Dark Seal

Dark Seal casts you as one of four characters, commanded by the King of Etrulia, to save the realm from the evil Volov and his right hand man, the Black Knight. Taking place in a medieval fantasy world obviously inspired by Dungeons and Dragons (even more so than the earlier similar games), each of the players fill a familiar role-playing archetype, illustrated via character sheets in the introduction. Carl F. Graystone is the knight, slow but wielding a powerful morning star, which is swung around in a circle. Freya Edirne is the wizard, subverting expectations by not being a bearded old guy but rather a woman who dresses in Egyptian-style garb. She wields a “flame pillar”, which shoots blazes of fire along the ground. Riger Hawk is a bard, which one would think would be useless in an action game, but he holds his own thanks to a weapon called an “elastic spetum”, which is a sort of multi-headed spear that fires out shadow duplicates of itself. As a bonus, he’s also immune to poison. Finally, there’s Kirikaze the ninja, who attacks with shurikens. The levels are presented with an isometric perspective, though your character can move in all eight directions. There are treasure chests everywhere, which grant assorted items. Most are just for score, but some can temporarily improve your speed, strength, or defense. There’s also a magic meter, which slowly grows as you dispose of enemies. All of the characters can actually wield magic, not just the wizard, though the spells they’re able to use are different. These are indicated by the book above the magic meter, which flips through the spell pages automatically, so you need to wait until it brings up the magic you want to use.