Not many people even noticed that this game was released at all because of its release date in 1995. What was going on in 1995 to cause everyone to look the other way? Well there was this somewhat popular console that had just been released called the Sony Playstation. Basically no one was even thinking about the Genesis anymore and it was really unfortunate timing for the developer.
It was a pretty solid RPG though.
This game was isometric 3-D, which was pretty wild at the time to some people and also very frustrating to pretty much anyone. This made it really tricky to determine where you actually were on the current playscreen, particularly when dealing with jumping from platform to platform and this happens a lot as it is a big part of the game.
those platforms are actually not on the ground, and are necessary to strike the dragon, but where are they actually? You gotta look for the shadows
The game even acknowledged this difficulty and kind of apologized for it in the manual.
Light Crusader was a bit unique in the way that a lot of the game revolves around completing puzzles which at least as far as I can remember, wasn't a big part of any of the RPG's I had played up until that point.
The bosses looked good and the sound in the music, although very midi-like given the Genesis' audio limitations, sounded pretty great and was widely varied.
The story is paper-thin and almost doesn't even make sense, there is only 1 town and there isn't much going on inside of it and there is only 1 dungeon which has many many levels. Therefore this game is extremely short compared to other RPG's that had existed at the time. I would say if it took you 10 hours to complete it, you were probably moving pretty slow.
I can't really recommend anyone go back and play this game now, but at the time it was a pretty welcome distraction for those of us that weren't going to pay the intro prices on the Playstation or even worse, the Sega Saturn (I think the Saturn was $400 at the time.. jeez). Mostly I look back at the stills with a sense of nostalgia because these graphics were such a sign of the times in the mid 90's gaming world.
You can download the ROM to play Light Crusader for free, HERE