As with so many media, it happens with video games that in the long history of their existence, entire works are forgotten by time. Be it through their similarity to other games that came before them, or through the fact that only a few played them at the time of their release. And in the case of Soleil, at least if you consider West, both are true.
Soleil was part of Sega's grand project to stock up on RPGs and adventure games, which had long been rather scarce on the Mega Drive. While the SNES spearheaded the golden age of RPGs and adventure games, Sega limited itself to the niches that competitor Nintendo served comparatively less. Be it action games, sports games and arcade ports. However, this meant that Sega missed out on a large target group, especially in Japan, who had a far greater interest in RPGs, which Nintendo only had in abundance on offer. Soleil was the first game of Sega's RPG project, which actively tried to compete with Nintendo in this niche. That the RPG project was crowned with little success hardly needs to be made clear. When you think of the RPG machine of the 90s, you're talking about the SNES with absolute certainty, and hardly the Mega Drive. Among other things, this "failure" ensured that most of the games from this project were increasingly forgotten over the years, usually completely regardless of their quality. Among these "lost gems" is unfortunately Soleil, which indulges its internet existence in a few Wikipedia articles and ancient playthroughs on YouTube. Which dismays me deeply, especially now that I've had a chance to play it myself.
Soleil has been compared to A Link to the Past since its release in the West in 1994. Which surprised me little, at least at first: the character looks very similar to Link, combat mechanics are similar, the game has a similar graphic style, there are dungeons with puzzles. That sounds like a real Zelda clone...doesn't it? When I first started Soleil I could have answered that question with a resounding "yes", but after the credits finally appeared on the screen I no longer think I can stand by that statement.
Soleil unquestionably takes some notes from A Link to the Past, but how it finally uses these characteristics and mixes them with its own ideas makes this game very much its own and special.
Soleil tells the story of Corona. On his 14th birthday, according to ancient tradition, he receives the sword and shield from his fallen father to begin his training as a hero of Soleil. After Corona tells the King of Soleil about his 14th birthday and is sent by him to the training camp, Corona seeks out a fortune teller. This one predicts him a future that will determine the fate of the world. For better or worse, it will be up to him. She also tells Corona that he would soon lose something important. A bright flash of light appears and the fortune teller disappears. Corona soon learns that he has lost the ability to talk to other people. However, he can now communicate with animals of all kinds. Corona asks his dog Johnny for help and starts with him, as his first companion animal, his journey through the country to find a way to regain his human language. On his journey, Corona meets other animals who, after he has helped them, assist him as another animal companion.
This is the core mechanic of the game. The animal companions function relatively similarly to items you would find in a Zelda game, but there is a much higher focus on influencing Corona's combat abilities instead of being a mere tool like a grappling hook. Just 4 of the 16 available pets could also be described as clear recreations of Zelda-typical items. Without as too many companions to begin with and no special abilities, fighting is very similar to the familiar A Link to the Past gameplay. However, Corona learns two abilities relatively early on that drastically change. First, Corona learns Sword Throw in training camp, which is Soleil's equivalent to Link's Whirl attack. Only, the sword throw is far more useful and the attack you'll use most often against bosses and masses of enemies. Combined with the animal companions, which can add ice and fire magic to the sword throw, among other things, the applications of the sword throw multiply all the more. Be it in the fights themselves or solving the rather simple puzzles of the game.
While the puzzles inside and outside the dungeons are very easy until the end, the focus of Soleil's puzzles is much more on platforming. This is made possible by Corona's dedicated jump button, which can be used to overcome huge chasms in combination with a certain animal companion. Even though none of the dungeons were really challenging in terms of puzzles, they were able to thrill in a different way with these platforming passages. Dungeons are also intrigued into the world of Soleil completely naturally. For example, Tower of Babel, which is not just any dungeon that stands in the middle of the desert without any context. It's a structure built by humans that was supposed to reach to the heavens, but was never finished. In fact, most of the dungeons aren't even really recognizable as such, as they're usually just part of the linear path that Corona travels on his way through the world. I often didn't realize it was a dungeon until I was face to face with the associated boss.
The bosses were always the highlight of a dungeon. While similar to the puzzles, they are not very complicated, the presentation of them and Corona's fast and dynamic movement makes up for it. All of this is accompanied by a soundtrack that could only exist on the Mega Drive, which makes the boss fights just plain fun.
