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Big gamer since the SNES. Try to play a variety of games and don't discriminate between genres or age. Any spoilers I discuss in a review will ALWAYS be shoved to the bottom so you need not worry.

Some terms I've coined over the years that you may run across in my critiques:

1) Running Sim - referring to horror games that give you no means of defense against enemies, forcing you to either run or hide.

2) Jogging Sim - a walking sim with running sim moments serving as action beats.

3) Kagome Syndrome - a (in my opinion) lazy storytelling device in which a normal human being is transported to an alternate reality/plane of existence and has no freak-out or existential crisis to their new circumstances. Named after the heroine of Inuyasha who, surprise surprise, was perfectly fine going from regular Japan to magical Sengoku Japan in the first chapter.
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Note - game received for free as part of a review code

Ressifice is an indie throwback to the Splatterhouse games of yore wherein you were tasked with killing scores of ghouls in atypical gory fashion. Question is, how well does it hold up to its progenitors? Well, as someone who never played them, I can’t say, though, on its own merits, it’s a nice enough diversion for the $1.00 asking price.


As it’ll literally take you less than an hour to beat Ressifice, I won’t frolic around too much. Graphically, this is a superb structure, combining early-2000s pixel art with some bloody Halloween aesthetics. This is a dark, hematic place, chock-full of monsters ready to rip apart unwary teenagers too cool for their own good, and while there are only three-or-so beasts in the entire game, each are excellent crafted, boasting an executioner’s hood and piercing maroon eyes (the bigger ones even holding visual throwbacks to such classic entities as Cthulhu and Jason). I was particularly impressed by the unique death animations, their intricacy showcasing some quality (though twisted!) artwork ala self-hanging suicides.

Backgrounds are plain yet foreboding, their compositions also bearing throwbacks to popular horror settings like Camp Crystal Lake and Burkittsville Forest. On top of this, the game, as a whole, features some surprisingly organic lighting that periodically shows up via fireflies, candlesticks, and good old-fashioned electricity. The human models, particularly your protagonist, are arguably the low-point in terms of their plainclothes appearance, but given that this was obviously the intention, that’s not saying much.

The only thing that kind of bothered me were the purple smears which accompanied your bat’s swinging, as the color felt out-of-place amidst the backdrops as well as the bat itself; however, as you guys can tell, this is a heavy nitpick -- the truth is Ressifice is a superbly-crafted title that successfully evokes grody nostalgia.

Music and SFX are pretty limited, though what you hear is trusty enough. The haunting melody cues that play every time you successfully complete a puzzle (more on that below) are particularly memorable, and while I would’ve liked a stronger crackle behind your club’s impacts, the minimized impingement won’t distract you as you’re mowing down scores upon scores of demons.

This brings me to the gameplay. As stated in the first sentence, Ressifice plays like a sanguine Namco beat’em up wherein you’re tasked with killing everything that stands between you and the exit. It’s a simple system of swinging & dodging, and though you’ll die frequently courtesy of the low health bar, the abundance of autosaves essentially provides you with nigh-immortality. In fact, I kind of wish the game had gone all-out with the power fantasy aspect: spam more monsters, increase your attack power, and do away with all HP. It wouldn’t have hurt the gameplay given the plethora of save states, and might’ve actually made things more fun considering how frustrating the three-hit health bar could get.

Outside of killing, your real quest is to escape this spooky world, your method of doing so being the assemblage of several painted skulls. There are some light puzzles involved as far as unlocking certain abodes to acquire them, but they won’t take-up much brainpower to resolve.

Honestly, the biggest problems I had with the game design were two-fold: one, the amount of respawning enemies -- they’re not only annoying to deal with, but inconsistently generated (some appear in specific spots, others will pop-up several blocks down); and two, the lack of a quick load function, forcing you to manually click the restart button each time with the mouse.

Storywise, Ressifice isn’t going to win any awards, taking the typical man vs. gothic monster template and doing little to mould it. The writers did try and shove some tongue-in-cheek humor into the script; however, the short length of the game combined with the lack of a real mythology prevents these from being anything more than cornbread comedy. I was also irked by the font projection, it often being too wide, too crunched, and too quickly generated for pleasant reading.

Overall, Ressifice is a case of what you see is what you get. If you grew-up with the Splatterhouse series (or its many scions), you’ll absolutely enjoy your time here -- all others, best look elsewhere.


NOTES
-Dialogue in the beginning of the game is rendered through a beat system that sounds like Japanese in reverse.

Played on the Wii U Virtual Console

Yes, I technically had to abandon the game because I couldn't beat the end boss rush, but having completed every other aspect, I feel this review stands as a qualified opinion


These days you’re liable to seeing video game mash-ups from different genres, but back in the 90s, a then-new company called Quintet seemingly pioneered this tactic with their debut title ActRaiser(+). Shoving city building and godhood systems into an action platformer schematic, ActRaiser stood as a unique first-year release for the SNES, one that concurrently launched Quintet into mainstream discourse.

