Illusion of Gaia

Illusion of Gaia is a game I’ve attempted to start playing a few times but never really could get myself to play very far into it. This game was developed by Quintet as the second part of the Soul Blazer series which includes Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma. I’ve heard a lot of great things about Quintet’s games, including ActRaiser, but I’ve never given any of them a proper play through until now. So the question remains of why I couldn’t get stuck into this game and give it a proper play through.

Illusion of Gaia follows the main character, Will, and his friends as they travel the world and collect ancient artifacts known as Mystic Statues. While Will’s friends are almost always present as they skip from town to town, they really don’t do much other than exist. Where in a traditional RPG friends will be brought along to aid the main character, Will’s friends aid him very little, if at all. I’m not sure why they’re even a part of this game, beyond pushing the narrative forward in some ways.

This game has a lot of the hallmarks found in other good SNES RPGs, but it’s still missing things that would normally draw me in. The graphics are good, the colors are bright and everything about this game seems right, but the game feels a bit unorthodox to me. Perhaps a lot of aspects some people would call tedious I find desirable, when it comes to an RPG. Things such as weapons and armor are gone. Traveling from town to town and even backtracking to towns over and over again to unlock something it gone. Spells, leveling up and epic boss battles are all gone.

I can forgive Final Fantasy II’s (the real FF2, not the US version) leveling system, but in Illusion of Gaia it feels too linear. The game seems to hold your hand and say here you go, this is what you wanted because I say so. I guess since the game centers around kids the weapons and armor aspect might feel odd. Maybe. Spells could have been useful though, but not even a hint is made about them here. The one thing that really kind of ruins this game for me is the lack of a leveling system. There are a finite amount of things to kill in each given section and once they are all dead you earn a small upgrade in health, defense or offense. This is the only way you can grow stronger in this game, and it just feels like the game is holding too tightly to the player’s hand. I like to grind out levels and make sure I can take down the upcoming boss.

Speaking of bosses, none of them really posed much of a problem. I guess if you make the bosses easy to kill you don’t really need much of a leveling system, but I’ve found it’s more of a think and rethink my strategy type situation rather than brute force. Believe me, thinking and rethinking is a heavily used aspect in this game. It seems a lot of the traditional RPG challenges have been removed, the upgrading your stats system is doled out by the game at its discretion and everything boils down to figuring out a puzzle. Now, I don’t mind puzzles in RPGs, as a matter of fact I think it can be a great aspect of a game if used the right way, but to me Illusion of Gaia seems to strip away everything that makes an RPG an RPG and replaces it with puzzles.

Ok, if I allow myself to free my mind of the frustration brought on by everything that makes this game feel so linear I can say that this game is pretty ok. Like I said the graphics are nice, the controls are responsive and there are some pretty good puzzles, and upgraded attacks too. With as much as I dislike some of the elements of this game I still don’t think it’s as rough around the edges as poor old Lagoon. After a while of playing Illusion of Gaia I kind of accepted it for what it was and got into it. Did I love it? NOPE! Did I enjoy my time playing through it? Kind of. Am I glad I gave it a proper play through? Yes, so I can say I did and I will most likely never play it again. Although, nothing is definite.

This post is lovingly dedicated to the memory of Hamlet and his selfless act of giving his bacon for peace. Oink oink little Hamlet, Oink oink!

Posted November 1st, 2021

Eternal Eyes

In the age of Pokemon’s success everyone was looking for their slice of the pie. While Hudson Soft and Atlas were busy publishing Robopon to try and take down Game Freak’s behemoth other companies were trying to catch the trend curve and see where they might fit in. Sun Corporation quietly sat back and when they finally saw their opening they published their attempt to seize the moment with Eternal Eyes.

The game follows the life of Luke, a descendant of the Cucurotheatro who possessed crimson eyes. The Cucurotheatro were known as magical puppet masters, also possessing the ability to detect jewels which could turn blank magical puppets into creatures used to aid them in battle. These magical puppets were used long ago in The War of the Goddess to seal away the Goddess of Destruction and free humanity from her evil clutches. After the war, the Cucurotheatro seemingly disappeared from existence without explanation. Now that some are seeking to free the Goddess of Destruction it is up to Luke to learn the abilities of his ancestors and help retain the peace and freedom of the world.