The soundtrack probably reflects a lot of Soleil's personality. The game actually manages to tickle such atmospheric sounds out of the Mega Drive that you would normally only expect from SNES games. But in doing so, Soleil still preserves the console's musical identity. Soleil sounds like a Mega Drive game, but like no other on the platform.
Unlike most other adventure games, the player does not move through an open connected world, whose secrets can be explored further and further in the course of newly acquired abilities. Soleil builds its upper world according to a kind of level system similar to Super Mario World or Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. However, the available areas can be freely explored and revisited, whether for story reasons or to collect missing golden apples, which correspond to the heart containers of a Zelda game. Thus, Soleil follows a strict linear progression with hardly any deviations from the foreseen path, but this apparent restriction allows the game to convey a deeper narrative, which at the time was really only known from classic RPGs.
Because even though Soleil starts off very lighthearted with its story, it unfolds its true plot point in the middle of the game. Soleil is, I think, one of the first games to seriously ask the question, "Is it really right to kill monsters just because they are monsters?" This is a question that has gained a strong hold in the medium, especially nowadays. A popular example of this would clearly be "Undertale." However, despite the deeper subject matter, you shouldn't expect anything as profound from Soleil as these modern games. Especially the ending of Soleil's story might be considered rather inappropriate or at least questionable by fans of Undertale, for example. However, I won't go into that until later.
Corona's journey finally leads him to Iris, where he is directly confronted with the moral conflict for the first time. Namely, when he enters the village, he exchanges bodies with a slime, which flees in its acquired human form. In search of a cure, the games if briefly views the world from the point of view of one of the weakest monsters in most video games. Only able to move, with a jump that basically does nothing and the fear of being slain by a hero who pounces on you like a madman as soon as you go near him. Corona finally meets the mother of the real slime in a hiding place, who immediately recognizes him as a real human being and tells him what kind of fear they constantly have to live in, although they have never done anything to a human being. For them, monsters are all the same, even though there are obviously just as many differences in character as there are in humans. With the help of a witch, Corona finally succeeds in changing his shape back with the real slime. The latter thanks him because he was finally able to tell a human girl, with whom he fell in love, about his feelings. With this first hard thought, the player finally leaves Iris.
And it doesn't stop from that point either. Corona reaches the Tower of Babel to find out why no one there can communicate with each other, hoping to find a solution to his language problem. He climbs the tower and beyond, finally arriving in heaven itself. After Corona finally defeats the boss of the dungeon there, he hears a divine voice. This explains to him that Corona received the language of the animals to see the world from the point of view of these and the monsters, to finally end the centuries of bloodshed. Seeing that basically nothing has changed and that Corona, with his victory over the Boss in Heaven, has also desecrated this sacred place, the goddess gives him back his human language. She warns Corona that it is not the words themselves that are important, but what is considered right in one's heart. He should look at the world from the point of view of others and she would pass the final judgment on those who are not able to see this. For Corona the time had come to change history. The laws of nature should no longer apply. Soleil's crusade should come to an end. Corona should see how deep the sins of mankind reach.
This stark departure in the game's tone so far hits hard. Especially when you consider that Soleil is actually aimed at a slightly younger audience than the typical Zelda player.
From this point on, the second act of the game begins. Corona gains the ability to travel back in time at certain locations on the overworld. It is not clearly stated why one does this. But if you interpret the goddess' speech correctly, it becomes pretty clear. Corona travels further and further back in time per area, not only to see how far the cruel conflicts of man have reached, but to unearth the root of all evil. His time travel takes him back to the desert, among other places, where in a society people are branded as monsters and thrown into the dungeon if they don't keep them to strict laws. In the volcanic area, Corona prevents the creation of an entire cave complex in the present where a magician turns ordinary animals into mindless monsters. In the animal village on the beach, Corona gives animals the courage to stand up to evil creatures.
But Soleil draws the player even further into humanity's dark history in the penultimate two areas. In Dahlia Valley, Corona climbs inside the monster mother that created all the monsters of this valley and kills her from the inside by attacking her defenseless heart. With the death of this monster in the past, there will never be monsters in Dahlia Valley in the present. But probably the most depressing place in the past, is Corona's hometown. There, some monsters have broken out of the dungeons. These can be traced to the church. The monsters tell that they only wanted to talk to the king to make him understand that they didn't want to harm anyone. The king's soldiers storm the church and kill all the monsters without being able to prevent it. One of the soldiers is also surprised that none of the monsters fought back. And to add salt to the player's wound, the king announces that a statue will be dedicated to Corona for his services.
