Continuing on with the Super Famicom's Quintet trilogy, this was the obvious next choice to play after Soul Blazer. Now this is a game I actually have played some of before, but I only got like a third of the way in and it was a LONG time ago. I'd also heard a lot of things over the years about how much worse the English version was vs. the original Japanese one (in a very standard mood for an Enix-published title), so I was very interested to see what the original version was like. It took me about 12 hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on emulated hardware without abusing save states.

Illusion of Gaia is the story of Temu, a young boy who lives in a coastal town and spends all day hanging out with his buddies. He's always had strange, telekinetic powers, but he's a kid like any other, and as soon as he's able, he's vowed to go out and find his father who disappeared a year ago when he left town to search for the Tower of Babel. After the kingdom's princess flees to his town and hides in his house, he and her become fast friends, and before they know it, the king has imprisoned Temu and they've all started onto a grand adventure to save the world.

In grand Enix fashion, I've heard many times over the years that this is a really poorly translated game in its English release. I've heard it described as outright nonsensical, even. The Japanese version, on the other hand, is actually a surprisingly really well written story. It's a really thoughtfully written tale about growing up, and I really loved how it tackled themes of discrimination (and while not perfect about it, it's a lot better than even a lot of games now get these sorts of things, frankly). Illusion of Gaia is a story very concerned about life, death, and just what you spend the one life you have doing. Life is never a completely pretty thing, and good people do bad things all the time for all sorts of reasons. What sort of life you lead and what you get from it, as well as what you do to others, is what paints this grand tapestry we call life. It's got some similar execution problems to Soul Blazer in how it doesn't always use music as well as it could to set certain scenes, but the story was nonetheless a really excellent one, and it's easily one of my new favorites on the console. It's just a shame it's nowhere remotely as good in the English release ^^;

The gameplay is once again a sort of Zelda-like, but with generally stiffer feeling combat as well as a transformation gimmick. Temu can turn into the dark warrior Freedan at save points in dungeons (and even another transformation much later into the game), and the respective powers of the different transformations are used to solve puzzles in dungeons. The boss and puzzle design isn't quite up to par with something like Link to the Past or other 2D Zelda games, but it still makes for a quite fun action game even if the adventure parts are more centered around the story writing than the exploration in towns and dungeons.

Speaking of which, there are significantly more towns in this game than in the last one, but they're largely for painting scenery and for telling the story. This is still a game with no money system, and you also don't level up with EXP like you did in Soul Blazer. Instead, clearing all of the monsters in a room gets you an upgrade to your max health, your attack power, or your defense power, so there's a hard limit to how great your stats can get in this game. There being no money also means that there's a hard limit to how many healing items you can get, and I've heard many a tale of how important it is to save your healing herbs in the English version to be able to deal with the harder bosses (which are MUCH harder in that version than in this one). The Japanese version, at least, had quite a nice difficulty curve to it, and while it's a bit harder than Soul Blazer and has no option to grind for power (though you can grind for extra lives, for whatever that's worth), this version should be eminently completable, especially for people familiar with the genre.

The presentation here is once again very good. The graphics are very pretty, and each location looks very distinct. NPCs and monsters are also very expressive and cool looking respectively, and the UI on top of the screen that shows monster and boss health is super appreciated for a game like this. While the UI design may've moved on from just copying Actraiser, the quality of the music is thankfully still just as strong as ever, and Illusion of Gaia has a soundtrack very befitting of its legacy.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. At least for the Japanese version, this is a game I can't recommend enough. It's a real shame that the English version is so much poorer, because it's honestly one of the strongest games on the system when it's actually written the way it's supposed to be. The action may not be the strongest on the system, but the story more than makes up for that (despite the imperfections and casual racism ^^; ), and this is absolutely a game worth checking out for action/adventure and 2D Zelda fans.

As a successor to SoulBlazer, this title does some things better and some things worse. The good? Combat is much improved. Now, you can transform into certain alter-egos to gain new abilities. There's also a major visual improvement, and the battle environments are all interesting with unique gameplay elements and real-world references like Angkor Wat and the Pyramids. The not as good? I miss the visual progression of the first title, where you can see the world restored to order as you conquer your foes. The loop is not as satisfying here. Also, the story is kind of a mess, whereas SoulBlazer is comparatively simple and easy to follow. It's a good game, but I slightly prefer its predecessor.