Eternal Eyes is a turn-based, tactical RPG much like Final Fantasy Tactics, but with the main mechanic of the game being very Pokemonish to see if they could capitalize on two already successful franchises at once. The ultimate goal being to create a party of magical puppets, aka Mappemon, (*sigh* yes, seriously..) and defeat those who wish to free the evil Goddess of Destruction. Throughout many different battles and dungeons you’ll collect blank puppets and jewels, which can be combined together to create different types of puppet monsters. These monsters can also be evolved and learn new spells with the jewels collected.

While the Pokemon aspect feels weak to me, it’s painfully obvious Sun Corporation went heavy into the tactical side for this one. In fact, I think if they had focused more on the tactical, turn based RPG elements and removed the puppet aspect entirely this game would probably be more highly regarded. I’m not sure I could see Eternal Eyes ever being able to match that of FF Tactics, but even as it stands Eternal Eyes is a fully playable game, and it’s not that bad, so it might have come close.

The story is a bit cheesy, but I guess it fits the needs of the game and sets up a bit of backstory, although I’m not the kind of person who plays a game strictly because of its story. The graphics are where I feel this game did something right. What drew me into this game was the fact that the graphics reminded me of some of the MMORPGs I played on PC at the time. Replaying Eternal Eyes now, the graphics are still pretty good for a PS1 game. The game play isn’t overly exciting but it does feel rewarding to beat monsters as well as collect and create your own puppets. Again, if Sun Corporation had made this game maybe even just 99.9% tactical RPG I feel this game would have been more highly regarded, but the puppet aspect just makes this game feel like a Pokemon clone that never quite hit the mark.

Posted June 19th, 2020

Darkstone Review

In the late 90’s and early 2000’s RPGs were pouring onto the gaming market at an amazing rate. The SNES boom of RPGs was over and the original Sony Playstation had taken that crown, offering developers more space to create more epic adventures. The RPG market was rife with great titles such as Breath of Fire III and IV, Dragon Quest VII, an endless supply of Final Fantasies and FF remasters, Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Vandal Hearts, the start of the Suikoden series, Azure Dreams, The Legend of Dragoon, the list could go on nearly forever.

Among the sea of those memorable RPGs there was one by the name of Darkstone (Darkstone: Evil Reigns everywhere else in the world) that crept into the ranks and sat there, quietly and seemingly became forgotten without much notice at all. Released for both the PC and Playstation, Darkstone is considered an Action Adventure RPG, but I personally feel it adds some quality dungeon crawling into the mix as well.

In Darkstone you’ll be choosing one of four classes, which offer both male and female avatars, to seek out and collect the seven crystals which will form the Time Orb to defeat the evil Lord Draak, who has just awoken from a previous attempt to snuff out his existence. Since Lord Draak is now awake many of his minions inhabit the world of Uma now, bringing chaos and despair to many across the lands. Yeah, the story sounds cheesy, but every good RPG needs something to get players motivated.

Choose your class, and gender, name your character and begin the adventure! You’ll start out in the main town where you can learn spells, buy, sell, repair and even upgrade equipment and do all the normal things RPGs offer. The first thing you may notice is there are only three camera angles and none of them are particularly good, but that’s just the way many games were back in that era, so it’s not just this game it was just ignorance of the technology. Also, remember when I said you can upgrade equipment? Well there are limits to that, because the more powerful any given piece of equipment becomes the weaker it’s durability is, just something to be aware of.

Once you’re ready you’ll exit the town and be welcomed to the Land of Ardyl, in which you’ll begin battling many of Lord Draak’s minions, both above ground and while adventuring deep into loot filled dungeons. As you kill, you’ll gain experience and sometimes you’ll obtain loot such as articles of armor and weapons, potions, food, gold among other items. Some of this loot will need to be taken back to town and be identified by Madame Irma before it’s full potential is revealed. Once you’ve obtained enough experience you’ll gain a new level and be allowed to set skill points into four different attributes: Strength, Health, Magic and Agility.

To keep your adventures going you can purchase potions to replenish your health and your magic, as well as spells to regain health. Should you get into a battle and run out of magic or potions to keep yourself alive, don’t worry, you’ll just respawn minus some of your items and durability of your equipment. In Darkstone death is not the end, but it is a bit frustrating.