This is the statue that adorns the fountain of Soleil City in the present.
A last area finally opens its gate to the past. Corona has arrived at the origin of everything. The point in time before light flooded the world and the point at which monsters entered the world. There Corona meets the still living monster mother, who explains to him that all monsters come from another world and got to Soleil involuntarily. They would have tried forever to return, but the gate through which they came was blocked by an invisible power of spiritual energy.
To fight against this power, the player must face five mini-bosses, which are designed according to the five senses. After defeating these, Corona faces off against the Spiritual Energy, which turns out to be the easiest boss in the entire game once you figure out its weakness. With the disappearance of the Spiritual Energy, all the monsters are sucked back into their world, thus never having encountered humans.
Back in the newly created present, battles against monsters were never fought, which means, among other things, for Corona that his father is still alive and his statue is exchanged for that of the Goddess. In a final speech by the Goddess, she praises Corona for reminding her of the good in people. However, she says, humanity should always remember that they are not the only ones who exist in this world.
Finally, during the credits, Corona takes his dog Johnny for a walk, during which he meets all of his animal partners that he never met in this timeline.
You will notice, especially from modern reviews, that this ending is criticized by some. I partially agree with this attitude and would have definitely liked it better if humans had learned to coexist with the monsters at the end. But I would by no means go so far as to say that Soleil ends up stumbling over its ultimate message of mutual understanding. Indeed, this is reinforced primarily by the newfound relationship between man and beast. Perhaps with the disappearance of the monsters, the developers wanted to communicate that some people are too different to ever live together peacefully, to the regret of all involved. Even if this would be a rather bitter conclusion, with which I would not agree, I can not deny that one could come to this view, if one looks at the real world events, with all its real conflicts. It at least makes you think.
Soleil is a game that, for me, went far beyond the image of a simple "Zelda clone". With its beautiful graphics that stand head to head with the SNES's finest games, a unique OST, and an unexpectedly deep story that, while a bit critical for me towards the end, definitely deserves more attention. Maybe one day Soleil will undergo an "Earthbound revolution" and will see this little game for what it is: A game worth remembering.
Soleil was part of Sega's grand project to stock up on RPGs and adventure games, which had long been rather scarce on the Mega Drive. While the SNES spearheaded the golden age of RPGs and adventure games, Sega limited itself to the niches that competitor Nintendo served comparatively less. Be it action games, sports games and arcade ports. However, this meant that Sega missed out on a large target group, especially in Japan, who had a far greater interest in RPGs, which Nintendo only had in abundance on offer. Soleil was the first game of Sega's RPG project, which actively tried to compete with Nintendo in this niche. That the RPG project was crowned with little success hardly needs to be made clear. When you think of the RPG machine of the 90s, you're talking about the SNES with absolute certainty, and hardly the Mega Drive. Among other things, this "failure" ensured that most of the games from this project were increasingly forgotten over the years, usually completely regardless of their quality. Among these "lost gems" is unfortunately Soleil, which indulges its internet existence in a few Wikipedia articles and ancient playthroughs on YouTube. Which dismays me deeply, especially now that I've had a chance to play it myself.
Soleil has been compared to A Link to the Past since its release in the West in 1994. Which surprised me little, at least at first: the character looks very similar to Link, combat mechanics are similar, the game has a similar graphic style, there are dungeons with puzzles. That sounds like a real Zelda clone...doesn't it? When I first started Soleil I could have answered that question with a resounding "yes", but after the credits finally appeared on the screen I no longer think I can stand by that statement.
Soleil unquestionably takes some notes from A Link to the Past, but how it finally uses these characteristics and mixes them with its own ideas makes this game very much its own and special.
Soleil tells the story of Corona. On his 14th birthday, according to ancient tradition, he receives the sword and shield from his fallen father to begin his training as a hero of Soleil. After Corona tells the King of Soleil about his 14th birthday and is sent by him to the training camp, Corona seeks out a fortune teller. This one predicts him a future that will determine the fate of the world. For better or worse, it will be up to him. She also tells Corona that he would soon lose something important. A bright flash of light appears and the fortune teller disappears. Corona soon learns that he has lost the ability to talk to other people. However, he can now communicate with animals of all kinds. Corona asks his dog Johnny for help and starts with him, as his first companion animal, his journey through the country to find a way to regain his human language. On his journey, Corona meets other animals who, after he has helped them, assist him as another animal companion.
