ActRaiser

"Being God is boring"

ActRaiser is a God Sim\Action game developed by Quintet. ActRaiser quite an original title for its time. It combined building\strategy with a pure game of hack n' slash and platforming. While not the most successful game, it become quite popular and made a few bucks. But my honest opinion is that the game is nothing but 2 simple games thrown into one and nothing more.

Story: 5.5/10
Presentation: 5/10

You are some sort of a God that has woken up from a long slumber after an evil demon jailed you into your sky castle or something. Then you meet a little angel that informs you about the situation. You have to help the human race to stand on its feet and help you find the lairs of various great evils in order to hunt them down and finally kill the demon. The story is very simple, very boring and won't keep you interested at all since there is no mystery involved or secondary characters. The only thing that happens is people informing you via praying about various stuff like a lost child, an enemy lair discovery and stuff like that.

Gameplay: 7.8/10
Replay Value: 3/10

ActRaiser is actually 2 games in one, a strategy city building game and an action\platform, but this 2 genres aren't mixed into one big game, instead what you do is developing a certain city and when the right time comes you descent into the earth and start killing bad guys. And this exactly is the weakness of ActRaiser, because with out the strategy part the action part is very simple and typical and the same, (and even worse), happens just with the strategy part.

What you do in the game is float around in your sky palace until you reach a city underneath and start developing it. Upon starting the strategy game you control the world with your angel. The angel commands to which direction should the people start developing the city, who then start moving around creating buildings and crop fields. The problem is that there is no special strategy involved, it is just a matter of time before your city is completed 100%. The only thing that you will do will waiting is kill various critters that come out from some lairs, lead the people there to seal the lair and finally do some special stuff like destroy boulders or remove swamps, deserts and things like that by using your godly powers like thunder, rain, etc. Also while you play some certain events will take place, for example your people will tell you that they need some rain over a certain spot, or they will ask to do something to calm them down, (like killing a monster that frightens them). In the strategy section you'll find various items that will enhance your power during the actual fighting part. After you develop your city to a certain extent, the people will ask you to kill the boss enemy of that area, then you will descent on the surface and enter a typical side scrolling action\platform game. There you will have to traverse through various places, killing stuff on your way and avoiding traps or carefully climb platforms, until you meet the main boss. The boss fights are quite entertaining although 90% of the effort needed is the use of the ultimate spells that you can use for a couple of times. These spells found on the strategy section have some small differences that make them better for certain bosses making the choice of magic before you enter the battlefield very important.

But is ActRaiser a good game. No, it isn't… and I say that although while playing it a became addicted to it. I could see the flaws, but I enjoyed it… and then I finished it and never played it again.

Graphics: 7.5/10
Design: 7/10

Nicely designed ActRaiser has good graphics without something revolutionary though. In the strategy part where you view the world from a bird's eye view and everything is nice and simple and errr… cute. What I mean is that the enemies that will spawn in this section of the game have that typical anime critter style. In the action part though things look better and not cute at all. You control a paladin like hero with very simple animation and design, something that goes for your enemies also apart from the bosses who sometimes have very good design. The backgrounds though have better design and are those that enhance the game in terms of graphics.

Sound: 6.5/10
Music: 9/10

I liked the music of ActRaiser. It's quite catchy and well composed like most music themes created by the-guy-who's-name-I-don't-remember! When in the strategy section you hear low tempo, soothing music that feels nice and when entering the battlefield a darker and faster theme starts. While very good, after a couple of minutes it becomes a bit repetitive, but what the hell, it's better to have good music that is a bit repetitive than have no good music at all. The sound effects on the other hand are nothing special, just your typical action game fanfare, good but forgettable.

Positives:
-2 games into 1
-Great music

Negatives:
-2 average games into 1
-Uninteresting story

Also Play:
Demon's Crest (SNES)
Giants: Citizen Kabuto (PC)
Sacrifice (PC)

Overall: 6.4/10

ActRaiser is quite addictive for the first playthrough, or for the first hour for some… after that it looses its charm and it is unlikely that you ever play it again. I don't recommend getting it for more that a euro\dollar\yen…

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/09

Game Release: ActRaiser (US, November 1991)