Illusion of Gaia

"Zelda clones have feelings too"

Zelda pretty much dominates the adventure-RPG field. It's been that way for as long as any gamer can remember. So perhaps it's inevitable that every now and again, a real solid game gets written off by the masses as just another Zelda clone.

Enter Illusion of Gaia, an old gem from the heyday of the Super NES. Most gamers breezed through the era without ever hearing of Gaia, instead associating adventure-RPGs with Link to the Past and Secret of Mana; those exceptions such as myself likely have the advertising section of Nintendo Power to thank.

As this wound up being one of the games that set the tone for my childhood, thank you, Nintendo Power advertising section.

From a functionality standpoint, Illusion of Gaia is described most easily by analogy to the first and third Zelda games – I'll leave the clone debate for another day, though it suffices to say that IoG brings enough innovations of its own to the table. More on that soon.

You play as Will, a run-of-the-mill boy from a working-class town. Your weapon is a flute. Now you're unlikely to curse yourself for leaving the woodwinds at home should you ever come face-to-face with a fierce monster in real life. But the flute makes for a pretty potent weapon in Will's universe. And that's a good thing, because said universe involves a lot of dungeon crawling. So Will interacts with monsters much the same way Link circa 1992 does: smashes them with a weapon before they get close enough to leech off his HP (hit points) by bumping into him. That, coupled with the bird's-eye view and puzzle-filled dungeons, is what gets Gaia labeled a Zelda clone.

But no Zelda game lets you stop off at preset warp zones to alternate dimensions where a talking goddess statue will save your game and let you transform into a giant knight. Dark Space is one of Gaia's first significant innovations. It's a resting point you'll access from dungeons across the duration of the game, and very often you're given the chance to temporarily transform Will into an ancient warrior who has boosted stats and new techniques. For most of the game, this will be Freedan, a knight of yore with powerful swordsmanship skills.

Speaking of those skills, we're on to Innovation #2, which ties in with the first. Occasionally you'll come across a Dark Space with a glowing statue of Will or Freedan. This means you can learn a new skill, which can be activated from any dungeon using a certain button combination. Not only do these abilities let you wail on enemies in new and wonderful ways, they even tie in with puzzles from time to time. For example, you may need to charge Will's “power dash” so he can break down a section of loose wall. Or use Freedan's sword-blast technique to reach a faraway enemy or switch. Often this leads to well-designed puzzles that involve precision and just enough repetition that you're not bothered having to watch the cool skills over and over again.

Another innovation is how graphics and audio interplay with the puzzles. You may need to whip out the flute and play a song to proceed (don't worry, there's no Guitar Hero-style minigame, it's as easy as choosing the tune from the item select menu). You may need to tap walls with your flute to check for clanky-sounding loose sections (okay, you can do this in Zelda too). And there's even an animation for Will's thick head of hair signifying a strong wind in the area; often this is the key to a clever puzzle.

These are all very nifty things. They are fine examples of doing a lot with a little, and in the early days of the SNES that was what separated the very average from the very memorable games. Yet Gaia's strongest asset may well be its in-game world. Indeed, it's a classic example of a game with a clichéd plot but impressive execution, bolstered mostly by its atmosphere and characterization.

For much of IoG, you'll explore ancient dungeons that have real-life equivalents, in mythology if not in the physical world. From the Tower of Babel to the Great Wall of China, Incan Ruins to the lost continent of Mu. Imagine my delight in junior high Social Studies upon learning that Angkor Wat really exists! And not only do the dungeons borrow from Planet Earth, the game's inborn sociology takes pages from real-life history books. Across your travels with Will you'll encounter one culture that was wiped out, another oppressed in slavery, and yet a third coping with starvation and the threat of extinction.

It's pretty mature stuff. The game goes so far as to tackle cannibalism, a Russian Roulette-style drinking game, and by its conclusion, such broad themes as civilization spoiling Mother Earth and the metaphysical forces acting on evolution. Pretty remarkable stuff when you consider Nintendo turned right back around on the Final Fantasies and insisted “pray” be changed to “wish” and “Holy” to “Pearl”!

And despite its oftentimes innocent appearance, Gaia is chock full'o morbidity. Some of the most “real” feeling deaths of the 16-bit era are contained within this little game.

Gaia presents, in fact, a very intricately woven theme about how good and bad, light and dark, always coexist – Yin and Yang, if you will. A beautiful town, for instance, has dangerous back alleys littered with slave traders. Very few areas don't have some sort of reminder that people, and therefore cities and towns, have their dark, criminal side. So used one gets to the recurring theme that the “twists” of the final dungeon fit perfectly with the game's tone in a weird meta-narrative sort of way.

Throughout Will's travels he has a rugged band of friends accompanying him – unextraordinary but decent characters, some (Lance, Lilly, Neil) with their moments. Here, again, the audiovisual definition counts for a lot – each buddy has his or her own detailed sprite along with a “color theme” reflected in the font of their text boxes and even the pitch of the sound made as their dialogue scrolls on screen. Princess Kara, for instance, is dressed in pink, and so her dialogue shows up in a pink font, and even makes a high-pitched, slightly feminine sound as it scrolls. Again, it's the little touches like this that help make the game memorable.

Finally, while the graphics may be nothing Chrono Trigger couldn't top in its sleep, the game does have a rudimentary example of Mode 7, in the click-and-go world map, which is actually pretty fun to use, especially when your teammates travel with you in a charming little pyramid formation.

I haven't said much about the music, and while Gaia lacks any sort of epic score, most tunes are very well-constructed; catchy without being repetitive, exactly what you want for exploring towns and crawling dungeons. All major dungeons (the “Ruins”) have their own signature musical theme, some even with a song for Will's flute to match. And for the most part, the dungeon themes get you pumped up, while the two themes help you relax and take in the scenery.

That's the sort of stuff where Gaia excels – quirks and details in the presentation coupled with innovative gameplay features and a very memorable world, intentionally analogous to our own. Illusion of Gaia isn't likely to make many Top 5 lists, but it is a shining example of how far a game could go in the 16-bit era with some simple ingenuity and a vibrant atmosphere.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/00, Updated 12/11/08

Game Release: Illusion of Gaia (US, 09/01/94)