Known as "Soul Blader" here in Japan, I've been meaning to get to this game and its two sequels for quite some time now, and a simple sort of Zelda-like was just what I was in the mood for after all of that N64 playing earlier in the month. I honestly had virtually no idea what this game was even like, but its reputation was good enough that I was willing to take the chance regardless. It took me a bit under 8 hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on emulated hardware without abusing save states or using a guide.
Soul Blazer tells the story of a heavenly guardian come down to the world to set things right. The great demon lord Deathtoll was summoned by humanity, so the souls of just about every living thing have been sealed away by his dark minions. It's your mission to head down there and set things right again. While the story's presentation is quite of its time (that being quite simple and without much use of scene-setting music), it's actually a surprisingly well written story dealing with how there can always be hope in the world despite how eager humanity can be to march towards its own demise for personal enrichment. It's not exactly the best story on the Super Famicom or anything, but it was one I enjoyed nonetheless, and it's nice to see a more well considered story in a Zelda-like like this.
While I do call this game a Zelda-like, it's honestly much more like Ys 1&2 and Gauntlet had a baby that was then raised by Actraiser XD (which makes some degree of sense, given that this was made by the guys who made both Ys 1&2 and Actraiser). It's a top down action game much like Gauntlet or Dungeon Explorers, and you go through dungeons killing all the monsters in an area. Upon killing all of the monsters out of a certain spawner, the spawner will explode all on its own, and walking over it will destroy it and free the soul of the being trapped in it.
Upon returning to the town of that particular area (of which the game has seven), you can talk to these beings (be they people, animal, or plant) and receive information, goodies, or just a simple thank you. This game has no money, so your goodies you find generally fall into being either new equipment (armor, swords, or spells), or just the power gems that you collect to power your spells. It's a pretty simple gameplay loop overall, but it's one that works really well regardless. It'll probably be a bit of an easy game for some (though the English version is a little bit harder), but I found its challenge to be juuuust right for me as a veteran of the genre. Even if you are having a hard time, you gain experience points from killing monsters, and there are always monsters that aren't connected to spawners that simply respawn when you enter and leave the screen, so simple EXP grinding to power up more is always an option if you're having trouble~.
The presentation of the game is really stand-out excellent. As mentioned earlier, we're taking a LOT of stuff from Actraiser, as almost all of the sound effects and even significant bits of the UI seem to just be copied directly over from Actraiser. Heck, even the way enemies get stunned slightly after hitting them is right out of Actraiser XD. Thankfully, not only is the Actraiser stuff very good and functional, so reusing it here is hardly a problem, but we also got a banging soundtrack too! This game's soundtrack was awesome, and there was barely a new area I got to where I didn't say out loud "oh hell yeah, this song rocks!". The graphics are also very pretty, though they're certainly of the time for a '92 SFC game.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. With a nice little story and really fun and balanced gameplay, this is a super easy recommendation. If you like 2D Zelda-type stuff at all, then this will likely be a game you quite enjoy, and you don't even need to be super good at these sorts of games to beat it. An awesome action/adventure game to spend a weekend with, if there ever was one~.
Soul Blazer tells the story of a heavenly guardian come down to the world to set things right. The great demon lord Deathtoll was summoned by humanity, so the souls of just about every living thing have been sealed away by his dark minions. It's your mission to head down there and set things right again. While the story's presentation is quite of its time (that being quite simple and without much use of scene-setting music), it's actually a surprisingly well written story dealing with how there can always be hope in the world despite how eager humanity can be to march towards its own demise for personal enrichment. It's not exactly the best story on the Super Famicom or anything, but it was one I enjoyed nonetheless, and it's nice to see a more well considered story in a Zelda-like like this.
While I do call this game a Zelda-like, it's honestly much more like Ys 1&2 and Gauntlet had a baby that was then raised by Actraiser XD (which makes some degree of sense, given that this was made by the guys who made both Ys 1&2 and Actraiser). It's a top down action game much like Gauntlet or Dungeon Explorers, and you go through dungeons killing all the monsters in an area. Upon killing all of the monsters out of a certain spawner, the spawner will explode all on its own, and walking over it will destroy it and free the soul of the being trapped in it.
Upon returning to the town of that particular area (of which the game has seven), you can talk to these beings (be they people, animal, or plant) and receive information, goodies, or just a simple thank you. This game has no money, so your goodies you find generally fall into being either new equipment (armor, swords, or spells), or just the power gems that you collect to power your spells. It's a pretty simple gameplay loop overall, but it's one that works really well regardless. It'll probably be a bit of an easy game for some (though the English version is a little bit harder), but I found its challenge to be juuuust right for me as a veteran of the genre. Even if you are having a hard time, you gain experience points from killing monsters, and there are always monsters that aren't connected to spawners that simply respawn when you enter and leave the screen, so simple EXP grinding to power up more is always an option if you're having trouble~.
The presentation of the game is really stand-out excellent. As mentioned earlier, we're taking a LOT of stuff from Actraiser, as almost all of the sound effects and even significant bits of the UI seem to just be copied directly over from Actraiser. Heck, even the way enemies get stunned slightly after hitting them is right out of Actraiser XD. Thankfully, not only is the Actraiser stuff very good and functional, so reusing it here is hardly a problem, but we also got a banging soundtrack too! This game's soundtrack was awesome, and there was barely a new area I got to where I didn't say out loud "oh hell yeah, this song rocks!". The graphics are also very pretty, though they're certainly of the time for a '92 SFC game.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. With a nice little story and really fun and balanced gameplay, this is a super easy recommendation. If you like 2D Zelda-type stuff at all, then this will likely be a game you quite enjoy, and you don't even need to be super good at these sorts of games to beat it. An awesome action/adventure game to spend a weekend with, if there ever was one~.