Some things I find surprising about Darkstone are, firstly, that the maps seem to be fairly good sizes and, since this is the beginning of disc based video games, the loading times that do exist don’t seem to take all that long. Also there is a rest feature, which can only be used when minions are not around, that allows you to recuperate health and magic. One of my favorite features is the fast travel system that allows you to fast travel to the entrance of places you’ve previously visited, making getting around much quicker and easier.

While not the most complex RPG, Darkstone is still quite an enjoyable RPG. There are plenty of dungeons and quests to do, but it may feel a bit much of the same eventually, it really depends on the person playing. My only real complaint would be how I felt the UI was a bit clunky until I became more familiar with it. Almost immediately after booting up my nearly 16 year old saves for this game the nostalgia came rushing back. I ended up playing for quite some time before I remembered I needed to buckle down and start writing the review. Darkstone is just a good old RPG that not many people seem to have tried.

Posted July 23rd, 2018

Lagoon for the SNES

LagoonLagoon is an RPG for the SNES, in much the same ilk of Ys, Willow and Crystalis, although much more basic. Lagoon was published by Kemco, a company mostly known for giving us the Top Gear series and a whole lot of Game Boy games, only a few of which slightly resemble RPGs. So what could we expect from a company who published a little bit of everything?

Now I need to be perfectly honest, when I started playing the game for this article I fully expected to make a gleaming review to garner some respect for this game, thinking it had been judged too harshly. I can honestly say that after playing this game, up to the final bosses, I have nothing, even remotely, to praise about this game what so ever. Ok, so the game isn’t complete trash, but it fails on nearly every level it tried to clone from the games it so shamelessly copies!

A comparison of how Ys (SMS) starts, and how Lagoon starts.

A comparison of how Ys (SMS) starts, and how Lagoon starts.

Speaking of levels lets begin there; what is an RPG without a robust leveling system? In Lagoon you’re limited to 35, and although that is over twice the levels in both Crystalis and Willow, there is absolutely no reward, fanfare, or any notification at all for gaining new levels. In almost every other RPG you’re well aware when you’ve obtained a new level, no matter how deep into grinding you may be. With Lagoon levels nearly fly past, without even a hint that you’re gaining them, forcing you to open the menu to check which level you’re currently on.

Another thing Lagoon has in common with Crystalis and Willow is the armor and weapons scheme. You’ll only need to purchase your first set of armor, the rest of the equipment to see you through the game is sprawled out within the caves you’ll be exploring to advance through the pretty abysmal and boringly stock story. Which only has you going back and forth between places you’ve already been a few times, making this game feel entirely too linear for its own good.

Although the armor is setup to be found, once you find them you may be surprised at the detail of actually changing the armor on the main character sprite. Overall the armor and shields look good and are quite useful, but the weapons only get mildly stronger as you progress. Even though the weapons get stronger for some reason they never bothered to change it on the sprite, so for the whole of the game you look as if you’re swinging a dagger, or pocket knife, and the targeting system makes it feel that way too!

One thing I disliked about the two games I keep name dropping because this game so clearly copied them, was the hit detection system, but after a few levels I found the flow of how to center my attack and become more successful, without taking a heap of damage. Not the case with Lagoon, hitting enemies sometimes feels the equivalent of threading a needle while your hands are on fire, it’s virtually impossible! On normal enemies placed around the game to help you level up this may be fine, but it’s an exercise in frustration when it comes to a boss fight.

Not a bad Boss design, just not much fun to kill.

Not a bad Boss design, just not much fun to kill.

Boss fights are strewn about to help push the story forward, again pretty standard RPG fare, but only require a slight bit of strategy, if any. But, and I can’t stress this enough, you need to hit a certain point or points on a massive boss with your equivalent of a pen knife, possibly leading to many frustrating attempts. Although sometimes the poorly thought out system can play extremely well in your favor, as I’ve sometimes walked straight into bosses and found the hot spot right away and did nothing more than button mash until they were defeated, taking little to no damage at all.

The first boss, learn from the frustration of this one, it doesn't get any more fun.

The first boss, learn from the frustration of this one, it doesn’t get any more fun.

The linear feel is broken up by a handful of caves, castles and other places you need to go through to level up, find essential items/armor and to fight the boss, but unlike any other RPG I’ve played Lagoon leaves you in the dark as to what floor you’re on once you’re inside. You go through door ways and passages and you’re never fully aware if you’ve gone up or down, in a circle or just through a door into another part of the building on the same floor. As I previously stated you’ll need to search these winding corridors to find the, very few, items you’ll need to progress, but when you do find them you’ll be presented with an obnoxiously long fanfare. They can put one in for finding an herb but not for gaining a level, that’s well thought out programming!