This is the core mechanic of the game. The animal companions function relatively similarly to items you would find in a Zelda game, but there is a much higher focus on influencing Corona's combat abilities instead of being a mere tool like a grappling hook. Just 4 of the 16 available pets could also be described as clear recreations of Zelda-typical items. Without as too many companions to begin with and no special abilities, fighting is very similar to the familiar A Link to the Past gameplay. However, Corona learns two abilities relatively early on that drastically change. First, Corona learns Sword Throw in training camp, which is Soleil's equivalent to Link's Whirl attack. Only, the sword throw is far more useful and the attack you'll use most often against bosses and masses of enemies. Combined with the animal companions, which can add ice and fire magic to the sword throw, among other things, the applications of the sword throw multiply all the more. Be it in the fights themselves or solving the rather simple puzzles of the game.
While the puzzles inside and outside the dungeons are very easy until the end, the focus of Soleil's puzzles is much more on platforming. This is made possible by Corona's dedicated jump button, which can be used to overcome huge chasms in combination with a certain animal companion. Even though none of the dungeons were really challenging in terms of puzzles, they were able to thrill in a different way with these platforming passages. Dungeons are also intrigued into the world of Soleil completely naturally. For example, Tower of Babel, which is not just any dungeon that stands in the middle of the desert without any context. It's a structure built by humans that was supposed to reach to the heavens, but was never finished. In fact, most of the dungeons aren't even really recognizable as such, as they're usually just part of the linear path that Corona travels on his way through the world. I often didn't realize it was a dungeon until I was face to face with the associated boss.
The bosses were always the highlight of a dungeon. While similar to the puzzles, they are not very complicated, the presentation of them and Corona's fast and dynamic movement makes up for it. All of this is accompanied by a soundtrack that could only exist on the Mega Drive, which makes the boss fights just plain fun.
The soundtrack probably reflects a lot of Soleil's personality. The game actually manages to tickle such atmospheric sounds out of the Mega Drive that you would normally only expect from SNES games. But in doing so, Soleil still preserves the console's musical identity. Soleil sounds like a Mega Drive game, but like no other on the platform.
Unlike most other adventure games, the player does not move through an open connected world, whose secrets can be explored further and further in the course of newly acquired abilities. Soleil builds its upper world according to a kind of level system similar to Super Mario World or Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. However, the available areas can be freely explored and revisited, whether for story reasons or to collect missing golden apples, which correspond to the heart containers of a Zelda game. Thus, Soleil follows a strict linear progression with hardly any deviations from the foreseen path, but this apparent restriction allows the game to convey a deeper narrative, which at the time was really only known from classic RPGs.
Because even though Soleil starts off very lighthearted with its story, it unfolds its true plot point in the middle of the game. Soleil is, I think, one of the first games to seriously ask the question, "Is it really right to kill monsters just because they are monsters?" This is a question that has gained a strong hold in the medium, especially nowadays. A popular example of this would clearly be "Undertale." However, despite the deeper subject matter, you shouldn't expect anything as profound from Soleil as these modern games. Especially the ending of Soleil's story might be considered rather inappropriate or at least questionable by fans of Undertale, for example. However, I won't go into that until later.
Corona's journey finally leads him to Iris, where he is directly confronted with the moral conflict for the first time. Namely, when he enters the village, he exchanges bodies with a slime, which flees in its acquired human form. In search of a cure, the games if briefly views the world from the point of view of one of the weakest monsters in most video games. Only able to move, with a jump that basically does nothing and the fear of being slain by a hero who pounces on you like a madman as soon as you go near him. Corona finally meets the mother of the real slime in a hiding place, who immediately recognizes him as a real human being and tells him what kind of fear they constantly have to live in, although they have never done anything to a human being. For them, monsters are all the same, even though there are obviously just as many differences in character as there are in humans. With the help of a witch, Corona finally succeeds in changing his shape back with the real slime. The latter thanks him because he was finally able to tell a human girl, with whom he fell in love, about his feelings. With this first hard thought, the player finally leaves Iris.
