Incantation

released on Dec 01, 1996

The player controls a young wizard who has to complete several levels. Enemies are defeated by using different ranged spells that can be found throughout the levels, with different firing patterns and power. Some levels require players to pick up a certain amount of items while other have a boss battle.


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Playing Through My Evercade Collection Part 4: Interplay Collection 1

Its not a horrible game by any means but its also just not very interesting either. While some of the spite work certainly is pretty, its quite clear early on that the game is pretty much running on empty with very little going on in the way of level design and progression.

You're basically just hurled into the game full force without any explanation or cut-scene to accompany anything, the enemies are rather plain, the levels are cute but nothing interesting and by the time bosses start repeating themselves, mentally you'll have checked out a little.

North America and Europe did not have many noteworthy SNES releases after the introduction of the PlayStation. There's a few for sure, there's the Kirby games and there's Super Mario RPG, maybe in another timeline we got Star Fox 2 at its intended release date. But mostly, a lot of its final years are just cheaper games to get something out on store shelves quicker. It's a bizarre change after the absolutely insane standard in 1993-95, one that didn't really seem to affect the console's run over in Japan.

Incantation is one such game, a Titus-developed platformer with zero meat on its bones, bosses you'll encounter for three stages in a row, and a rather dull aesthetic. There's really nothing to it, and really just paves the way for more interesting discussions about the decline of the SNES in western regions.

There is a very lousy ending though that I thought was really funny, where the boss dies before its health is fully depleted and it jumpcuts to this ugly ass endscreen and locks itself up. I looked through multiple longplays to see if this was some dumb joke or false ending or something, but they all ended like this. Tittus had no fucking idea what to do there and it's amusing how blatant it is. Rushed out for a quick buck.