#72: Soul Blazer

Such a simple sword for a sword blazer.

I love a lot of games on the Super Nintendo but there aren't very many that bring back memories the way Soul Blazer does. It had a really interesting way of building up a world and that stuck with me over all these years. The basic idea is there are little circles that spawn monsters inside of dungeons. Kill all the monsters that spawn and you can step on the circle to seal it. Sometimes this would open up a new path to travel in the dungeon and sometimes it would release the soul of a creature from town. That soul would appear back in town along with nearby things like a building or a bridge or a set of stairs. You could go back and talk to all of them. Some existed just to add atmosphere to the town. Some existed as part of an end game gathering quest. Most importantly some served to progress the plot and/or open up new dungeons. So the game basically plays out with you hacking monsters in a dungeon for a bit, then going back to town to check out all the souls you saved, then going back into a dungeon. Repeat as necessary.

Old woman sells medicinal herbs!

I didn't remember much about the game beyond the basics of releasing souls. The opening music was immediately familiar, but not from Soul Blazer... No, this music was from ActRaiser! Another game that alternated between fighting monsters and a unique way of building a town. Another game by Enix, actually. It didn't take long for them to link the games together in other ways. In ActRaiser you play as 'The Master' who is essentially the God of that world. You would sent your power down to inhabit statues to beat up the monsters. In Soul Blazer you take the form of a human avatar of a heavenly being but you get to commune with 'The Master'. In both games The Master has apparently failed as all living things have been sealed away by evil. But with a little help from an angel the day can be saved! It also felt like they flat out stole a lot of the sounds and animations for things like enemies dying, and shooting projectiles, and spawning from a lair.

Suck it, Deathtoll!

I saw this game was coming up today and spent all week playing it instead of just popping it in for a bit in the afternoon. Soul Blazer is worth the attention. The story is interesting enough, but a little preachy. The plot is about a scientist who invents a machine that lets evil take over the world. The moral of the story is that science is bad and faith is good. A pretty terrible moral, actually. The ending has the player character fall in love with a human girl. The Master sees this and decides the player character isn't worthy of being a heavenly being and casts him out of heaven to go live with the girl. Sounds good, actually! Oh, except The Master wipes out all of his memories. She still knows he's the angel/man/hero who saved the world but he doesn't remember it. He doesn't even remember her. But she loves him and he's an amnesiac so they obviously live together in the end.

The game is a pretty standard adventure RPG game. Swing your sword, cast your spells. Find the pattern for the boss fights and execute them in order to dish out more damage than you take. Level up some if you need the extra health. Inventory management is a real pain, unfortunately. If you find a key you need to go through the effort of equipping the key to your one item slot before you can unlock the door. Then you need to switch your item slot back to the one useful item.

There are 6 levels of souls to save and then a final dungeon. Each level has it's own theme and story, though they are all pretty derivative. A member of Dr Leo's entourage was in the town and had a gem. The ruler of the town falsely imprisoned them to take the gem, all of which led to the huge downfall of the world. Save people, eventually save Leo's friend, save the now apologetic rules, get the gem. But even though they were all basically the same story the details were different enough in each town to feel like something new was going on.

Is Soul Blazer the best game ever? No. But it's a fun game with a really interesting and unique premise. A lot like ActRaiser in that way, actually. It's pretty telling I think that there's only been two games out of seventy-two thus far that I felt compelled to play through to completion and it's those two games. I came close on Link to the Past and I only skipped out on Final Fantasy IV because I'd just played it but the fact still remains that only ActRaiser and Soul Blazer captured my memory enough to get me to want to play it through, and were good enough to make me stick with them.

Rating : S-