Retro Game of the Month November 2017: Soul Blazer (SNES)

So I put about 3 1/2 hours in today. I beat the mermaid level, so I already got further than I did the last time I played.

It's kind of reminding me of Zelda 3 with how nice it feels to swing that sword around. Unlike Zelda, though, there's no knockback. Instead, enemies are briefly stunned so most battles consist of trying to position yourself relative to the spawning enemies in the way that maximizes damage while minimizing risk. You quickly learn that hitting enemies on the end of your swing can chain hits quicker and keep them at bay longer. It's obviously not super-deep, but it's a mechanic that kind of forces you to pay attention for every battle. Because of that, it didn't really get boring for me despite the game's grindy nature.

In fact, the sword mechanic might work too well. I haven't really had to use magic for any significant reason at any point. You unlock a series of offensive spells, but none of them seem better than your basic sword swing. You can't even use magic on bosses. I don't really mind that much (I do like the swordplay), but the magic system is undercooked, at least at this point in the game.

The game's got charm up the wazoo, though. The town areas eventually become populated with the beings you've been freeing through combat. It seems like much time and effort was put into making these characters somewhat interesting, which is nice. A side quest involving resolving a love story/ghost story seems all the more interesting to me for featuring chubby blue moles. Paying attention to what silly NPCs have to say leads to more treasure! Sometimes that treasure is a useless medical herb (you can't carry more than 1 at a time and I've only used one up to this point, and there are multiple points where you can get one for free at any time... Have I mentioned this game is pretty easy?), but sometimes it's something cool like a medallion that doubles your defense. Probably the best thing I can say about the game is that they really tried to use the writing to propel your motivation as a player, and I think they succeeded for the most part. The simple societies you build piece by piece feature an overarching theme of hope versus failure, of persistence even after death. The tree stumps have dreams about flying as birds. There's some poignant and/or funny stuff in there. It even features toilet humor that got me to LOL.

There's some great sprite work, too. I'm a personal fan of the forest animals. There's a nice looking cloud or water surface overlay on some scenes. The colors are great, with lots of vibrant hues and detailed surfaces. The music generally ranges from "good" to "very good", but I do admit I got annoyed by some of the guitar samples in the underwater bubble segment.

I'm definitely having fun with it so far.

Szlia said:

You will notice that a lot of the sound effects are identical in Actraiser, Actraiser 2 and Soul Blader/Soul Blazer (and possibly in other Quintet games). The 'ow' the character makes when getting hurt, the metallic sound of invulnerable enemies, etc... the score is not made by the same composer though.

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I definitely picked up on the same damage grunt, but I can't believe I missed the metallic clang!

My friend @Mire used to own this game and beat it several times. I asked him today about the lettered emblems because I didn't want to later find myself in a position where it might be too late to get a specific one. He assured me that you can always backtrack to get the ones you haven't found.

I also suspected that the squirrel that follows you around in the forest town might be the key to finding one of these emblems, but Mire insisted he had no memory of that squirrel being important. I even caved and checked gamefaqs but found no reference to that particular squirrel. Is it possible this squirrel only exists to teach you the "NPC following you" mechanic that you later use to resolve the mole side quest?

McCheese said:

I played this for a couple hours tonight. First time playing it, no clue about it at all going in. I really enjoyed it, and I look forward to playing it.

The animations are really good, like how there is even a side step animation for when you strafe let or right. The world looks nice, and I like how big and colorful everything is.

I got to The first boss in the painting and promptly got killed.

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Yeah, even as a teen I was impressed with the strafing animation. Nice attention to detail.

I'm gonna stream my progress for maybe a couple of hours.