Soul Blazer

The Good
Let me say that right off the bat, I love the concept of this game. The world starts out empty, everybody's souls in the world have been captured by monsters. Only by defeating these monsters and conquering their "lair" will you be able to reclaim a soul and put it back on earth. And the restoration of these souls is needed to progress. A ladder might not appear until the character who stands next to it is restored, a house will not be built until somebody who lives there returns to life.

The game also has a sense of humor, and it won't be long before you find yourself rescuing some rather strange souls. Dogs and cats might be needed, or dolphins, or rats, or flowers may have the information you need. At one point in the game, you're even restoring the souls of chairs and tables. It's all rather surreal.

After the initial concept, the gameplay is quite simple. Top-Down hack and slash RPG action. You gain levels by defeating monsters, but this is all pretty linear and nearly every player will have fought the same number of enemies and explored the same places. Nothing to write home about.

Unique however is the glowing ball of light that orbits your character. This represents the souls who have chosen to aid you directly, and more practically... it's the object from which all your spells originate. Not only does this add to the whole 'soul' feeling, but it also makes spells more complicated since the you're required to aim the spell from the circling ball.

The Bad
The game isn't difficult, that is until you reach a boss. Most of the bosses seem to be exceptionally tough and difficult to combat from your overhead view. As such many of them seem to have an unfair advantage in battle.

The game doesn't have a lot of equipment to select from or a lot of spells to use. A player will get used to what they have fairly quickly and will find that they have it for a very long time. This isn't much of a problem, but once you've upgraded one stat with newfound equipment, don't expect to find anything else to aid it for quite some time.

Also, the game's weirdness will probably put off many folk and many of the NPCs that you talk too aren't that interesting, trying to rescue a specific person in order to advance can be tedious... especially if they're behind a puzzle of some kind.

The ending also isn't that good.

The Bottom Line
This is a Quintet game through and through, it resembles Actraiser very much in it's "holy restoration" nature, and also resembles Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma in it's game play. But it's also as weird and quirky as any of Quintet's other games.

This game makes you feel like you're really accomplishing something and defeating the forces of darkness, one person at a time... though a player may get bored and frustrated at some point and just give up playing the game. I know I've played and enjoyed this game on at least three different trips from beginning to end, and it was mostly because of the concept that I had such a good time.

The Good
The ideas behind this game worked... I loved the idea of adding little bits to different towns by finding different spirits (however a similar(ish) idea has now been created for the PS2 in the form of Dark Cloud and it's sequel (cant' remember the name). I also loved the actual story line it was rather sweet with little animals and plants also talking to you, also the actual additions to the game made it a little more interesting such as finding the 8 special emblems to gain the best spell (or sommat like that...)

The Bad
Unfortunately... the actual game lacked in length and can actually be completed within about 24 hours (possibly less if you don't bother to read the dialogue. Also with the exception possibly of finding all 8 emblems it is a bit easy... the last boss in the entire game not even slightly hard by the time you have the weapon and armour and ring required... also the ending although again sweet did leave a fair bit to be desired there are better RPG games for the SNES... but there are worse...

The Bottom Line
Short but fun while it lasts, not one to spend a lot of money on but if seen cheaply then could be worth a try better yet if possible borrow it off a friend. Not much reason to replay short of completeing everything...