Who knew smashing together sidescrolling action and town building could work so well?
ActRaiser is SUPER fun. I always had this game in the back of my mind thanks to the theme of Fillmore, one of my favorite Yuzo Koshiro compositions. After playing through every Castlevania game, I was still hungry for more sidescrollers, and that's when it resurfaced in my sea of interests.
(Speaking of Castlevania: God's damage sfx sounds oddly similar to Simon's lmao)
You play as God, alternating between cutting through demons in sidescrolling stages, then listening to the pleas from the people you've just saved in a simulation mode. Helping them with their problems and defending them from overworld demons increases your health and MP for an easier time with the sidescrolling portion of the game, not to mention new spells.
Full transparency, I was initially skeptical about this setup. "Won't the whole simulation thing take a big shit in the game's pacing? You'll be all fired up from killing demons, then you have to stop to help some farmers grow wheat?"
But the simulation mode isn't very complicated at all. You don't need to carefully manage a ton of different resources, the requests from your followers are easy to accomplish, and while you wait for them to build houses/farms and move around, you get to defend them from overworld enemies that want to kidnap them/destroy their buildings/destroy YOU(seriously, fuck that giant skull), so you don't just sit there staring at the screen.
It looks good for an early SNES title, showcasing some of that hot scaling and rotation, and the music needs no comment from me; it's Yuzo Koshiro goddammit, of course it's perfect. It's only a shame that Fillmore, the theme that drew my attention to ActRaiser in the first place, only plays ONCE in the entire game. Shaving off half a star from the rating for that crime alone.
The other half is from the controls. It's not a difficult game, but sometimes you'll be missing jumps or running into enemies because you can't control yourself in mid air all that well. Flying enemies were a constant source of frustration.
All in all, I really enjoyed my time here. Sadly, I hear that the sequel removed the simulation mode and is 100% sidescrolling action, which I do love, but I became enamored with taking care of these little 4 pixel long scrimblos. Maybe I'll check ActRaiser 2 out some other time, but for now, I'm jumping over to Renaissance.
ActRaiser is SUPER fun. I always had this game in the back of my mind thanks to the theme of Fillmore, one of my favorite Yuzo Koshiro compositions. After playing through every Castlevania game, I was still hungry for more sidescrollers, and that's when it resurfaced in my sea of interests.
(Speaking of Castlevania: God's damage sfx sounds oddly similar to Simon's lmao)
You play as God, alternating between cutting through demons in sidescrolling stages, then listening to the pleas from the people you've just saved in a simulation mode. Helping them with their problems and defending them from overworld demons increases your health and MP for an easier time with the sidescrolling portion of the game, not to mention new spells.
Full transparency, I was initially skeptical about this setup. "Won't the whole simulation thing take a big shit in the game's pacing? You'll be all fired up from killing demons, then you have to stop to help some farmers grow wheat?"
But the simulation mode isn't very complicated at all. You don't need to carefully manage a ton of different resources, the requests from your followers are easy to accomplish, and while you wait for them to build houses/farms and move around, you get to defend them from overworld enemies that want to kidnap them/destroy their buildings/destroy YOU(seriously, fuck that giant skull), so you don't just sit there staring at the screen.
It looks good for an early SNES title, showcasing some of that hot scaling and rotation, and the music needs no comment from me; it's Yuzo Koshiro goddammit, of course it's perfect. It's only a shame that Fillmore, the theme that drew my attention to ActRaiser in the first place, only plays ONCE in the entire game. Shaving off half a star from the rating for that crime alone.
The other half is from the controls. It's not a difficult game, but sometimes you'll be missing jumps or running into enemies because you can't control yourself in mid air all that well. Flying enemies were a constant source of frustration.
All in all, I really enjoyed my time here. Sadly, I hear that the sequel removed the simulation mode and is 100% sidescrolling action, which I do love, but I became enamored with taking care of these little 4 pixel long scrimblos. Maybe I'll check ActRaiser 2 out some other time, but for now, I'm jumping over to Renaissance.
Cani
6 months ago