Yet another thing Lagoon has in common with Crystalis is a small amount of platforming, requiring you to jump from area to area, or else you fall to your death, Game Over! Which is turned into quite the task by the poorly thought out centering system. The main character will almost walk off the screen in any directly, leaving you unsure of what is along the next step. It could be something you need to kill, or it could be a pitfall that will kill you and take you to the Continue or End screen.

Falling to his death.

Nasir falling to his death.

Now we get into Ys territory with the ability to save virtually anywhere, expect boss rooms, so if you’ve planned out your save strategy well enough, once that dreaded Continue screen pops up you’ll be able to restart exactly where you last saved. This can be both handy and harmful as you can save almost anywhere, as often as you like, and progress through the game with a frequent save plan. But since the game tends to close things off behind you, in that linear fashion, I also assume if you miss an item and save down the road you may be screwed!

Again, you find almost every item you will need along your journey, but Lagoon does have a currency system. Monsters will drop small amounts of currency, by which I mean you just magically obtain it like exp, once they’ve been killed unless you kill them with magic, which I will get to in a second. The only real item that interested me was a Shiny Ball which speeds up your recovery on HP and MP, but by the time you’ve saved up the 10,000 coins you can’t go back to buy it, and its only a single use!

What would an RPG be without magic? Well Lagoon would probably be much better off as you can only use it on normal enemies and never in a boss fight! You only obtain magic through a variety of crystals and staves, which you can mix and match to create different spell effects. Not an original feature, but none the less the most creative feature in Lagoon.

And finally I’ve reached one of the most important aspects of all RPGs, your HP and MP. This is handled in the exact same way as Ys, you have two long bars across the bottom of the screen, both bars indicate how much HP you and your foes currently have, respectively. Your HP and MP will slowly refill as you sit still, you can’t be moving at all for them to refill, but in some key areas they will both refill rather quickly.

Game Over, well thankfully the suffering is over!

Game Over, well thankfully the suffering is over!

I originally planned to compare Lagoon to the games I name dropped oh so heavily in this review to highlight its strong points, but by the end of playing through the game I felt it mostly highlighted just how poorly they dismantled those games and half baked a game that isn’t as good as any of the games it tried to become. On a scale of 1 to 10 replay ability is a solid 0, but I fear Kemco never cared as they already conned people out of their money. I always try to keep my reviews positive, but I can’t for every game and as much as I wished, hoped and tried to like Lagoon for what it is, I simply can’t!

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Posted February 12th, 2013

Willow for the NES

Willow was a 1988 film starring Warwick Davis and Val Kilmer, written, in part, by George Lucas and directed by Ron Howard, so did it’s video game counterpart suffer the same fate as many other movie to NES titles? Well fans seemingly had luck on their side as the job went to Capcom, the company who brought us the Mega Man series, so it seemed as though everything had fallen into perfect order. But would Capcom be able to translate the story of the movie into an enjoyable game, or slaughter it instead?

In both cases the main character, Willow, must overcome many perils to protect a baby who is destined to grow up and bring peace to the lands, which are currently ruled by the evil Queen Bavmorda. Willow treks a long way meeting many dangers along his journey, yet he always surpasses them with help from acquaintances. The video game follows it’s movie counterpart closer than many other NES games did and does a really good job of leaving the main plot in tact, while taking it’s own liberties to make the game fun.

The game play is action/adventure and you may immediately find yourself comparing it to The Legend of Zelda. Starting off with simplistic analysis of the sound and animation of entering/exiting dungeons and caves, which are highly reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda. But most notably the maps are cut into sections and once you go any of four directions the screen will scroll in that direction, again, much like The Legend of Zelda.

Yet this game also has a heap of Crystalis thrown in with it’s simplistic and strictly “hunt down” weapon selection, they’re more a part of the story so there are no stores to sell you weapons nor armor. The game also uses a leveling system much like Crystalis, being that there are only 16 levels. With such few levels spread out between 0 and 99,999 exp, you’ll find yourself doing quite a bit of grinding, rather than gaining experience along the journey.

You would think that such a leveling system would be well backed by a plethora of monsters to sustain the need to gather such necessary exp to fight the handful of boss battles, and this is true, but also not. I found that sometimes monsters won’t respawn in a section when they’re suppose to, while in other sections monster will always spawn. I’ve also found sometimes there are key points that you need to walk over to cause the spawn event.