And it doesn't stop from that point either. Corona reaches the Tower of Babel to find out why no one there can communicate with each other, hoping to find a solution to his language problem. He climbs the tower and beyond, finally arriving in heaven itself. After Corona finally defeats the boss of the dungeon there, he hears a divine voice. This explains to him that Corona received the language of the animals to see the world from the point of view of these and the monsters, to finally end the centuries of bloodshed. Seeing that basically nothing has changed and that Corona, with his victory over the Boss in Heaven, has also desecrated this sacred place, the goddess gives him back his human language. She warns Corona that it is not the words themselves that are important, but what is considered right in one's heart. He should look at the world from the point of view of others and she would pass the final judgment on those who are not able to see this. For Corona the time had come to change history. The laws of nature should no longer apply. Soleil's crusade should come to an end. Corona should see how deep the sins of mankind reach.
This stark departure in the game's tone so far hits hard. Especially when you consider that Soleil is actually aimed at a slightly younger audience than the typical Zelda player.
From this point on, the second act of the game begins. Corona gains the ability to travel back in time at certain locations on the overworld. It is not clearly stated why one does this. But if you interpret the goddess' speech correctly, it becomes pretty clear. Corona travels further and further back in time per area, not only to see how far the cruel conflicts of man have reached, but to unearth the root of all evil. His time travel takes him back to the desert, among other places, where in a society people are branded as monsters and thrown into the dungeon if they don't keep them to strict laws. In the volcanic area, Corona prevents the creation of an entire cave complex in the present where a magician turns ordinary animals into mindless monsters. In the animal village on the beach, Corona gives animals the courage to stand up to evil creatures.
But Soleil draws the player even further into humanity's dark history in the penultimate two areas. In Dahlia Valley, Corona climbs inside the monster mother that created all the monsters of this valley and kills her from the inside by attacking her defenseless heart. With the death of this monster in the past, there will never be monsters in Dahlia Valley in the present. But probably the most depressing place in the past, is Corona's hometown. There, some monsters have broken out of the dungeons. These can be traced to the church. The monsters tell that they only wanted to talk to the king to make him understand that they didn't want to harm anyone. The king's soldiers storm the church and kill all the monsters without being able to prevent it. One of the soldiers is also surprised that none of the monsters fought back. And to add salt to the player's wound, the king announces that a statue will be dedicated to Corona for his services.
This is the statue that adorns the fountain of Soleil City in the present.
A last area finally opens its gate to the past. Corona has arrived at the origin of everything. The point in time before light flooded the world and the point at which monsters entered the world. There Corona meets the still living monster mother, who explains to him that all monsters come from another world and got to Soleil involuntarily. They would have tried forever to return, but the gate through which they came was blocked by an invisible power of spiritual energy.
To fight against this power, the player must face five mini-bosses, which are designed according to the five senses. After defeating these, Corona faces off against the Spiritual Energy, which turns out to be the easiest boss in the entire game once you figure out its weakness. With the disappearance of the Spiritual Energy, all the monsters are sucked back into their world, thus never having encountered humans.
Back in the newly created present, battles against monsters were never fought, which means, among other things, for Corona that his father is still alive and his statue is exchanged for that of the Goddess. In a final speech by the Goddess, she praises Corona for reminding her of the good in people. However, she says, humanity should always remember that they are not the only ones who exist in this world.
Finally, during the credits, Corona takes his dog Johnny for a walk, during which he meets all of his animal partners that he never met in this timeline.
You will notice, especially from modern reviews, that this ending is criticized by some. I partially agree with this attitude and would have definitely liked it better if humans had learned to coexist with the monsters at the end. But I would by no means go so far as to say that Soleil ends up stumbling over its ultimate message of mutual understanding. Indeed, this is reinforced primarily by the newfound relationship between man and beast. Perhaps with the disappearance of the monsters, the developers wanted to communicate that some people are too different to ever live together peacefully, to the regret of all involved. Even if this would be a rather bitter conclusion, with which I would not agree, I can not deny that one could come to this view, if one looks at the real world events, with all its real conflicts. It at least makes you think.
Soleil is a game that, for me, went far beyond the image of a simple "Zelda clone". With its beautiful graphics that stand head to head with the SNES's finest games, a unique OST, and an unexpectedly deep story that, while a bit critical for me towards the end, definitely deserves more attention. Maybe one day Soleil will undergo an "Earthbound revolution" and will see this little game for what it is: A game worth remembering.