If you’ve been a part of any retro community, chances are you’ve read skyrocketing praise for ActRaiser over its various elements, and while they definitely do warrant respect, I feel the lack of a genuine sequel may have boosted the base game’s reputation into abnormal parameters. What do I mean by this? Well, as you guys have no doubt experienced by now, the best sequels are the ones that take the good from their predecessor and make it even more exemplary: they iron out the kinks, chisel new systems, and smelt the entire product into a revolutionary package: ACII, Half-Life 2, Arkham City, DKC2 -- we still look fondly upon the original, but recognize that significant improvements were done in the follow-up.

ActRaiser’s problem is that it didn’t get a true sequel(++), meaning any lauding it’s garnered from 4th gen enthusiasts smacks of the kind of superior advancements fans would’ve physically seen in a theoretical ActRaiser 2. This isn’t out of disingenuity or anything of the sort, but more-so nostalgia combined with the admittedly-novel concepts bolstered by the game.

To illustrate what I’m alleging, let’s start with the city building: it’s entirely linear. Each area has you start off with a giant piece of land that you then have to direct your worshippers towards industrializing (an activity they consequently conduct square-by-square). There’s no strategy, no worrying about environmental or economic factors, no catalog of dwellings to select from, nothing. Once your people seal off the adjacent monster lairs, you don’t even have to concern yourself with their safety (not even from such phenomena as natural disasters or surprise incidents). Throughout your tenure, you’re occasionally hit with a scripted dilemma, but almost all of these have to be resolved instantly in order to progress further.

The god prayers are handled a bit better insofar as you’re actually given agency whether to grant them or not (i.e., not smiting the requested mountain), but these don’t result in any noticeable consequences outside of your character not gaining a power-up or extra magic scroll (more on those later). Regardless, the lion’s share of scenarios ultimately demand completion for the sake of unlocking the hidden boss cave in the region, meaning they’re just as mandatory as the obligatory city ones.

Don’t get me wrong, these aspects provide a lot of that simple dopamine gamers have come to love from modern-day releases -- seeing each village get constructed from the ground-up, in particular, reminded me of the renovation system from the Ezio games wherein you’d instantly behold the fruits of your labor. I liked the interactions that came about between the citizenry and your protagonist: how they’d treat you reverently, make earnest requests, and offer alms in your honor. Despite the limited dialogue, it’s a relatively-accurate representation of how faith operated in older civilizations, and while ActRaiser doesn’t really address any deeper themes on the topic (save a blurb at the end), I do think this part has contributed to the game’s continued fervor.

On that note, what exactly is the premise of ActRaiser? Well, in the original Japanese script, you were literally the Abrahamic G-D trying to save humanity from the influence of Satan and his 12 minions. Of course, that kind of on-the-nose storytelling wouldn’t have flown back in the day, and so western markets renamed him The Master, and his opponent Tanzra.

Regardless, the gist is your typical good vs. evil scheme. One of the things I appreciated about ActRaiser was how you never actually see your persona: during the action scenes, he inhabits a gold guardian, while the town simulations have him directly interact with an anonymous Cupid. The former decision, in particular, end-ups being an unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally?) wise integration as it subsequently explains how your deity is able to be “defeated” by lesser enemies.

You’ll be conducting these fights during the platforming sections, which is arguably where ActRaiser succeeds the most. Quintet would later garner fame for their trilogy of ARPGs, and it’s clear they cut their teeth working on ActRaiser as it is absolutely solid: you have a jump, slash, duck, and magic attack, all of which you’ll need to employ should you wish to beat the various enemies and bosses thrown your way. The jump, in particular, works really well, with Quintet having mastered the precision, weight, and height factors that go into 16-bit springing (that is to say, it’s easy to learn and do without feeling like you’re at a disadvantage).

Honestly, there are only two real problems here: first, side bounding and attacking is very inconsistent to pull off (and outright impossible for vertical jumps), and two, the game is way too bloody easy, that simplicity largely coming down to a single spell you acquire in the third world: Stardust. At the click of a button, your avatar can call down a hailstorm of galactic pellets, and man do these babies do a significant amount of damage: so much so, that bosses are rendered cakewalks. To try and counter this, the game puts a cap on the amount of times you can cast a spell/per a run (NOT per/a life; die and any previously-depleted slots remain empty), but the thing is, if you’re fully developing your cities, chances are you’re going to find the majority of magic scrolls (ammo) out there anyway, thus ensuring you’re well-armed prior to most battles (this isn’t even taking into account the number of temporary extra scrolls you can loot in-game).

I’m not sure who on the dev team thought this would be a good idea, but it ends-up undermining a lot of the programming that no doubt went into the craftsmanship of these bosses. Perhaps realizing this too late, the game forcibly reverses course during the final act wherein Tanzra is preceded by a punishing boss gauntlet that’s so frustrating, you’ll see below why it caused me to drop the title(+++).

