Cleopatra no Mahō

Cleopatra no Mahō begins with a strong old-school hook: your archaeologist father has been taken by demons at an Alexandria dig, and you head down the Nile hunting the Tear of Isis before an ancient curse claims him for good. It is a compact adventure/RPG mixture where examining a place, taking objects, and choosing how to use them matter as much as winning a fight.

The blend is intriguing, even if its age shows in the stripped-down combat and menu-heavy exploration. Come for a curious 1987 Square oddity with Egyptian tombs, demons, and puzzle-minded adventuring; stay only if you can enjoy making deliberate choices through a first-person command menu rather than expecting a deep battle system.

Platform: NES

Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first stretch puts you in the right frame of mind quickly: this is not a game about charging from battle to battle, but about poking at an ancient-world mystery one menu command at a time. You move, look, take, and use through straightforward commands, so progress comes from noticing what a location might be hiding and trying the item that makes sense. If you enjoy the patient rhythm of early text-and-menu adventures, the format has a certain directness.

The RPG side is deliberately thin. Battles are turn-based interruptions where you choose to attack, use an item, or flee, and that limited choice means they are unlikely to carry the game on their own. Experience raises Daisuke’s maximum HP, while your offensive and defensive strength comes from the best weapon and armor you have found. That makes exploration materially important: a new piece of gear is not just treasure, but your real route to becoming tougher.

There is a useful tension in that setup. You are searching tombs and temples for answers, but thieves and demons keep the trip from becoming a purely leisurely scavenger hunt. Still, frustration can set in if you want flexible character builds or tactical turn-based combat; neither is the point here. Treat combat as pressure around the adventure rather than its centerpiece, and the game’s hybrid structure makes much more sense.

Graphics

The game uses a first-person adventure viewpoint, placing your attention on the places you inspect and the choices in the command menu. Ancient Egyptian tombs, temples, Alexandria, thieves, and demons give its journey a pleasingly specific pulp-fantasy frame rather than a generic dungeon crawl.

Story

There is real momentum to the premise. Daisuke Kusano arrives to spend his summer with his archaeologist father, only for demons to abduct him as part of an ancient curse. It is a clean personal stake, and it gives the search for Cleopatra’s treasure more urgency than a simple expedition for riches.

The Nile-spanning route is a good fit for an adventure game because every tomb and temple can feel like another lead in a larger archaeological chase. The Tear of Isis is more than a named prize: it is the object Daisuke needs to dispel the evil spirits and rescue his father, keeping the objective clear even as the journey moves through dangers and puzzles.

Expect the tone to lean toward supernatural Egyptian adventure: curses, demons, relics, and ruins rather than a historical simulation. That is a sensible choice. The father-and-son setup gives the otherwise grand mythic material a human reason to matter, and the treasure hunt has a proper destination instead of feeling like aimless sightseeing.

Overall Experience

Cleopatra no Mahō is an appealingly unusual early Square game because it asks you to think like an adventurer first and a fighter second. Its strongest idea is the combination of a menu-driven first-person investigation with just enough RPG progression to make discoveries and equipment feel consequential.

You should give it a chance if old Japanese adventure games sound inviting, especially if you prefer examining a location and testing inventory logic over optimizing a party or mastering elaborate combat systems. The ancient Egypt setting also helps it stand apart: following a cursed trail through Nile-side tombs and temples is a far more memorable backdrop than the genre’s usual fantasy roads.

The trade-off is plain. Combat offers very little tactical variety, and leveling only increasing maximum HP may disappoint you if you want a robust sense of growth. But if you meet it on its own terms, the focused quest to recover the Tear of Isis and free Daisuke’s father has the kind of strange, compact charm that makes digging into older games worthwhile. For background on the game’s history and release, see this Cleopatra no Mahō reference.