Review: Soul Blazer

In the early days of the Super Nintendo, most of Enix’s best games came from sub-development studios. The best of these developers was Quintet, who developed Soul Blazer, the first game of the Creation trilogy, in 1992.

Quintet was the studio behind other famous titles like Actraiser, Actraiser 2 and the other Creation trilogy games, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma. Looking at what they developed, you could say Quintet’s theme was, with a nod to Mark Hamill, “religion’s greatest hits.”

Years ago, King Magridd of the Freil Empire made a pact with a great demon called Deathtoll. Magridd was a greedy and corrupt ruler who was obsessed with money. Deathtoll offered him a gold piece for each soul in his empire.

Magridd, eager to comply, forced Dr. Leo to come to his capital and build a new machine. Leo was a kind inventor who could understand machines’ feelings and wanted to build ones that improve everyone’s lives, not destroy them.

But the new machine Magridd desired would not improve anyone’s life. Instead, it would be used to open a door to the World of Evil where Deathtoll lived. The world fell into ruin and all people were sealed away while monsters roamed the land.

God, or as Nintendo of America calls him, “The Master,” looked down on the world and was not pleased. He calls on you, one of his angels, to go down to the human world, release the people and destroy Deathtoll.

If the plot sounds similar, it may be because of its incredibly similarity to Actraiser. However, this game now has a linear storyline, people who actually matter, and gameplay that is an action-RPG, not just an action game.

You can tell the game was published under an Enix label by the familiar cast of characters. Yes, expect to see a dog named Turbo and a nameless woman “removing a speck of dust” from a nameless man’s “eye.”

One downfall to the plot in this game is its undeveloped love story between yourself and Dr. Leo’s daughter, Lisa. Maybe it’s because Soul Blazer focuses more on action than later games in the Creation series did, or maybe it’s because you spend far less time with Lisa than Will does with Kara (Illusion of Gaia) or Ark does with Elle (Terranigma).

The romance element was incredibly weak at best, which really cut into the game’s potential. It plays a predominant role in Magridd Castle and in the entire ending of the game, but because of poor development, what could otherwise be powerful scenes feel rather plain.

Where the game shines is in its message. People who misuse technology bring about the downfall of their civilization, and everything apparently has souls–from the talking rock to the doll to the door frame. Yes, the door frame.

For anyone with a hippy streak, this concept may be just the kind of thing to burn hash, meditate and burn some more hash about for a week or two.

Items are fairly well structured in the game. There are 7 areas and 8 weapons, armour and spells your character can acquire. All of them will be needed in some way to finish the game.

Each piece of equipment has a unique property that makes it necessary. For example, the Bubble Armor will give you a shield to survive underwater without taking damage. Elemental Armor will allow you to walk on spikes and other traps without taking damage. The Zantetsu Sword will let you destroy metal enemies. The Spirit Sword will let you destroy ghostly enemies.

The spells are, unfortunately, not as useful as they should be. Powerful yet difficult to obtain magic like Tornado ends up having too limited a range to be useful, and Magic Flair, which makes your orbiting spirit damage stuff, burns Gems too fast to be useful.

The most useful spells are Light Arrow and Phoenix. Light Arrow is essentially the same as Flame Ball, your first spell, but is capable of shooting in 4 directions. The Phoenix only costs 2 Gems to cast, works like your regular attack, does massive damage and is your only way to defeating Deathtoll.

There’s a huge list of items to find in the game–unfortunately most of them end up being fairly irrelevant to the game aside from a single use. Of course, if you’ve ever played an RPG this is nothing new.

However, Soul Blazer does have one cool item you use throughout the whole game: the Dream Rod. The Dream Rod can be placed on sleeping character to enter their dream world. Sometimes you can use their dream world to open new paths or get clues.

There’s a lot for players to search out, like the Master’s Emblem series of items. Anyone who can track them all down is awarded a bell that removes the cost of casting magic. Unfortunately by the time you can get this bell, you’ll be so close to the end of the game as to never be able to use up all your Gems casting spells.

Difficulty for the game is average at best. Killing all available monster lairs is almost enough to keep the hero at an appropriate level. You only need to be level 24 to beat the game.

The monsters come from “Monster Lairs,” a tile in the dungeon that will continually cough up monsters. Once you have defeated all monsters in a Monster Lair, the tile turns green. Stepping on it will unseal a villager, a building or open a new path in the current dungeon.

Most monsters and bosses follow extremely easy, predictable patterns. Deathtoll can be a little tricky your first time or two, but he’s certainly tougher than some other action-RPG bosses.

The soundtrack was produced by Yukihide Takekawa and Kazz Tomaya. I have never heard of either of these men working on any other video game’s soundtrack, which makes me almost wonder if their names were romanized incorrectly.

Regardless of what other work they may or may not have done, Soul Blazer boasts one of the best soundtracks on the SNES with very different styled themes for each area of the game. Unquestionably, the best song is Koibito no Inaiyoru, a song of lost love heard only once in the game.

But the more regularly played music is excellent too. The Shrine of the Master sounds very similar to the religious temples in Battle of Olympus, Temple of Light has a strong jungle-like beat totally fitting the setting where it is used, Lonely Town is another nice melody reflecting a bit of the quaintness of the empty towns the hero faces when his journey begins.

Probably the worst song in the game is the World of Evil–this song does not sound remotely evil or scary.

Overall, Soul Blazer proves to be a pretty solid game for its time. Its story is nowhere near as strong as later games in the series, but the gameplay and music make up for it. For the studio’s first ever action-RPG, it was an excellent attempt.

Just make sure if you play, you wait a minute after the credits stop scrolling. The game isn’t over yet!