As I hinted to early all items within the game are merely collectables, which break down into: weapons, shields, magic and items, all of which are key ingredients to survival and progressing through the game. In some cases items can easily be completely passed over while trying to progress through the game. Sometimes you will even find yourself doing the normal RPG backtracking to talk to a few NPCs to unlock obtaining a certain item.

But sadly Willow is plagued with a faulty, at best, save system, using passwords instead of a battery backup, which causes you to start at the last heal point, on the exact amount of exp it took to obtain your last level, without anything equipped. This means any further progress you made on the trek or exp toward a level, regardless of whether you’ve entered the password or hit continue, have now been voided back to a certain state, yet all items will be retained. This disjointed style of game play is so inhibiting and frustrating that I literally took a year away from the game, before finishing it to a point where I felt I could justify a full review on it.

I loved Willow the movie, I love both games this one reminds me of, and I also enjoyed almost anything Capcom put out on the NES, but Willow falls short (pun NOT intended). Maybe that all boils down to Capcom’s lack of experience (pun intended!) with making RPGS, yes they made a few but Capcom isn’t well known for them. Even so, are we to believe that Capcom’s version of Willow was possibly the best movie to NES adaptation? I would say yes, because it could have been dreadfully worse!

Posted November 4th, 2012

Destiny of an Emperor

Destiny of an Emperor is a fairly obscure NES RPG by Capcom that never received much in the way of accolades, but is one I always thought should be in any serious old-school RPG collection! The story is based on the ancient Chinese epic “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” (with quite a bit of liberty taken, I might add), which follows Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, and Guan Yu, and tells of the unification of the Han Dynasty. Many characters should be familiar to anyone who has played the Koei “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” games or the “Dynasty Warrior” games. Unlike those games however, this is a turn-based RPG similar in gameplay to the Final Fantasy / Dragon Warrior series, but has some fairly unique elements I’ve never seen anywhere else.

Your party is comprised of “characters” that are actually Generals that command large armies. You can have 5 Generals in your front line, and 2 more Generals as support/backup. Each General is actually played much like a normal RPG character however, and the “armies” they command are really just treated as hit points. You can buy weapons and armor for your armies, but they are equipped like normal RPG equipment, it is just assumed that the General’s entire army is now equipped with that kind of gear. It takes a little suspension of disbelief, but once you get past that and the occasional grinding, it is a thoroughly enjoyable, and at times challenging game. Just don’t forget to talk to everyone (as usual) and definitely bring along plenty of rations!!

A unique aspect of this game is that you can recruit 98% of the enemy Generals you will ever fight! The most powerful Generals are usually guarding towns and castles (virtually all towns and castles have an army defending them when you first arrive), but can also be found in smaller armies roving the local countryside. After you face a particularly nasty castle fight, you can usually take solace in the fact that most, if not all, of the guys you just barely beat up can now be added to your own team! This is also quite necessary through much of the game, because as you level, most Generals don’t get any stronger (ie. their armies don’t get any bigger). You start out with a couple of Generals that will grow as you level, but the vast majority won’t. You’ll eventually find a few more Generals that grow (like the 5 Tigers! Grrr!!), but until then, adding new, more powerful Generals from newer areas to your team is essential for success. An interesting aspect of this system is that it has a rather ‘Pokemon’ feel to it, and it can be very easy to get the “Gotta catch’em all” fever!! After a battle, some ask for money, some ask for a Steed, and some refuse outright, but with work you can ‘catch’ nearly anyone! Steeds are great later on when Generals ask for several thousand gold, or they’ll take a 200g horse instead! Seriously? I guess ‘I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’ (har har har!)

The “magic” system in this game is quite unique as well. I put magic in quotes because it is actually referred to as “Tactics” and requires a designated Tactician. This is typically one of the 2 support characters (or the last General in the battle line-up if you only have 5 or fewer Generals in your traveling team), and has to be selected by the player. Once a character is designated as the Tactician, any Tactics that they have learned can be used by any of your fighting Generals, but you only have a limited number of Tactics Points (TP), which is determined by your army’s level. Different Generals make better Tacticians than others, having better and/or different Tactics and higher Intellect. Tactics can have a variety of effects, from causing Fire or Flood damage, to healing , to increasing combat strength  or durability . Like I said, “magic”! The names are all in Chinese though, so you’re gonna need to bust out the instruction manual or look up a walkthrough to understand which Tactics do what, but there aren’t too many, so it’s not too bad.

