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.
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.