The amount of invincibility frames they give you in this game is so fucking amazing. I felt like a fucking god sliding through fuckers and dodging hits. The combat is definitely a step up from Soul Blazer, but it still definitely retains a bit of that (good) jank that lets you fuck enemies up super fast. Unfortunately, I think everything else is quite a step-down. The story is moving at like 200 mph with so many random things being introduced. It's entertaining in a "LOL WTF JUST HAPPENED" sort of way. Like, when you get captured by cannibals and your pig friend has to sacrifice himself I was absolutely losing my shit. The themes carried over here which is nice and definitely make this game worth playing, especially for the ending. Great palette cleanser game before moving on to the main attraction.

Time to check out Terranigma!

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.

For whatever reason, Illusion of Gaia is always one I get halfway through and then put down. I finished it once on a rental in high school, once in college, and then once today. About halfway through it's like the designers got scared that they were building areas that were too repetitive and mixed it up, but the way they did was incredibly aggravating.

The last three big areas, Mt. Kruik Angkor Wat, and the Pyramid, are all long, confusing, and frustrating. There's no longer a clear indication of where to go, not even a little bit, rooms and screens all start to look the same, and enemies become unfair or irritating.

So it's usually around Euro that I feel like I've had enough and I'm ready to move on. The ending has been seared into my brain for almost 30 years, so it's not like I need a refresher on that. But what I had been missing was how deeply sad the back half of the game is. There are early interpersonal/character moments that are hard, but the longer the game goes on, the more horrible things it shows us about the world -- and our world. There's hope there, but there's also a deep sadness, like maybe that hope isn't going to be enough.

And today, in 2023, I felt that. It doesn't have the melancholy that Soul Blazer has, maybe because in Soul Blazer the world had already ended at the start of the game and in Illusion of Gaia the world was still fearing the end.

But we get slavery of both the child and the adult varieties, pleas for vegetarianism, cannibalism, poverty, despotism, and this admission that maybe, despite what we want to believe, it's always been this way and it will always be that way.

The closing text, over the modern city, hit hard this time, especially the bit about the earth looking sad, even as everyone on it was happy. I will likely go through Terranigma next, and I'm already thinking about the modern city section of that game and the depressed people inside it.

INDIANA JONES X ZELDA A LINK TO THE PAST

Todos tenemos en nuestra cabeza muchos JRPGs donde vivimos aventuras en grandes mundos fantásticos y conocemos todo tipo de civilizaciones y lugares de dichos mundos acompañados de los aliados que hacemos por el camino ¿Pero qué te parece vivir una aventura con tus amigos de escuela por el mundo real?

Así es, en Illusion of Time/Gaia viviremos la historia de Will, un chico con extraños poderes que; siguiendo los textos de su padre arqueólogo, la ayuda de una caprichosa chica y el resto de sus amigos de pueblo, deberá de descubrir el modo de salvar el mundo de un meteorito que amenaza la vida misma de todo el planeta.
En su aventura deberá recorrer varios lugares del mundo tratando de buscar los objetos que le permitirán aumentar sus extraños poderes para poder salvar a todos.

Una jugabilidad muy mejorada de su predecesor (Soul Blazer), unas mazmorras excelentemente diseñadas y una gran aventura que hará crecer a nuestros protagonistas y entender la luz y oscuridad de nuestro mundo, es lo que le espera a aquellos que quieran jugar este gran clásico.

Oh my god the incredible memories ...
From the atmosphere, the music, the story, the characters ...
It has an unique and kinda dark aura. Something is really special about it.

In any case truly a classic of JRPG !

I think my least favorite of the Quintet "trilogy" of Soul Blazer, this one and Terranigma, though they’re all pretty close. Mainly, I found the story to be really weirdly paced, it’s difficult to get into without a full dissertation but a lot of things happen without any buildup, and I didn’t care for it (Shitty translation doesn't help).

The gameplay itself is quite good though, and the dungeons are very well designed and were the highlight of the game for me. Definitely worth checking for those alone.

I wasn't the biggest Terranigma fan in the world but I will give it a bit more credit after playing this game. In some ways I actually appreciated its super simple combat and linear design because it meant I wouldn't be lost as much. While that was kinda true, the game devolves into a chore at a certain point. Enemies generally aren't handled very differently. Dungeons are mildly entertaining to explore but not super challenging unless they are really maze-like. I like the concept of upgrading your stats by clearing out rooms of enemies. The bosses are WAY more difficult than anything else in the game. Especially the vampires. Switching forms seems like such an arbitrary addition to the game. I guess playing as the knight and the other guy is pretty cool. You get one of them right at the end of the game which is lame.

It's pretty clear that the translation is really bad. Honestly it may even improve the game since it's at least funny when the writing in all these SNES JRPGs feels so stunted and weird. Even if the translation was good the event that transpire in this game are so goofy I probably wouldn't take it seriously anyway.