Since the Tactic names are jibberish to most, I made a list with effects and attempted my own translations (made by playing around with Google Translate for a while :p):

    Fire Tactics:

  • Lian Huo (Year of Fire) – Weak Fire attack, one enemy.
  • Ye Huo (Wildfire) – Slightly stronger Fire attack, one enemy.
  • Yan Re (Scorching Heat) – Medium Fire attack, all enemies.
  • Da Re (Great Heat) – Strong Fire attack, one enemy.
  • Huo Shen (God of Fire) – Massive Fire attack, all enemies.
    Water Tactics:

  • Shui Tu (Water Plan) – Weak Water attack, one enemy.
  • Shui Xing (Water Model) – Slightly stronger Water attack, one enemy.
  • Shui Lei (Water Category (?)) – Medium Water attack, one enemy.
  • Hong Shui (Flood or Red Water) – Strong Water attack, all enemies.
  • Shui Long (Water Dragon) – Devastating Water attack, all enemies.
    Healing Tactics:

  • Chi Xin (Novice Sustainment) – Weak healing, one ally.
  • Tong Xian (Expert Thread) – Better healing, one ally.
  • Yin Xian (Silver Thread) – Good healing, all allies.
  • Wan Fu (Thousand Blessings) – Complete healing, one ally.
  • Jin Xian (Golden Thread) – Very strong healing, all allies.
    Defensive Tactics:

  • Ji Rou (Strong Flesh) – Halves the damage received from all physical attacks.
  • Wuo Jian* (Partial Fire) – Halves the damage received from Fire Tactics.
    * – I think Wuo Jian was suppose to be Huo Jian. Wuo makes absolutely no sense here.
  • Shui Jian (Partial Water) – Halves the damage received from Water Tactics.
  • Ce Mian (Avoid Tactics) – Prevents all enemy Tactics from working.
  • Ji Mian (Avoid Strength) – Prevents enemy’s physical attacks from doing damage.
    Miscellaneous Tactics:

  • Cheng Nei (Inside Castle) – Forts add bonuses to the defenders, this nullifies that.
  • Yi Xin (Newly Alone) – Causes enemy to doubt allies, does nothing for a while.
  • Li Jian (Divided Plum (?)) – Causes enemy to start attacking his allies for a while.
  • Qi Shou (Timely Hand) – Increases target officer’s Agility, letting him act sooner.
  • Jie Ce (Expire Tactics) – Disables the effects of any Tactics the enemy has used.
  • An Sha (Assassinate) – Instantly kills target by cutting off the officer’s head.
  • Bei Ji (Strength of the North) – Doubles power of both attacks and Fire/Water Tactics.
  • Fu Bing (Fortunate Defect (?)) – Get in an extra attack.
  • Tui Lu (Route of Retreat) – Retreat from battle.
  • Gui Huan (Return) – Retreat from battle and go to Lui Bei’s current castle.

As the game progresses, you find yourself increasingly caught up in the middle of a growing political and military struggle to control different areas of ancient China (Shu, Wu, and Wei). Eventually, your role becomes saving it all from the would-be “Dragon” Emperor and unite all of China under the Han Dynasty (ie. yourself). Pretty ambitious if you ask me! There is plenty of intrigue along the way: dictators overthrown, alliances made and broken, betrayal… and Lu Bu. Good grief! Lu Bu must be Chinese for “drama”!!

There is a sequel to this game that was never released outside of Japan (Destiny of an Emperor 2). It re-tells the same set of events, but it is mixed up quite a bit with newer features, brand new maps, and tries to tell the story in a more dramatic way, with more specific character interactions. You could probably compare DoaE 1 and 2 to Dragon Warrior 3 and 4, as far as the story-telling quality is concerned. To play through the sequal though, you’ll need to find a translated version. That is unless you know Japanese and can find the original cart, of course!