Thankfully the levels themselves are quite stunning, taking place over a variety of locales ranging from indigenous-inspired forestry and frosty ice caves to even a Tatooine-influenced abode (no seriously, it’s got its own Sarlacc Pit). The bosses themselves exemplify this virtuosity to a tee, often being conventional monsters wrought out with gorgeous colorwork and gargantuan proportions. Enemy design, on the other hand, could be hit-or-miss: some levels throw uniquely-crafted creatures at you like forest ents, orc-like wasps, and lizardian knights, while other times you’ll find yourself scratching your head at the presence of floating eyeballs, conventional gargoyles, and even swole women!

ActRaiser, as stated before, came out early in the SNES’s life, and while the visuals for the abovementioned levels are top-notch, unfortunately the bird’s eye map for the city building isn’t quite at the same level, often looking one-step removed from Oregon Trail’s graphics. If that weren’t enough, you’re often forced to partake in this discount schmup schematic via your little Angel shooting arrows at an ever-breeding(++++) source of minions (till their grounds are sealed for good). The critters themselves are even more generic looking than their earthly compatriots and do little more than destroy structures and carry away the occasional batch of humans (as I keep saying, it’s an underdeveloped part of the game that ultimately gets repetitive in light of the lack of differentiation between continents, as well as the relative shortness of the platforming stages).

Part of me does wonder if more was originally intended with the city-building as you’re granted elemental powers (earthquakes, lightning, wind, etc…) that can theoretically affect the landscape, but which are only ever utilized during the, you guessed it, scripted events. As it stands, unless you wish to destroy your own creations Sim City-style, you’re not going to find much use for these abilities.

Ironically, the sound design operates oppositely to the visuals in that more effort was put into the aerial arrangements than their platforming equals: from the creature growls to each of your god powers, you’ll hear a distinct din compared to the ground wherein everyone is silent save their projectile attacks. Your sword literally swipes like someone breathed a hot air “ha” on the microphone, and the dialogue scroll is so awfully-screechy, I implore prospective buyers to choose the fast text speed for the sake of your ears.

The music was strung together by Yuzo Koshiro, a man who’s, of course, acquired a strong reputation amongst the RPG community. Unfortunately, he simply wasn’t given enough money here to do what he could, meaning there are a lot of repeated tracks chock-full of their own repetitive loops. Sometimes this works, as in the case of the soothing town-building tune, but other times it comes across as unintentionally lazy, such as every boss sharing the same beat. That said, I will give him credit for morphing his tracks depending on the individual theme of the stage (i.e., the pyramid has a more Egyptian horn accompaniment whereas the lava motif wouldn’t sound out-of-place in Bowser’s Castle!).

Regardless of my complaints, I still recommend playing ActRaiser by any legal means necessary. For starters, it doesn’t wear out its welcome, being completable in 1-2 sittings, and for all the downsides of its supplementary genres, the fans have a point -- there really is no other game like it.



NOTES
+For the record, I don’t know if ActRaiser was the first video game to combine multiple types of games into one cartridge. Also, does anyone know what happened to Quintet? It’s a very sketchy story when you read about their disappearance from society.

++There technically was an ActRaiser 2, but it abandoned the town sim aspects entirely in favor of pure platforming. A spiritual remake called Renaissance was released semi-recently, but, as pointed out by SNESDrunk, it failed to do any kind of innovation on the formula minus adding a Tower Defense-schematic.

+++So basically you have to beat six of the previous 12 bosses before facing Tanzra who, in turn, comes in two stages. The problem is, you aren’t given any kind of health or mana replenishment throughout the ordeal, meaning you need to beat it one-go. Oh, and to top it all off, the game strongarms you into using-up several mana shots on the first thug, a sped-up version of the Minotaurus, due to said speed-up making it near-impossible to hit him with conventional attacks. It’s a shame because an easy work around to this difficulty spike (in addition to granting replenishments) would’ve been to just save the meteor spell for this moment, allowing players to beat the bosses as they were originally intended during the vanilla run.

++++Strictly-speaking, there is a limit to the number of spawns, but it’s so high you’re better off closing the portals as soon as possible.

Should I even write a review? Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk will take you, at best 20 minutes to complete, meaning anything I say will inherently emit spoilers.

As someone who isn’t a big fan of VNs, I found myself strangely drawn-into the world crafted by Nikita Kryukov, and it’s really saying something when a short indie title does a better job tackling mental health issues than some of the bigger games I’ve played.

The mucky claret art style works towards the game’s psychedelic nature, though I wish some images were less blurry (the in-game explanations coming across as much like excuses as legitimate rationale). Likewise, I would’ve appreciated a little more SFX despite the writers, again, technically providing a reason for the reliance on music. That said, the tunes Kryukov has assembled here befit his moody product quite well.

There’s honestly not much more I can, or rather should, say - at a $1.00 asking price, you’ll get your surreal experience for sure.