Illusion of Gaia - presumably Soul Blazer's follow-up, set aside the town-building elements and opted for a linear, story-heavy action-adventure. This new approach awards stat boosts upon defeating monster rooms rather than hub progress, with unlockable special attacks serving as tools. But it's hard not to be reminded of Seiken Densetsu (and in particular its sequel, released a few months before IoG) while playing this Zelda/RPG hybrid: Unlike SD2, they aren't afraid to dabble in puzzles (best represented by its dedicated gimmick rooms). Unlike SD2, they can graft Zelda's clever solutions to the unique scenarios of JRPGs, and unlike SD2, combat's variety doesn't hinge on weapon types & magic (offering transformations, beat-em-up-esque collisions and follow-up strikes instead). They also compare favorably in regards to characters, dungeon designs + aesthetics, storytelling (whose emphasis, themes and quality were rare among action games at the time) and animations, losing only when it comes to battles (that turned to LoZ-grade poking with a few add-ons). If the RPG integration feels more cinematic than functional, and they've yet to learn how to balance boss fights, this game succeeds at recreating Final Fantasy Adventure from another - more narrative-driven and puzzle-y angle.
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Beautiful game. I beat it a couple years ago and frankly, I can't remember shit of the story. It's the usual sentimental inter-galactic transcendental non-sense that Enix usually puts out, but it works really well this time, linking the plot to those crazy locations. The graphics are superb, the gameplay is simple and effective, and the music is absolutely beautiful. I used to sleep on the savescreen at night because the song was just so soothing. That vampire boss is bullshit hard but the rest of the game is fairly easy, I actually beat the final boss first try without really breaking a sweat. Still, I highly recommend it !
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I guess it's not fair to criticize the story too much since this game's localization is notoriously awful, but the narrative really seemed like kind of a mess. The pacing was all over the place, and it felt like it was just throwing out loads of unrelated concepts without taking any time to dwell on or explore any of them. Normally I'd cut it some more slack, but considering how strictly linear this is and just how long some of the cutscenes go on, it's clearly trying to get you to pay close attention to the storytelling. That said, the core gameplay is really satisfying, there's a whole lot of visual flair, and the dungeon design is solid (the sky garden in particular was an absolute blast to explore). Kind of a mixed bag really, though since it's on the short side I'd be more than willing to play through it again if somebody ever puts out a retranslation patch.
the one thing i really remember from this game was the death of hamlet, which made me burst out laughing when it happened. mostly good, but definitely some extremely stupid moments in this one too