapons along the way.
Lightbringer is initially quite interesting with its large and complex levels, which give you a choice of how to move from room to room. It quickly reveals itself to be a total cheap hit fest and quarter sink, though. Your characters can't really take much damage, and it's coming from everywhere - all sorts of environmental traps, stuff that just randomly drops on your head, heaps of fake treasure chests, having a hard time aligning properly with the foes due to the isometric perspective. It's all little cuts here and there, but you can only take four or five cuts before you die.
Ultimately the characters feel so slow, weak and sludgy that the game just isn't that fun to play. They're also badly imbalanced. The "easy mode" turns out to be to pick the Methuselan wizard, who initially seems like crap with his weak physical and bad charge attacks, and get him a particular staff and item that lets him do the Meteo and broil screens full of foes instantly. All the other characters have pretty useless charge moves, so if you don't want to magic spam it's best to either take the knight for his solid basic combo or the brawler and basically just spam his dash move and A+B as much as possible. The sexy elf really doesn't seem to be any good, other than for shooting arrows at a couple particular bosses that love to turtle and shoot range weapons.
And oh, if you think the regular gameplay is cheap, wait until you see those bosses. The first one, a large snake, just has a ton of crap going on. He can stun/interrupt charges and trip you with any contact with his long body whipping around, mooks constantly spawn in for him to eat and recharge big chunks of his health, and he can insta-grab you for an attack that also insta-kills you (making you into a-nice-a heap) if your health is low enough. Later on you fight his palette-swap brother who literally just hides in his hidey hole and shoots a super powerful flamethrower at you. Bosses always have either gimmicks like these or just some crazy priority that lets them instantly override anything you're doing; granted, not uncommon for beat-em-up bosses, but most games have much more mobile characters.
All those complaints out of the way, the game does have its good qualities. The complex levels with lots of possible paths, hidden secrets and optional sub-objectives are far more advanced and interesting than you usually see with arcade games. It has a nice little soundtrack too, I presume by Zuntata. But despite those good qualities, the minute-to-minute gameplay just feels like too much of a slog between the slow character movement and all the cheap hits.
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