Posted May 17th, 2011

Soul Blazer

Ever wished that there was a game out there that crossed both the action and town building elements of Actraiser in a top-down action game like Zelda or Illusion of Gaia? If you missed it, your wish was granted back in 1992 with the release of “Soul Blazer” by Enix for the Super Nintendo. Published by Enix, Quintet was actually the company that developed it, the same people behind Actraiser. Given the similarities between the two, many people think of Soul Blazer as the true “Actraiser 2”. Where Actraiser was half side-scroller, half city-builder, Soul Blazer blends these 2 elements much more directly into one top-down Zelda-esque action RPG platform. The gameplay is quite similar in style to Zelda or Crystalis (top-down action) with a semi-grid style map (finer than “full square”, it’s more like “1/4 square”). It certainly leans towards more RPG elements however, as interaction with others and the story is somewhat important to the game’s progression. The story isn’t nearly of Final Fantasy uberness or depth, but is a little stripped down, easily understandable, and adds a nice touch and mood.

In this game, all living creatures in the world have been imprisoned by the demonlord Deathtoll, and you are an angel in human form sent by “The Master” (God, Gaia most likely) to release all creatures, large and small, from his clutches. You have the power to communicate with all living creatures, which is good because you will have to free not only humans, but all manner of woodland critters, sea critters, plants, and even sentient machines! You do this by journeying into dungeons (and in some cases dreams, paintings, models, machines, etc.) and defeating enemies and sealing their “Lairs” (Hello, Actraiser!). You must destroy the enemies that each Lair spawns, and when it runs out, you can step on it to seal it. Each Lair you seal (there are a lot of them!) will release a resident of the town near whichever area you are freeing, and will spontaneously rebuild parts of the town as well. In this way, you rebuild the world, and as you do, the residents will reward you with advice, gear, or insight into how everything fell apart. There are many points where the only way to advance in the dungeon is to free a specific individual to help you, so frequent trips between town and dungeon are a good idea. When you clear an entire area (with a few exceptions) you will then be able to move on to another part of the world that needs your help.

Throughout the game, you acquire new swords, armors, spells (8 of each), and a variety of unique items to use in battle or to progress. You’ll need them all, since many enemies are only effected by certain attacks, different armors help you survive different conditions/enemies, and most spells, even the early ones, are useful throughout the entire game in different situations. You can only have one weapon, one armor, and one spell equipped at a time though, as well as one of the many extra items, so you must pick carefully depending on your needs. You are also accompanied by a Soul Orb that is the focal point for several Angel spirits that will help you throughout your journey, showing you invisible enemies, secret passages, lighting up the darkness, etc.

This Soul Orb is also where most of your spells are actually cast from. When cast, the spell launches from the Orb in the direction you are facing, which gives an interesting tactical approach to magic. To use a spell, you must have enough “Gems” to cast it. Gems drop from enemies, but in limited amounts, so you can’t just spam spells at everything, and you may need to save them up to kill certain enemies and bosses. As you hoard Gems throughout the game, you can save up enough to use spells quite frequently later in the game, which is nice.

If the gameplay reminds you a little bit of Illusion of Gaia, that is no accident. Soul Blazer is the first installment of a very loose trilogy of games, Illusion of Gaia being the second, and Terranigma (a game that unfortunately never arrived in the US, and hopefully the subject of an upcoming article) being the third. The play style and themes are relatively similar amongst all three games, but with IoG being almost exclusively action oriented. As I said above, some people include Actraiser in this, but there are no solid links between the games, so it’s up to interpretation. I can really feel the heritage from Actraiser in the themes, story, graphics, and more though. I just discovered that the Playstation game “The Granstream Saga” was also created by many of the same Quintet people working under a different name, with the intention of it being a spiritual sequel to Terranigma! I’m gonna have to check that out! In addition, Soul Blazer also feels like quite a gameplay/character system successor to Crystalis in the main action aspect and the equipment system.

Overall, a very fun game for fans of Crystalis, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Actraiser, Illusion of Gaia, etc. The raw action element itself may feel *slightly* slower-paced in some regards, but not by much (and not always!), and is well made up for by the fact you make real progress rather quickly and consistently. On a first play through, the game can take many partial days to complete, but once you’re a pro at it and know everything, it could probably be beaten in a good day or two. There isn’t much grinding needed (or to be done) and progress is pretty smooth, keeping things challenging throughout, but not frustrating. Most bosses are more a matter of strategy than raw survival-of-the-fittest hack’n’slash, You’re not going to be bogged down for 40 hours of grinding/training to be uber-pro with this game, and is a good pickup for a short-medium romp through an action RPG!

Posted March 16th, 2011